Communication, Culture and Media
Courses
CCM 510 Introduction to Cultural Studies 3.0 Credits
This course is an introduction to cultural studies and theory. We will discuss current trends and discussions in cultural studies, and raise questions about culture, politics, subalternity, sexuality, gender, feminism, urban studies, revolutions, ethnicity, and multiculturalism, among others. Students will apply the theoretical approaches and methodologies of cultural studies to the analysis of various aspects of material culture found in contemporary society from products to media.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 555 Ethnography of Communication 3.0 Credits
Following an examination of theories about interaction in speech, the course provides an in-depth look at qualitative communication studies. Both transcripts of talk in natural settings and videos of actual interactions will be used. Considers such topics as storytelling (narrative), self-presentation in talk (performance and identity), the construction of gender in communication, literacy, and cross-cultural approaches to politeness.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 701 Contemporary Social Theory 3.0 Credits
This course familiarizes beginning graduate students with original works by major theorists of the late 19th century to the present. Students will especially examine the production of social theory as an ongoing conversation about the predicaments of modernity and post-modernity.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 702 Communication Theory I: Persuasion and Media Effects 3.0 Credits
This course is an introduction to the study of persuasion and media effects. Readings include elements of persuasion and compliance seeking, as well as how persuasion takes effect through mass media. Course draws liberally from contemporary research in communication literature.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 703 Communication Theory II: Discourse and Semiotics 3.0 Credits
Through readings of major theoretical ideas and voices, and occasional case examples, this course introduces students to theories of discourse and semiotics. Major concepts include theories of the sign, and of genre, and the role(s) that language plays in social construction, structuralism and post-structuralism, discourse and post-modernity, and language ideology.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 704 Research Methods in Communication, Culture and Media 3.0 Credits
This course familiarizes students with various quantitative research methods in communication research including analysis, survey research and experiments. Each stage of the research process will be explored from hypotheses to defining and operationalizing variables, including effective sampling, analysis, and write up. Also introduces students to a wide range of original research studies.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 705 Data Analysis in Communication 3.0 Credits
Students are introduced to statistics for communication research, including quantitative analysis techniques for survey data and content analysis. Causal models, sampling and basic ideas of correlation and regression are discussed. Course is a hands-on approach with equal attention to technique and theoretical understanding, using SPSS software.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 710 Mass Communication and American Social Thought 3.0 Credits
Mass communication has been at the center of most of the hopes and anxieties of the 20th Century. Would mass communication promote democracy or totalitarianism, support the powers-that-be or challenge them, make us smarter or dumber, enhance real life or distort it, etc.? In the end, what do we want mass communication to be and do in the 21st Century? In this course we will examine these questions historically, while learning about the development of “media studies.”.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 720 Critical Theory 3.0 Credits
This course provides an overview of critical theory. It starts with the creation of the critical Frankfurt School, and reviews the works of Gramsci, Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. It then focuses on the expansion of critical theory by Jurgen Habermas through consideration of his theory of communicative action.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 725 Political Communication 3.0 Credits
This course introduces students to the background concepts and literature in multiple areas of political communication. Material ranges from rhetoric and public relations to mass communication theory. The course objective is to equip students with the skills so that they can go on to pursue scholarly research in these areas on their own. Among other things, students will learn how to write and analyze speeches; evaluate more and less adroit responses to questions; and to assess media coverage of political affairs.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 735 Material Culture 3.0 Credits
Stuff. Things. Goods. Possessions. This course explores the relationship between human beings and the material objects that surround us. Drawing from literature in anthropology, archaeology, cultural studies, communications, and science and technology studies, we will be exploring the cultural and social life of things: how they move across borders and through our lives, how they accumulate and disperse, how they define the difference between social groups and classes, and, most of all, how they lend our lives weight and meaning. We will also be exploring the status of things in the digital age, emergent notions of materiality, and cutting edge work in "new materialism" studies.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 740 Consumer Culture 3.0 Credits
