MDST 2000 Intro to Media Studies (3 credits)
Instructor: Bruce Williams
This course also includes Discussion Sections
This course is a survey introduction to the complex and increasingly pervasive impact of mass media in the U.S. and around the world. Our lives, as individuals and as citizens of a developing global village, are perpetually intersected by numerous forms of mass media. Newspapers and magazines, television, Hollywood cinema, advertising, and the Internet significantly help us determine how we make sense of ourselves and of the world around us. This course provides a foundation for helping you to understand how mass media – as a business, as well as a set of texts – operates. The course also explores contextual issues – how media texts and businesses are received by audiences and by regulatory bodies.
MDST 2559 New Course: Black Femininities and Masculinities in Media (3 credits)
Cross-Listed with WGS 2224
Instructor: Lisa Shutt
Restricted to 1st & 2nd-year students
Addresses the role the media has played in creating images and understandings of "Blackness" in the United States, particularly where it converges with popular ideologies about gender.
MDST 2700 News Writing (3 credits)
Cross-Listed with ENWR 2700
Instructor: C. Brian Kelly
Satisfies second writing requirement
This course focuses on the development of basic writing skills, with craftsmanship the emphasis. We will study, discuss, and rewrite old and new newspaper stories in a workshop setting. Readings will be taken from texts and various other sources. Progress from short hard-news pieces through speech stories, legislative and political coverage, the use of narrative and on to other news features. Repeated writing drills. Fair to good typing or word processing skills required. It will be essential to follow current events as well.
MDST 2810 Cinema as an Art Form (3 credits)
Cross-listed with DRAM 2810
Instructor: Walter Korte
This course also includes mandatory screening section
A course in visual thinking; introduces film criticism, concentrating on classic and current American and non-American films.
MDST 3000 Theory & Criticism of Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Aniko Bodroghkozy
Restricted to Media Studies majors – prerequisite MDST 2000
This is a required course for all third-year Media Studies Majors.
How can we think productively about the media – the industries that produce it, the audiences that receive it, and the social, cultural and political impact mass media have on the contemporary social order? This course provides students with conceptual and analytical tools for understanding how and why “media matters”. Using a broadly historical lens, we will explore the dominant “schools” of media and mass communication thought as they have developed over the 20th and 21st centuries, looking at how these different schools’ dialogue with each other as well as how they provide different ways to think about the phenomenon of mass media.
MDST 3050 History of Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Jennifer Petersen
Restricted to Media Studies majors and minors
This is a survey, lecture-format course on the history of media forms, institutions, and technology from the origins of writing, invention of print technology, through the development of digital media. Attention to the specific characteristics of individual media, the changing role of media as a force in culture, and the continually transforming institutions and business of media will all be touched on. The role of media forms in the creation of public discourse and the social controls on media through censorship, legal constraints, and economic policies will also be examined.
MDST 3206 Documentary Film (3 credits)
Instructor: Jennifer Petersen
Restricted to instructor permission
When do we call a film documentary? Why? How do these expectations and definitions guide (or trouble) documentary filmmakers? In this course, we will answer these questions and discuss the different ways that documentary films (and filmmakers) have attempted to represent reality. Starting with recent debates about documentary, we will discuss how we define documentary film as distinct from fiction and why. To do so, we will investigate the origins of documentary (in photography and anthropology) and the development of various techniques and modes of documentary film. Throughout, we will be conscious of the particular truth claims of documentary and the ethical issues involved in filming real people. We will also pay close attention to the historical origins of different modes of documentary and how each mode deals with issues of truth-telling and ethics. You will leave the class with a better understanding of the history and cultural role of documentary and with the ability to identify different “modes” of documentary, and an understanding of the different ways documentarise claim representational authority.
MDST 3300 Global Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Hector Amaya
Examines the dynamic global transformations in print, broadcast, and digital media in an international and comparative context. Considers historical, institutional, and textual factors that impact media in local and global contexts. Examines the critical role of media in the long history of globalization and focuses on a number of cultural, technological, and economic issues addressed by media and globalization at the turn of the twenty-first century.
MDST 3402 War and the Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Bruce Williams
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This course examines media coverage of American wars from World War I through the current Iraqi conflict. From the 20th century on, the experience of war came to most Americans mainly through the electronic media – from newsreels to Hollywood feature films to television to the internet – rather than through direct experience. As a result, our understanding of America’s military conflicts has been heavily shaped by the way war has been portrayed in the media. Careful study of the evolution in media coverage of war provides an ideal vantage point for understanding the changing nature of warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries, war’s impact on American society, and the ways in which political elites have attempted to mobilize public support for a number of very different foreign conflicts.
