BACK TO MCS HOME PAGE

Quick Links to Courses

110-01: Texts and Power: Foundations of Cultural Studies

114-01 News and News Reporting

128-01: Film Analysis And Visual Culture

202-01: Global Media Industries

247-01: Documentary Film and Video

294-01: Afrofuturism in Media and Popular Culture

315-01: Gender, Sexuality, and Film

394-01: Media Manifestos

488-01: The Blaxploitation Era - Blackness and the Media in the 1970s

Spring 2012 Course Offerings

110-01: Texts and Power: Foundations of Cultural Studies

TR 9:40 - 11:10 a.m., Professor John Kim
MW 9:40 - 11:10 a.m. Old Main 011, Professor John Kim

This course introduces students to the intellectual roots and contemporary applications of cultural studies, including critical media studies, focusing on the theoretical bases for analyses of power and meaning in production, texts, and reception. It includes primary readings in anti-racist, feminist, modern, postmodern, and queer cultural and social theory, and compares them to traditional approaches to the humanities. Designed as preparation for intermediate and advanced work grounded in cultural studies, the course is writing intensive, with special emphasis on developing skills in critical thinking and scholarly argumentation and documentation. Completion of or enrollment in MCST 110 is the prerequisite for majoring in media and cultural studies. (4 credits)

114: News and News Reporting

TR 1:20 - 2:50 p.m. OLRI 301, Aron Kahn

Writing is easy, observed legendary New York Times writer Red Smith. "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." This course will spare you some bloodletting by focusing on crucial elements that serve writers for newspapers, magazines, journals, blogs, and authors of nonfiction books. With a reverence for accuracy and attribution, you will write about significant events on the Macalester campus and in the Twin Cities region, while developing styles that underscore rhythm and flow -- key elements of good writing. You'll learn when to begin an article with the classic who, what, when, where and why, and when it's more important to write straight to the heart, often with very few words, as in this first paragraph of an Associated Press story from Karubamba, Rwanda -- Nobody lives here any more. There will be much discussion of how to begin a story; how to rivet the reader with the color and humanity of events, and how to weave well-organized paragraphs that must follow. Along the way, you'll talk with some of Minnesota's best writers of short- and long-form journalism, and learn about pressures and ethics that guide them. You'll also refine your interviewing skills, and watch the action in newspaper and public radio newsrooms. Whether your studies take you to a job in journalism, to a career in nonfiction books and publications, or to any field at all, the skills learned in this course will assist you as a writer and communicator. And, hopefully, you'll have some fun.

128-01: Film Analysis And Visual Culture

TR 1:20 - 3:50 p.m. HUM 401, Professor Michael Griffin

Suitable for first year students; first day attendance required; mandatory film screenings TBA.

This course explores the nature of visual representation, building from a focus on the formal analysis of cinema (the basic features of film form and style) and developing tools of visual textual analysis applicable to all visual media (photography, television, digital and graphic representations of all kinds). We start by concentrating on the basic features of cinematic form: narrative and non-narrative structure, the shot, editing, sound, and the construction of film style. Students will gain a familiarity with cinematic elements and vocabulary, and practice in formalist critical analysis. Students will also make an abstract video. Following an introduction to cultural studies, we will apply the tools and insights of film analysis to various studies of visual representation, in film and other forms of visual culture, including: television, photography, journalism, advertising, and art. The primary goal of the course is to develop a set of analytical tools that can be used to illuminate all forms of visual representation and their aesthetic, cultural, and social implications. (4 credits)

202-01: Global Media Industries

MWF 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. CARN 105, Professor Michael Griffin

Crosslisted with INTL 202-01.

This course investigates the effects of globalization on worldwide cultural identities, with media and popular culture as the primary focus of inquiry. We will interrogate where cultural identity and symbolic communities come from and consider the politics of common culture. We will ask who defines meanings, and what meanings are omitted. Combining theory, worldwide media (film, video, e-media, music and more), and case studies, we will explore numerous paradigms (modernization, cultural imperialism, post-modernism, post-structuralism) as frameworks of understanding. Open to first- and second-year students. (4 credits)

Back to Top

247-01: Documentary Film and Video

MW 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. HUM 402, Professor Michael Griffin

One evening will be spent viewing films.

This course explores the history and theory of documentary practices and representation in film and video, including: epistemological issues and critical debates surrounding attempts to depict and/or comment on “reality,” the implications of cinematic technique and style for documentary representation and function, and the place of documentary representation in social and political discourse, including nationalist propaganda. The course integrates critical readings on documentary history and theory, viewings and discussions of significant documentary films and videos, and experiments in student video work. As a capstone for the course, class members are encouraged to reflect critically on the potential for visual media to transcribe and communicate about “reality” in their own 10 minute documentary video productions. Prerequisite: sophomore status or permission of instructor. Recommended but not required: MCST 128, Film Analysis and Visual Culture. Alternate years. (4 credits)

Back to Top

294-01: Afrofuturism in Media and Popular Culture

W 07:00 pm-10:00 pm HUM 215, Professor Leola Johnson

Screening times TBD

315-01: Gender, Sexuality, and Film

TR 9:40 - 11:10 a.m., HUM 401, Genevieve Yue

Crosslisted with WGSS 320

This course explores a variety of critical approaches to the representation of gender and sexuality in film and video, including psychoanalytic feminist film theory and criticism, queer theory, narrative analysis, genre, visual culture, and cultural studies of gender and sexuality in relation to race, nation, and class. How have social constructs about gender and sexuality been promulgated and/or contested in film and video within mainstream and avant-garde contexts of cultural production? How have these constructs functioned to uphold and/or challenge other forms of social stratification or privilege? And, how might the woman's body in particular - both as a sight to behold and a site of looking - offer different ways of thinking representational possibility? In asking these questions, the course considers a wide range of issues, including the gaze, the body, media technologies, spectatorship, identity and identification, realism, mythology, and pornography. Written work emphasizes the close analysis of film texts. Prerequisites: sophomore standing; Media and Cultural Studies 128, Film Analysis and Visual Culture, or a course in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; or permission of the instructor.

394-01: Media Manifestos

TR 1:20 p.m. - 2:50 p.m., HUM 111, Professor John Kim

Prerequisite: MCST 110 or permission of instructor

Media Manifestos is a class about the potential for radical politics in media practices; the radical art in media politics; the historical forms some radical creative practices have taken and can take in the present. We will read and reflect on manifestos and theories of the relationship between radical politics and media practices. Finally, we will engage in frequent media making prescribed by some of the following groups: Dada, Surrealism, Situationism, Hacktivism, DIY, Dogme 95, Cyborg Feminism and others. Prerequisite: MCST 110, Texts and Power, or permission of instructor.

488-01: Advanced Topics Seminar: The Blaxploitation Era - Blackness and the Media in the 1970s

W 1:10 - 4:10 p.m., HUM 402, Professor Leola Johnson

Back to Top

Macalester College · 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105  USA · 651-696-6000
Comments and questions to mleduc@macalester.edu