Screen Studies is where film, television, media, and cultural studies come together to address a digital age. We?ll track the evolving forms of screens as specific mediums alongside the changing nature of our relationships with them. This means we can use film theory to talk about how TikTok turns memes into mini-movies. This course will survey the cultures that form around screens as para-social relationships with branded YouTube celebrities, pop-cultures, subcultures, fan-cultures, and cancel-cultures, with a focus on developing a research project throughout the semester.

This is a stand-alone independent study designed by the student and faculty sponsor that involves frequent interaction between instructor and student. Qualitative and quantitative enrichment must be evident on the proposed contract before consent is given to undertake the study.

What is Ethnography? What is Performance (auto) Ethnography? How can we think about Performing Ethnography? Drawing heavily on the works of Dwight Conquergood, Norman Denzin, and D. Soyini Madison, we give a rest to traditional forms of qualitative inquiry as we disrupt the notion of "business as usual" in the academic space. We will examine the interpenetrating relationships among performance, ethnography, and culture. The readings and assignments forefront localized critical pedagogy, critical personal narratives, decolonizing and interpretive inquiry as moral, political discourse.

This course examines the role of different kinds of nonverbal behaviors (i.e., body orientation and posture, gaze direction, gestures, space, etc.) in establishing a joint focus of attention, coordinating turn-taking, conveying meaning, sustaining institutional realities, telling stories, and navigating interpersonal relationships. We will investigate nonverbal behaviors both in ordinary face-to-face conversations and in a variety of professional settings, including courtrooms, doctors' offices, and the workplace. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-COMM majors.

Algorithmic systems are at the center of today's digital world, and mediate communication processes in areas as diverse as social media, journalism, healthcare, and governments. How do algorithmic systems capture, represent, and transmit information about everyday interactions? How do they shape, and are shaped by, social, cultural, and political life? What kind of new issues and concerns arise from their ubiquitous use? This course provides a critical introduction to algorithmic systems, and how they relate to issues of communication, power and inequalities in society.

This course is designed to offer a framework for understanding the processes involved in news production and its impact on public opinion. We will examine various social forces that shape news content, including individual, political, economic, and institutional factors. We will also examine research and theory on the implications of today's new media environment, with a focus on its relationship with citizens' engagement in public life. This course serves as an Integrative Experience (IE) requirement for BA-COMM majors.

This course examines the ways food is made meaningful through discourse and performance. While the need for food to satisfy hunger and strengthen the body is universally understood, what counts as food, its relative abundance or scarcity, and its relationship to the body, identity and culture are socially created and highly symbolic. Still, for most people what we eat and why we choose to eat it seems common sense. Meanings attached to what is edible or inedible, good or bad, nutritional or unhealthy, gourmet or junk food are highly subjective and deeply cultural.

As forms of communication contribute to the growing integration of the planet, the planet itself is threatened by unprecedented environmental and economic crises. This course will examine ecology and sustainability through the mediating logic of communication technologies, institutions and texts, as well as insights drawn from a variety of disciplines. Students will develop an interdisciplinary theoretical and practical framework that will allow them connect their everyday life to the dynamics of the socio-environmental world.

An exploration of the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and 70s and later, hosted by someone who was there and lived to tell the tale. Through the medium of documentary and fiction films, we will delve into the musical, sexual, artistic, political and spiritual upheavals that rocked America and Europe back then and that continue to reverberate today. This course satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Comm majors.

An exploration of the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and 70s and later, hosted by someone who was there and lived to tell the tale. Through the medium of documentary and fiction films, we will delve into the musical, sexual, artistic, political and spiritual upheavals that rocked America and Europe back then and that continue to reverberate today. This course satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Comm majors.