This course introduces non-majors to a variety of competing theories of interpersonal behavior and everyday social interaction and provides them with new ways of thinking about the social situations in which they participate and interact (and observe others doing so). Theoretical frameworks may include Cultural Discourse theory, models of Relational Communication, Coordinated Management of Meaning, Identity Management, and the Ethnography of Speaking. (Gen.Ed. SB)

An introduction to the social role of mass media in advanced industrial Western societies, focusing on how relationships between mass communications and the surrounding economic framework affect cultural, political, and ideological processes in society. An examination of social and historical contexts within which newspapers, radio, and television developed and how they are structured with attention to both the domestic and international implications of treating mass media as just another industry.

Focus on acquiring a principled understanding of everyday, face-to-face interaction as the process by which we create, maintain, and manage social experience. Vocabulary and concepts to enable the student to account for, analyze, and evaluate current interpersonal communication practice. Limited enrollment.

Not available at this time

Not available at this time

Not available at this time

We will view, analyze, and discuss films by modern documentary masters such as Michael Moore ("Sicko"), Chris Paine, ("Revenge of the Electric Car"), Seth Gordon ("The King of Kong - A fistful of Quarters"), Pamela Yates ("Granito") and many others to further the understanding of the documentary craft and art from a filmmaker's perspective. Students will also do preproduction (research and treatment) for their own short documentary, along with shorter hands-on exercises in writing narration, interview techniques, etc.

This course examines the situation comedy from sociological and artistic perspectives. We will seek, first of all, to understand how situation-comedy is a rich and dynamic meaning-producing genre within the medium of television. Secondly we will work to dissect narrative structures, and the genre's uses of mise-en-scene, cinematography/ videography, editing, and sound to create specific images of the family through social constructions of race, class, and gender.

This course combines reading and discussion with application of theoretically informed methods in the study of everyday social interaction. We will: 1) Read and discuss representative studies of social interaction and communicative behavior in cultural context. 2) Do graduated classroom and field exercises to assemble methodological tools and accumulate data for your final paper. The final paper will be based on accumulated data?observations, transcripts, and interviews?and analyses from your field site/activity. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Comm majors.

This course provides an introduction to the comparative study of religious beliefs, practices and movement. Classic and contemporary approaches in the Anthropology of religion are explored in ethnographic context, examining the similarities and variations in systems of religious belief.