Course requirements include viewing a wide range of media treatments of various foreign conflicts and reading pertinent theoretical and historical essays.
MDST 3405 Media Policy and Law (3 credits)
Instructor: Siva Vaidhyanathan
This course examines the constitutional, legal and regulatory foundations common to print, broadcast media and the Internet. An overview of topics such as libel, invasion of privacy, obscenity and copyright helps students understand forces that shape news and information they receive and prepares them to use media more effectively as citizens, voters and entrepreneurs in an increasingly complex multimedia world.
MDST 3502 Topics in Film Genres – Topic: Shooting the Western (3 credits)
Instructor: William Little
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This course will provide an overview of the enduring genre of the American Western in its classic and revised forms. The course will address the social and historical contexts informing the films. Students will be asked to perform both cultural and formal analysis of the cinematic texts.
MDST 3502 Special Topics in Film Genre – Topic: American Gangster Films (3 credits)
Instructor: William Little
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This course offers in-depth examination of an enduring, flexible genre in American cinema: the gangster film. The aim of this study is three-fold: 1. To trace the genre’s development from the early silent film period to the present as a means of exploring artistic and technological achievements marking the history of American film; 2. To explore the extensive influence the genre has had on the nature of the American film industry, from the industry’s implementation of the Production Code in the 1930s to the growth of independent cinema in the latter part of the twentieth century; 3. To explore how the representation of gangster life on screen articulates crucial anxieties, frustrations, and desires circulating in American society at the time of the film’s creation. To pursue this last aim, students will consider carefully a number of issues dramatized in and/or raised by the films studied, including the following: the dream of social mobility; the myth of self-reinvention; the politics of cultural assimilation; the thematics of consumer culture’s investments in style; the psychology of codes of masculinity; the dynamics of the law’s dependence on violence; the romance of the nuclear family; the underworld family as model of corporate enterprise; the increasing interface of bodies and machines and the impact of technology on the sense of self.
Students will be expected to conduct patient, rigorous analysis of the form and content of the assigned films. To facilitate this practice, viewings will be supplemented by essays of film criticism and by theoretical readings drawn from a variety of disciplines, including cultural studies, religious studies, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. The list of films is as follows: D. W. Griffith’s The Muskateers of Pig Alley, Mervyn LeRoy’s, Little Caesar, William Wellman’s, The Public Enemy, Robert Siodmak’s, The Killers, Raoul Walsh’s White Heat, Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, Francis Ford Coppola’s, The Godfather, Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, The Hughes Brothers’ Menace II Society, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, The Wachowski Brothers’ Bound.
MDST 3503 Issues & Controversies in Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Richard McGuire
Restricted to instructor permission
This course will consider recent and current controversies in media and media studies. It surveys a series of "hot" topics within media. In each case it examines issues both historically and theoretically. The purpose of the course is to provide students with the tools and habits of thought to delve into the background and issues surrounding controveries so that the shallow presentation of the controversy does not remain the dominant frame.
MDST 3559 New Course: Television, New Media, and Society (3 credits)
Instructor: Michael Wayne
For the last 60 years, television has been one of the most important cultural forms in the American mediascape. Mindful of this past, this course seeks to explore the contemporary issues in television studies as we enter what many have called the digital age. How does time-shifting technology fundamentally alter our conceptions of television? What does Hulu mean for the television industry? What does the emergence of “quality television” imply about television's rich past as a shared cultural product? Does television still matter in our convergence culture? To answer such questions, this course will use a variety of theoretical approaches from media studies, cultural studies, and sociology to help students develop critical thinking and writing skills. Assessment will be based on four papers assigned throughout the term.
MDST 3610 Film Under Facism (3 credits)
Instructor: Laura Heins
The cinema of the fascist dictatorships of the 1930s and 40s stands as the primary historical example of the application of mass media to the ends of mass manipulation. The propagandistic strategies of fascist cinema were often subtle, however, and the workings of fascist ideologies were hidden from spectators under the surface appearance of “pure entertainment” or of informative documentary. This course will examine the ideological content and the formal structure of fascist films, focusing primarily on cinema in the Third Reich, but also considering the cinemas of fascist Italy and Spain. Among the topics we will address are the way in which a militarist and nationalist spirit was supported by fascist popular films, their participation in racist worldviews, and their treatment of gender issues. We will also investigate definitions of “fascist aesthetics,” the often complex modes of address to spectators of Nazi films, and the relationship between fascist cinema and the classical cinema of Hollywood. The course should thereby serve to sensitize students to the reflection and transmission of ideological content in popular cinema in general.
