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FALL SCHEDULE '08 SPRING SCHEDULE '09 HMCS ALUM UPCOMING EVENTS + LOCAL LINKS INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITIES COURSE CATALOG
Humanities and Media And Cultural Studies
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110-01: Texts and Power: Foundations of Cultural StudiesTR 9:40 - 11:10 a.m. OLRI 270
114-01: News Reporting/Writing M 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. HUM 216
W 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. OLRI 250 An analysis of the major forces that determine media production and distribution. Topics include the political economy of media, ownership and government regulation, systems of power within media organizations, and the influence of advertisers on news and programming practices as well as on media access and diversity. Students will examine contemporary commercial media practices and structures in light of comparative, historical, and potential alternatives. (4 credits)
128-01: Film Analysis And Visual Culture TR 1:20 - 3:30 p.m. HUM 401 First Year Course only; 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)
145-01: Pagans, Christians & Jews TR 9:40 - 10:40 a.m. MAIN 001 This course explores the development and interaction of traditional Roman paganism, early Christianity and Judaism. We will become acquainted with the primary sources for these worldviews and religions. We will examine their growth, their structures and beliefs, their reactions to one another, their mutation and putative eclipse.
The late-Antique world and the Greek speaking east in particular produced a vibrant and powerful form of imperial paganism that many claim is still with us. It’s imfluence and forms most certainly are still extant. This period and place also produced the three monotheistic faiths that are still with us in variant forms and for the most part seem not to get along. We will examine all of this and control the questions and material that informs our contemporary knowledge of these movements, religions and wordviews.
194: Critical Studies of Sports in the Media MWF 9:40 - 10:40 a.m. OLI 370 Athletes and athletics have been a central preoccupation of the film and newspaper industries since the turn of the 20th century, and sports continue to be a primary site of media representation. Sports have also been an important topic in the humanities, and in the fields of cultural, cinema and media studies, because they are primary sites for the production of meaning. In this course, we will read some of what these fields have to say about the way sports produce meaning in American culture, focusing specifically on the media. We will talk about media representations of Latino baseball players, ranging from comedy to news. We will also examine the emergence of “coming out” stories, such as professional basketball player Cheryl’s Swoopes’ November, 2005 revelation that she is in a same-sex relationship. Besides reading scholarly books and articles examining various issues in the representation of sports, students will also be expected to immerse themselves in sports and sports media, including attending sports events at the college and in the community, watching sports on television, and looking at films focusing on athletes and athletics. The course is designed to develop writing skills and experience in the use of digital media. To this end, the course requires three papers and a digital media project (e.g., a web site, a short documentary, etc.)
194: Race and Sound in Modern American Culture TR 3:00-4:00 p.m. HUM 215 This course examines the racial politics of music making and noise production in the twentieth century. Drawing on recent scholarship on sound from a range of disciplinary perspectives, we will develop a shared critical vocabulary for interrogating the ways in which race has been voiced in the ‘soundscape of modernity,’ to borrow Emily Thompson’s phrase. Key topics include the place of song and noise-making in social movements, the politics of ‘noise-pollution,’ the racialized history of the music industry, and the racialized and gendered history of communications work.
MWF 1:10-2:10 p.m. CARN 404 Global media is the world's most influential "consciousness industry." As such, the way it is organized vitally impacts global views. How is global media organized, who owns it, and how has it transformed? When did a "global media system" emerge, and where is it heading? In this course, we will investigate the historical and contemporary struggles by various groups to determine the course of globalization, particularly through media, and consider contesting paradigms that have been offered.
248: History of Film, 1893-1941 MW 7:00 -10:00 p.m. HUM 401 This course provides an overview of the history of film up through the release of Citizen Kane, examining aesthetic, industrial, social, and theoretical topics in a variety of national and cultural contexts. Discussions, lectures, and screenings emphasize commercial and avant-garde styles and their determinants. What is thestyle now referred to as the "classical Hollywood cinema"? Why did it materialize? What alternatives were there? The course explores issues of racism and gender as well as connections between the history of film and the modernization of European and U.S. culture. Several papers are required. Prerequisite: sophomore status or permission of instructor. Alternate years. (4 credits.)
294: Making History: Russian Cinema as Testimony, Propoganda, Art TR 1:20-2:50 p.m. HUM 215 This course will study how major events in Russian history from medieval to modern times are represented in the language of the cinema. No knowledge of Russian is required. Through weekly screenings of Russian and less frequently foreign films we will study how storytelling in film differs from professional history and from fiction, and how politics, power relations, technology and aesthetics shaped the depiction of important historical events. Taken as a whole, the course will examine film as story, spectacle, entertainment, art form, fantastic projection, vehicle of political propaganda and revealer of truth. Readings are drawn from Russian history, cultural history, and film and narration theory. Students will write short papers on assigned topics and a term paper on a subject of their choice. No prerequisites
294: Environment and the Media MWF 12:00-1:00 p.m. OLRI 101 This course examines how media and popular culture influence our understanding of the environment. We will use an interdisciplinary framework to explore the ways in which nature and the environment are portrayed in a variety of cultural texts. Topics will include: feature films and nature television, news accounts of environmental issues, corporate advertising, nature theme parks, and media representations of green activism.
394: French-German Dialogue in Philsophy and Theory MWF 3:30-4:30 p.m. HUM 401 No description of this class yet.
W 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. HUM 136 For most of the past decade, the burgeoning literature on race, racism, and the media has focused on the "Other," that is, on representations of Blacks, Latinas/os, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in journalism and in commercial culture generally. This capstone seminar offers advanced experience in an increasingly important but still inadequately investigated area of racism and the media, study of the unmarked category of race, in representations and understandings of Whites and Whiteness. This reorientation makes visible what has long been invisible, namely that White identity is also "raced" in its representation–and has a history and politics. We trace the development of the category of Whiteness in the European colonial project and study its function in the racism of the Southern United States as well as in Northern cities, where different immigrant groups negotiated an uneasy relation with dominant White culture. Then we look at the survival of White discourses in neo- and post-colonial environments, where they flourish, generally invisibly, long after the original colonial projects that spawned them have been overthrown or exhausted. We look at the survival of these discourses in films, clothing styles, and the audiences and texts of television. And we consider alternative forms of representation that challenge the privileged vantage point of what Stuart Hall has called the "whites of their eyes." Prerequisites: At least one course in media studies and another in either Comparative North American Studies or African American Studies or a course in International Studies that focuses on race. Other students will be admitted with permission of one of the instructors. Junior or senior standing is required. Non-majors welcome.
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