This course will engage with the rise of mass consumerism in the United States over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries, and trace critical approaches to it using interdisciplinary approaches from the fields of history, media studies and communication, and cultural studies. Specifically, we will discuss the birth of critiques of capitalism, the rise of mass production and advertising, the role of consumerism in shaping conceptions of identity, citizenship, and taste, and contemporary trends in consumer culture.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 745 Digital Subjectivities 3.0 Credits
By asking about the mass media as an imaginative resource, this course will examine theoretical frameworks to understand types of self and subjectivity facilitated by new media. Through a survey of contemporary social thought on the subject of “the subject,” as well as recent work on virtual subjectivity, we will explore the very meaning of “being digital,” its cultural implications, its structural limitations, and its ontological consequences.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 750 Political Economy of Media 3.0 Credits
The political economy of media links media and communications systems to the workings of economic and political power. After a general introduction to approaches to political economy, students will concentrate on analysis of selected features of news media and social media in terms of their relation to commercial business interests, political power and the framing of public discourse.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 760 The Body Digital: Biopolitics and Media 3.0 Credits
Students explore how the political economies of digital media and data permeate institutions, such as the life sciences, medicine, border control, public health, and other related institutions of biopolitical governance. In particular, we consider how the body, mostly human, but sometimes other, becomes a medium, an interface and a commodity in surveillance biocapitalism, as well as a site for mediated experimentation in arts, science and film.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 777 Communication Network Analysis 3.0 Credits
This course introduces communication network analysis to graduate students, emphasizing its theoretical, substantive, and methodological foundations. The main objective of this course is to allow students to acquire a sufficient grasp of both the classical and the contemporary network literature to enable them to pursue independent advanced study, and ultimately, to contribute original research results to their disciplines. The course covers key network concepts and principles; examines data collection, measurement, and computer analysis techniques; and investigates applications in social sciences, communication, media studies, information science, public health, organizational studies, and related disciplines.
Repeat Status: Not repeatable for credit
CCM 801 Seminar in Contemporary Theory 3.0 Credits
This is a special topics seminar course that will introduce students to different currents in contemporary social theory, especially through in-depth reading and discussion of a single major theorist, theoretical school, or theoretical concept. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 2 times for 9 credits
CCM 802 Seminar in Discourse and Semiotics 3.0 Credits
This is a special topics seminar course that will explore in-depth a particular theoretical or research approach to the study of language, discourse, and signs. Students will work with major theoretical approaches as well as recent research in the area. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 2 times for 9 credits
CCM 803 Seminar in Structural and Cultural Dynamics 3.0 Credits
Through in-depth exploration of a specific research topic, this seminar course will introduce students to what is called the sociological imagination. The course examines special topics that will illuminate such broad sociological approaches as political economy, cultural analysis, neo-institutionalism or post-modernism. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 2 times for 9 credits
CCM 804 Seminar in Research Methodology 3.0 Credits
This course focuses on a single research method. The course takes students through the inception of research ideas, research design, implementation and data-analysis/write up as the mean to understanding the limitations and possibilities of the research process according to methodology. Course paper involves student research design practicum. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 2 times for 9 credits
CCM 805 Seminar in Communication Ethics 3.0 Credits
By in-depth examination of a single issue in research ethics, this course develops student awareness of ethical issues in processes like peer review, human subjects research evaluation, and public consumption of knowledge generated by scholarly investigation. Course may be repeated for credit.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated 2 times for 9 credits
CCM 998 PhD Dissertation Research in Communication, Culture & Media 1.0-12.0 Credit
Requires supervised research, including literature research, data collection, and writing of doctoral thesis.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
CCM I699 Independent Study in Communication, Culture & Media 1.0-12.0 Credit
Self-directed research, reading or other study; intermittent consultation with a designated instructor required.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
CCM I899 Independent Study in Communication, Culture & Media 1.0-12.0 Credit
Self-directed research, reading or other study; intermittent consultation with a designated instructor required.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit
CCM T580 Special Topics in Communication, Culture and Media 0.0-9.0 Credits
Topics decided upon by faculty will vary within the area of study.
Repeat Status: Can be repeated multiple times for credit