Class Schedules

This course introduces the aesthetics of film as well as selected issues in contemporary film studies. Its aesthetic approach isolates the features that constitute film as a distinct art form: narrative or non-narrative structure, staging, cinematography, editing, and sound. Topics in contemporary film studies that might be considered include one or more of the following: cultural studies and film, industrial organization and globalization, representations of gender and race, and theories of authorship, horror, and spectatorship. Several papers, a test covering basic film terms, and a short video project emphasizing abstract form are required. Suitable for first year students.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

What are the truths and falsehoods that data and databases tell us about contemporary culture? How do we use data to tell stories? Increasingly, computational methods are being used to ask questions and look for patterns in cultural data (from museums, libraries, archives, and elsewhere). This class provides an introduction to some of the methods and tools used to investigate data and datasets, while encouraging critical engagement with a number of humanities-based research questions surrounding them. Students will consider ethical and design questions encompassing the collection, analysis, and presentation of data through class conversations and the process of creating their own digital projects.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The theorization of difference is an important aspect of cultural theory. In this class we will look at the role of difference as it is understood through representation, cultural production and practices and the production of knowledge. We want to examine the turn to difference within cultural studies and how this move has shifted how we think about power relations and meaning making in society. We will at the foundational work of cultural theorists like Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall and bell hooks as well as more recent work by Jasbir Puar and Simone Browne whose work focuses on the administration of difference through the U.S. War on Terror, cultures of surveillance. We will also look at the work from cultural producers like filmmakers DJ Spooky aka The Subliminal Kid and Khalil Joseph. The class will expose students to a range of material including print, digital media, film, television, and internet and social media.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

One often hears horror movies referred to as trash. Does horror necessarily deserve this condemnation (or plug)? Why does an occasional horror film like Get Out or The Silence of the Lambs win respectability or even a best-picture Oscar nomination? What are the criteria by which we decide whether any film or work of art is good, bad, or perhaps not art at all? The course will examine horror films from various eras and places, some of which were repudiated at their release only to be recuperated later as art-house classics. But all challenge cultural assumptions about art and horror as mutually exclusive categories, and all employ shock, horror, or the uncanny as compelling means of representing social anxieties and historical traumas. Our objective will be to reflect on questions of aesthetic value, and to explore the themes, narrative strategies, and audience effects of horror. We will draw on a variety of theoretical approaches like Freud’s description of the uncanny or Todorov’s concept of the fantastic. In some sense horror cinema was “born” in Weimar Germany, so we will begin with silent German films, but explore Universal Studio’s depression-era horror (which owed a debt to German expressionist cinema) and to modern horror from Hitchcock to Stanley Kubrick, Dario Argento, or Jordan Peele. Student obligations: several brief presentations, midterm exam, research paper + presentation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Global media collectively have tremendous influence in how many see and comprehend the world and therefore on the information and beliefs upon which they feel or act. While media are central to the continued production of a sense of "the world" at large or the "global" scale, media industries are situated geographically, culturally and institutionally. Even if they promise worldwide coverage or are multinational companies, there is much to be gained from studying how media are produced and distributed differently according to specific social, political, economic and historical conditions. This course considers media industries around the world with a focus on the relationships between the labor and infrastructures behind representations in a broad range of media (television, radio, cinema, news, telecommunications, internet).

