Courses

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

514 Social Uses of Language

540 Internet Governance & Information Policy
Introduces students to actors, institutions, and public interest battles fought nationally, regionally, and globally for the control of the Internet. It considers the interaction between law, technological design, and policy solutions in shaping infrastructure, code, and content of the global web.

611 Introduction to Theories and Concepts of Human Communication
Process of theory construction, theory testing, and paradigmatic change in communication. Theory relationships among normative and scientific studies. Theory types and their causal mechanisms, units of analysis, and appropriate research methodologies. Major theories compared in terms of their theoretical and metatheoretical bases. Required of all Communication graduate students; taught in fall.

613 Introduction to Theories of Social Interaction
Scholarly literature of interpersonal communication, including historical development and conceptualization, survey of current research and theoretical literature, and critique of methodologies and lines of development. Emphasis on reciprocal causal relationships between communication patterns and nature of the social order, and implications of this relationship for individual action and cultural change. Required of students specializing in this area.

620 Qualitative Methods in Research
Approaches to research, conceptualizations of problems, questions, and methodologies for the field of communication, broadly defined with an emphasis on qualitative, interpretive, feminist, critical, and cultural approaches. Introduction to methodological specialties of departmental faculty. Required of all Communication graduate students.

621 Quantitative Methods in Research
Introduction to the structure, process, and logic of quanitative empirical research in communication. Topics include research design, measurement, descriptive and inferential statistics, and basic multivariate analysis. Students expected to acquire an understanding of the ability to critique various methodological approaches and techniques. Fundamental concepts of data analysis; preparation for more advanced courses. Required of all Communication graduate students.

627 Fixing Social Media
Examines sociotechnical problems with existing modes of social media and works towards building new, affirmative visions for social media through techincal and policy means. Students will examine interventions to address problems with contemporary social media and design and develop possible interventions.

641 The Cinema as a Social Force
Effective and reflective roles of film in society. Emphasis on relationship of society to structure, development, function, and effects of the motion picture.

665 Contemporary Rhetorical Theory
Review of major contemporary approaches to rhetorical theory. Includes formalism, structuralism, phenomenology, marxism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies.

690E Ethnography of the Digital
A practice-intensive seminar to rethink ethnographic methods as our social lives are increasingly mediated by digital technologies.

691B Seminar in Media Theory
Foundation course in the history and philosophy of various approaches to mass media and technology. Covers mainstream research in direct, indirect, and limited effects models. Required of students specializing in this area.

693D Introduction to Film Theory
Overvew of the major theoretical and critical approaches to the study of cinema, as well as their historical development and applications.

695S Survey of Performance Studies
This course provides an overview of performance studies, performance and performativity as theory and methodology.  The various approaches to performance studies in communication are considered, as are interdisciplinary approaches, with emphasis on critical, postcolonial, feminist and pedagogical applications of theory.

705 Race, Media, and Politics
Reviews the Communication and Political Science literature to understand: (1) The role of mass media (and communication more broadly) in the construction and dissemination of race as a sociopolitical concept; (2) how race affects political attitudes, opinions, and behaviors; (3) the unique methodological problems researchers face in studying racial attitudes and opinions; and (4) shortcomings in the existing scholarship on race, media, and politics and how these shortcomings might be addressed.

712 Political Communication
Diffusion of persuasive political communications through standard and created media. Examination of campaign techniques (i.e., research on issues and themes, electorate polling, thematic media approaches, campaign strategies) in management and administration.

722 Media Systems and Institutions
Analysis of institutionalization of mass communication process in society, including organizational entities creating message systems and nature of resultant information stuctures.

750 Language and Society
Relationships between language use and aspects social structure amd process. Study of origins and functions of language diversity; ways that language varieties affect communication, social identity, and social evaluation. Emphasis on social class, gender, race, and ethnicity.

781 Ethnography of Communication
Exploration of ethnographic inquiry and some of its possibilities for creating insights into human communication. Basic philosophy, theory, and methodological issues.

791B Political Economy of Communication
What is political economy and how can it be applied to the study of media and (new) communication industries? This course is designed to introduce students to the intellectual history of the political economy of communication, and concludes with contemporary scholarship that reconsiders the structure-culture discussing frameworks such as transcultural political economy.

791E Television Studies: Text, Culture, Industry
Seminar designated to introduce graduate students to contemporary issues, debaates, and methodologies in global television studies.

794B Critical Pedagogy
This class explores radical theories of education, their challenges and possibilities for transforming teaching and learning.

794M Field Research Methods in Communication
Ethnographic approaches to recording and alalyzing communicative events and practices in their sociocultural context. Emphasizes hands on application of theoretically informed methods.

795M Performance Ethnography
This performance-based seminar focuses on the implications of decolonizing emancipatory epistemologies for critical, interpretive inquiry.  The readings and assignments forefront localized critical pedagogy, critical personal narratives, decolonizing and interpretive inquiry as moral, poltitcal discourse.

796 Independent Study
Independent study in special subjects. Credit, 1-3 each semester; maximum credit, 6.

797P Media Archaeology
This course examines the development of media archaeology from its German origins. What makes the study of media technologies "archaeological" as opposed to simply being "historical"?

891 Pro-Seminar-Graduate Introduction to Communication
This one credit proseminar is designed for new graduate students (although all are welcome) and has three broad foci: (1) teaching/instructional development; (2) professional development for graduate students; and (3) topics of scholarly expertise in the Department. Credit 1.

896 Directed Research
Directed study in special subjects. Credit 1-3 each semester; maximum credit, 6

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 12.