Courses

All courses carry 3 credits unless otherwise specified.

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.

614 Media Theories
The purpose of this course is to provide a historical and critical framework for the field of media studies. We will start from the history of "mass society" as a concept in social thought and then examine media as institutions, technologies, systems of representation, and cultural objects. We will discuss the links between media, culture, and power from a number of perspectives, including political economy, media effects, cultural studies, racial capitalism, postcolonial studies, and technology studies.

615 Survey in Performance Studies
This course provides an overview of performance studies.  As such, we will overview the history of the field, major tenets, paradigms, theories, methodologies, and directions. As a field of study, performance studies is interdisciplinary, practiced across fields, and specifically as a subfield and tradition in Communication.  Beyond the field, we will look to the ways theories are produced as and through performance, how theories analyze as and through performance and how performance as a methodology is practiced as aesthetic communication, ritual, everyday life, ethnography, and more.  Students will demonstrate their understanding of performance in all these ways through writing and analysis as well as through different kinds of performance practices.  Students should leave the survey with an understanding of the breadth of performance studies and be prepared to use performance theories and methodologies in research, an area focus, or in further seminars.

616 Introduction to Film Theory
This course offers an overview of the major theoretical and critical approaches to the study of cinema, as well as their historical development and applications. We will examine various formalist and realist film theories (together constituting so-called "classical" film theory), as well as theoretical and critical methods informed by structuralism and semiotics, phenomenology and cognitive science, psychoanalysis and politics, visual and cultural studies, and media studies (among others). Theoretical topics to be considered will likely include the following cinematic representation and reality; montage and dialectics; narrative and textuality; film's status as art and its relationship to other arts; authorship, gender and sexuality; genre; spectatorship and identification; stardom and performance; ideology and apparatus; alternative aesthetics; globalization, national cinemas, postcolonialism; and mediation and convergence culture in a digital age. Seminar participants will be responsible for watching films outside class on a regular basis. There are no prerequisites for the course, except a strong interest in interdisciplinary film industrial/artisanal product, and mode of entertainment. This course fulfills a requirement for the Graduate Certificate in Film Studies.

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 quantitative 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 technical and policy means. Students will examine interventions to address problems with contemporary social media and design and develop possible interventions.

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

690STA Engaged Research Methods in Communication
Engaged scholarship promotes collaboration between academics and diverse publics outside academia-practitioners, government officials, industry, social movements, advocates, and citizen groups-in knowledge production and creative projects that are mutually beneficial and contribute to the public good. This course introduces participants to main epistemological frameworks, collaborative methods, and dissemination strategies employed in the field of communication to advance engaged and public scholarship that emphasize the social and democratic dimension of communication research that engages affected publics in open deliberation, knowledge creation, and problem-solving work.

691E Media Literacy
Media literacy is defined and discussed in this graduate seminar, with a focus on children and teens and an inter-and intra-disciplinary, praxis-based approach. We will begin by asking the surprisingly complicated questions of what media literacy is and what its goals entail, attending to its multiple theoretical foundations. Then we will briefly examine the state of media literacy (and the policies to support it) in the U. S. and in various global locations. Next, we will turn our attention to the study of media literacy efforts in a number of topic areas, including news and politics, commercialism, representation, and various aspects of health and well being (body image, alcohol and tobacco use, violence/aggression). Throughout the course, we will carefully examine the methods and approaches that are used to study media literacy, including both qualitative and quantitative research. Students will have the option of engaging in media literacy efforts in the community

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.

723 Networks in Digital Information Infrastructure

This course introduces students to network theory and analysis across the social sciences. Students will learn key concepts such as social capital, weak ties, homophily, and opinion leadership by exploring their applications in contemporary literature in communication and related fields.  The course emphasizes both theoretical foundations and hands-on skills for collecting and analyzing network data through no-code software.  Students will study digital networks like hyperlinks, retweets, and hashtags to examine topics like information spread, organization, politics, and identities.  By critically engaging with network science, students will understand its insights on issues such as polarization, disinformation, and social movements.  The goal is for students to design their own network study by the end of the course.

724 Audience Research and Cultural Studies
Focuses on the relations between media and audiences, concentrating on theoretical and empirical work drawn from a cultural studies tradition.

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, debates, and methodologies in global television studies.

792J Communication in the Public Sphere

We will discuss the concepts of public and communication in the participation of ordinary people in public activities, stressing on participation in the media but not limited to it.  We take a two-fold approach: we discuss various theories regarding participation and the public; and we discuss and learn discursive methodologies to study such participation.

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 analyzing communicative events and practices in their sociocultural context. Emphasizes hands on application of theoretically informed methods.

794Q Argument, Conflict, and Mediation

This course provides an introduction to argumentation theory and research with specific focus on communicative approaches (e.g., pragma-dialectics, conversational argument) and examines conflict in relation to language, processes of human interaction, and the rich settings where people conduct their lives.  We will pay special attention to disagreement management in dispute mediation and study interventions to shape interaction from a communication design perspective.

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, political discourse.

795N Cultural Studies: Theoretical Foundations
This seminar examines the theoretical perspectives that lie behind the formation of cultural studies. Instead of discussing works claiming to do cultural studies, we will read a number of authors, from whom cultural studies draws its concepts and analytic procedures.

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

801 (Fall) and 802 (Spring) Pro-Seminar-Graduate Introduction to Communication
The Proseminar is a 1-credit class spread across the Fall and Spring semesters. Over 15 class meetings, this class will introduce you to many of the people, knowledge, and tools that the department feels you need to start you on a successful path in the Communication PhD Program. Our meetings focus on professional development and training in the areas of pedagogy, research, and career planning.

891T Information Technology and Society

In an era of rapid technological advancement, we are witnessing a communication revolution that is both citizen-driven and technology-enabled.  This seminar introduces students to the major areas of research concerning the impact of emerging information technologies on society.  Discussions will focus on the role of technology and networked communication in information diffusion, social change, and the evolving dynamics of public and private spheres of social life.  The course will examine the influence of communication technology on social networks, civil society, democratic processes, and global interconnectedness.  The course begins with foundational theories explaining the relationship between media and society.  Building on this theoretical foundation, we will explore contemporary perspectives on the effects of information technology.  Finally, we will investigate various issues documenting the impact of technology on different aspects of our society, political ecosystem, and global environment.

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

899 Doctoral Dissertation
Credit, 12.