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In the last couple of decades we have seen the invention and popularization of a wide assortment of digital technologies and with them, a wide variety of new media forms. The internet (which includes a collection of media forms, from web pages and peer-to-peer software to social media and video sharing sites), massively multiplayer online video games, ubiquitous computing, software, mobile phones - together, many argue, these and other forms of new media are reshaping how we live, create, work and even, what it means to be human. In this class we'll examine a cross-section of contemporary humanistic research that has sought to understand the impact(s) of new media through a comparison to earlier, pre-digital media. In addition, we will engage in hands-on workshops, where we will use and learn some of the tools, software, and websites that our texts consider.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Taught in English, with an optional German component for those who want to have the course count toward their German-taught courses. In this case, students must do some reading and all writing assignments in German and participate in extra discussion sessions in German (format and frequency to be determined in collaboration between student and instructor).In this course we shall focus on the exchange and influences among French, German, and American cinematographers within the genre of road movies. We shall begin with a couple of 1940s-1950 American films that cut across the genres of road movie and film-noir and had an impact on the French nouvelle-vague director Jean-Luc Godard, whose films, in turn, inspired American road movies during their acme in the 1960s-1970s. We shall then turn to the German director Wim Wenders to focus on the relation of his 1970s-1980s road movies to both the German literary canon and their American filmic counterparts. The course will conclude with the German director of Turkish descent, Fatih Akin, who complicates the above exchanges by intertwining them with the significant German-Turkish cultural exchange. Students will gain insight into film as an aesthetic, ideological, and political medium, and into specifics of the history and culture of the countries involved.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This class gives an introduction to the many media platforms that are vital to contemporary journalism, and provides a strong foundation in news writing and reporting. It is taught by a veteran editor and writer, who is a Macalester graduate and currently a digital editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune ( startribune.com ). Campus and Twin Cities communities are used as students plan, develop, report and write stories individually and in groups. Cookies are usually served in class.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Although Donald Trump is, despite the many comparisons, a far cry from Hitler, examining how Nazism sold itself may help us understand the reasons for Trump’s political ascent, and for the far-right movements taking hold elsewhere. The Nazis were masters of propaganda, brilliant at mobilizing the modern media to disseminate their (ironically often anti-modern) worldview. Even before seizing power, they recognized the power of film in sustaining their imaginary, and created a film industry that rivaled (and resembled) Hollywood. What did Nazi movies look like? How did they balance film propaganda with film entertainment? Was resistance possible in this system? Instead of asking “What is a fascist film,” we’ll explore how film functions under fascism. Student obligations: several brief presentations, midterm exam, research paper + presentation.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This discussion-based course is entirely focused on Bruce Lee, the actor and leading martial arts icon of the 20th century. Using American Studies and Critical Race Studies frames to examine the construction of racialized and gendered bodies, we will discuss Bruce Lee in terms of his biography, identities, politics, philosophy, and filmography. We will take time to appreciate the entertainment value and athleticism that Bruce Lee brought to his work, but we will also learn to distinguish the commercialized, commodified Bruce Lee (from t-shirts to posters to action figures) from the serious historical figure who symbolized the spirit of cultural independence and political sovereignty around the world. Among the required books and movies: The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, and "Way of the Dragon" (1972).

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In this course we shall examine the relation of religion to both capital and the modern forms of political power (what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or biopower), as well as the biopolitical formations of race and racism as means for sustaining power—while discovering the enduring pertinence of Marx’s work in theorizing the above issues. Biopower emerges gradually in secular capitalist modernity as a form of power that legitimizes itself not through its right to “take life” or punish or exclude (as in traditional forms of sovereignty) but through its obligation to protect and enhance life. Yet, albeit “secular,” biopower is a form of “pastoral power” (Foucault). We shall explore: the interconnectedness of modern biopower and religion; Marx’s critique of the dominant (Enlightenment) critique of religion and his thesis that the secular state presupposes religion; the colonial and racial constructions of religion; and the biopolitical constructions of race in its relation to social class and other forms of domination. All readings in English; no pre-knowledge required. Counts as a core course for the Critical Theory concentration.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

How do pictures mean? This course explores the ways in which scholars and theorists have studied the unique nature of visual communication. How do visual images communicate differently from (and/or similarly to) lexical language? What sorts of assumptions have been made about visual communication and which of those assumptions have been debunked by research? To what extent is the interpretation of visual images a natural or universal process and to what extent must images be read by means of symbolic conventions that are culturally learned? The course will address issues ranging from the psychology of visual apprehension, addressing theories such as gestalt, to patterns of word-image relationship and the institutionalized use and circulation of visual images within multi-media systems. Class members will have opportunities to explore particular topics in depth as part of a final project.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