MDST 3703 Introduction to the Digital Liberal Arts (3 credits)
Instructor: Raphael Alvarado
Students will gain a practical and critical introduction to key technologies that are shaping research, innovation, and critical thinking across the liberal arts curriculum: specific technologies, including a programming language, that will empower them to better envision and develop technology-mediated projects in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students will reflect on the history and discourse in these areas.
MDST 3800 Independent Study in Media Studies (1-3 credits)
Instructor: Hector Amaya
Restricted to instructor permission – Restricted to Media Studies majors
Provides an opportunity for students to get credit for advanced, independent projects and field work, including extra-mural sponsored projects and internships, in the area of media studies. Students must put a proposal together for the project with a faculty sponsor, which must be approved by the add/drop deadlines. Application forms and guidelines may be obtained in the Media Studies office.
MDST 3830 History of Film I (3 credits)
Cross-listed with DRAM 3830
Instructor: Walter Korte
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This course also includes mandatory screening section
Analyzes the development of the silent film, 1895 to 1928; emphasizes the technical and thematic links between national schools of cinema art and the contributions of individual directors. Includes weekly film screenings.
MDST 4000 Media Theory and Methods (3 credits)
Instructor: TBA
Restricted to 4th year Media Studies Majors
An introduction to advanced theory and research methods in Media Studies. Intended as a foundation for thesis work to be conducted in a student's fourth year of undergraduate study (usually to fulfill Distinguished Majors Program requirements). Covers subjects such as historiography and proper use of historical records, survey methodology and ethics, and ethnographic methods. Prerequisite: MDST 3000.
MDST 4105 Media & Citizenship (3 credits)
Instructor: Hector Amaya
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This course provides a critical perspective on the relationships of media to citizenship. It asks questions central to explaining the role of media in political and national life, including the following: What notions of national and political membership are forwarded by mainstream media? What media spaces are viable for the political agency of racial, sexual, and economic minorities and how do these spaces work?
MDST 4106 The Kennedy Era and the Media (3 credits)
Instructor: Aniko Bodroghkozy
Restricted to Permission of Instructor
This seminar and discussion-oriented course examines the powerful influence the abbreviated Kennedy presidency had on a range of U.S. media including journalism, television, advertising, cinema, and media policy. The course also explores the continuing media fascination with the Kennedy era in memory, nostalgia, and conspiracy theories.
MDST 4559 New Course: Media and Popular Music
Instructor: Joel Rubin
From sheet music to the MP3, media have played a central role in popular music cultures. In this seminar we will examine how media technologies have impacted the production, dissemination, and consumption of popular music; we will also consider the economic and legal issues that intersect this ongoing history. Students will bring their varied interests and approaches to an independent research project.
MDST 4801 Intro to Documentary Production (3 credits)
Instructor: Bill Reifenberger
This introductory course will focus on the elements of documentary productions, including theory, ethics, and technologies. Students will plan and produce their own short documentaries using mini DV cameras and non-linear edit systems.
MDST 4900 Media Studies colloquium (1 credit)
Instructor: Siva Vaidhyanathan
Restricted to Instructor Permission
This largely student-run and student-led discussion and activity seminar focuses on current issues in Media Studies. It also serves as a clearinghouse and resource-sharing space for Media Studies majors. Third and fourth year majors gather once a week in an informal environment to discuss a mutually agreed-upon topic, engage in specific projects, or listen to presentations by invited speakers or other students.
MDST 4960 Advanced Independent Project in Media Studies (3 credits)
Restricted to Instructor Permission
This course is designed to allow students to pursue guided independent study of a topic that is not contained within the course offerings of Media Studies. Students wishing to pursue a guided study must prepare a syllabus and reading list in consultation with a faculty member or the Chair of the Department of Media Studies. Students must put a proposal together for the project with a faculty sponsor (or the Chair of Media Studies) and the project must be approved before the end of the add/drop period for the semester in which the credit is taken. They should be very explicit about the milestones for assessment during the semester's work. The reading list and assignments should be comparable to those in any other 3 or 400-level course for Media Studies and terms for midterm and final grade evaluation on the basis of papers and final projects should be formalized at the time the student begins the course. Intermediate and advanced students have found this a particularly useful way to study an area in depth that cannot be accommodated in the course offerings of the program. In general, the more focused the proposal, the greater the likelihood of approval. Students may not use this course to substitute for core courses in the major, though in some cases this may count as an elective for credit towards the major requirements, on approval of the Chair of the Department.