In the capstone seminar, students working on an independent project in line with the theme of the seminar share their scholarship, integrating what they have learned in the major, emphasizing knowledge gained in their focus area, as well as presenting their work at a concluding mini-conference. The capstone experience involves close analysis of cultural artifacts that examine at a higher level issues first raised in the introductory course. The department plans to offer two seminars every year, at least one in media studies, enabling students to select the seminar most relevant to their intellectual development. In exceptional cases, students with sufficient preparation may take the seminar prior to their senior year. Students may take more than one MCST senior seminar as long as content varies. Recent seminar topics have included: Image/Text: Metaphor, Myth and Power; Advanced Film Analysis; Advanced Studies in War and Media; Postmodernism, Identity and the Media; Whiteness and the Media; Advanced Queer Media. Prerequisite(s): MCST 110 - Texts and Power: Foundations of Media and Cultural Studies or permission of instructor. MCST 128 - Film Analysis/Visual Culture recommended for film studies seminars. Non-majors are welcome if they have taken MCST 110 or a comparable course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

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.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course introduces the aesthetics of film as well as selected issues in contemporary film studies. Its aesthetic approach isolates the features that constitute film as a distinct art form: narrative or non-narrative structure, staging, cinematography, editing, and sound. Topics in contemporary film studies that might be considered include one or more of the following: cultural studies and film, industrial organization and globalization, representations of gender and race, and theories of authorship, horror, and spectatorship. Several papers, a test covering basic film terms, and a short video project emphasizing abstract form are required. Suitable for first year students.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Marx’s contribution to the theorization of the function of the imaginary in both the constitution of subjectivity and the mechanisms of politics and economy—usually referred to as ideology—cannot be overestimated. His conceptualization of the imaginary is gradually developed throughout several of his works, from his Critique of German Ideology to Capital, and is intrinsically intertwined with his discovery of three further crucial concepts: structure, the unconscious, and the symptom. All these concepts became instrumental in the development of psychoanalysis and new fields of knowledge, such as cultural analysis and the analysis of ideology. While also familiarizing ourselves with the basics of two of the most decisive influences on Marx, Hegel and Spinoza, in this course, we shall read excerpts from Marx’s work and pursue its further development in later influential thinkers and cultural critics, such as Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, and Slavoj Žižek. In this way the course will combine theoretical rigor with tangible analysis of media that range from verbal texts to the visual arts and film. The course will actually meet MWF 11:00-1:00 (not until 1:30), so students who want to take the course but have another course starting at 1:00 can ask professor Kordela whether she can give them permission to take the course as an independent study with her.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

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.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This class gives an introduction to the many media platforms that are vital to contemporary journalism, and provides a strong foundation in news writing and reporting. It is taught by a veteran editor and writer, who is a Macalester graduate and currently a digital editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune ( startribune.com ). Campus and Twin Cities communities are used as students plan, develop, report and write stories individually and in groups. Cookies are usually served in class.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WC

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course introduces the aesthetics of film as well as selected issues in contemporary film studies. Its aesthetic approach isolates the features that constitute film as a distinct art form: narrative or non-narrative structure, staging, cinematography, editing, and sound. Topics in contemporary film studies that might be considered include one or more of the following: cultural studies and film, industrial organization and globalization, representations of gender and race, and theories of authorship, horror, and spectatorship. Several papers, a test covering basic film terms, and a short video project emphasizing abstract form are required. Suitable for first year students.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

The theorization of difference is an important aspect of cultural theory. In this class we will look at the role of difference as it is understood through representation, cultural production and practices and the production of knowledge. We want to examine the turn to difference within cultural studies and how this move has shifted how we think about power relations and meaning making in society. We will look at the foundational work of cultural theorists like Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall and bell hooks as well as more recent work by Jasbir Puar and Simone Browne whose work focuses on the administration of difference through the U.S. War on Terror and cultures of surveillance. We will also look at the work from cultural producers like filmmakers Trinh Minh ha and Khalil Joseph. The class will expose students to a range of material including print, digital media, film, television, and internet and social media.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The theorization of difference is an important aspect of cultural theory. In this class we will look at the role of difference as it is understood through representation, cultural production and practices and the production of knowledge. We want to examine the turn to difference within cultural studies and how this move has shifted how we think about power relations and meaning making in society. We will look at the foundational work of cultural theorists like Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall and bell hooks as well as more recent work by Jasbir Puar and Simone Browne whose work focuses on the administration of difference through the U.S. War on Terror and cultures of surveillance. We will also look at the work from cultural producers like filmmakers Trinh Minh ha and Khalil Joseph. The class will expose students to a range of material including print, digital media, film, television, and internet and social media.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

It is often assumed that visual images simply reflect reality, and faith in the veracity of pictures often carries over to a less than critical stance towards media representations of all kinds. This course introduces you to the field of media and cultural studies by focusing on a deeper understanding of the role played by visual images in creating mediated experiences and constructing the authority of media accounts. Drawing from the history of visual cultures and picture use and relating that history to contemporary media practices, including the shifting nature of visual images in digital environments, we will explore the particular roles and functions of visual images for journalism, documentary, publicity and political communication, and analyze the ways in which pictures and moving images engage our attention, potentially disarm our critical faculties, and contribute to the rhetorical and persuasive influence of media presentations. Writing assignments will focus on specific photographs, films, commercial or political advertisements and help you synthesize knowledge and methods of analysis from exercises, lectures, and readings. An independent project will help you hone your visual analysis skills, argumentative writing and ability to conduct college-level research.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

What do data look like in the humanities? How can data and databases inform our understanding of culture, or, alternately, be manipulated to distort the truth? Increasingly, computational methods are being used to ask questions and look for patterns in cultural data (from museums, libraries, archives, and elsewhere). This class provides an introduction to some of the digital methods and tools used to investigate humanities data and databases, while encouraging critical engagement with the many ethical and design questions that arise in the collection, analysis, and presentation of data. In this course we will read articles from a range of disciplines, engage in activities reflecting on our own collecting practices and daily routines, and explore and articulate ways that digital technologies may be used more effectively and ethically.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Under construction right now across Northern Minnesota, the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline is an issue of global environmental and racial concern. When completed, the pipeline will transport an estimated 800,000 barrels a day of fracked, tar sands oil (the equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants or 38 million vehicles) from Alberta, Canada to Lake Superior, threatening local and global life. The pipeline crosses the Mississippi River and hundreds of other bodies of water and wetlands crucial to sustaining human and non-human life. It also extends the lifetime of the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, contributing to potentially irreparable climate change and global mass species extinction. In addition to its environmental impacts, the pipeline has direct links to issues of racial justice that recall this past summer’s George Floyd uprising. Its construction has ignored Native sovereignty and treaty rights, reproducing systems of racial injustice and inequality that connect the Twin Cities to Northern Minnesota, Black Lives to Native Lives Matter. In conversation and/or collaboration with Indigenous and allied organizations working against the pipeline (including Honor the Earth, MN 350, Stop Line 3, the Giniw Collective, and others), this class will articulate the problem of the Line 3 pipeline through the lens of Media and Cultural Studies while drawing interdisciplinarily on other fields and other case studies for context and perspective. We will also engage in hands-on media making that will encourage you to stake out your own position regarding these issues

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

This course teaches the concepts and practical application of digital media in contemporary performance. Students will gain fluency performing with digital arts and creating multimedia designs through a combination of classroom instruction and weekly Performance Labs. Class sessions include lectures, discussions, tutorials, and hands-on performing with video cameras, projectors, and audio-video software. In Performance Labs and term projects students will create and perform original short pieces that stage their digital designs.Topics include: Intersection of Dramaturgy and Technology in Digital Design; Experimental and Multimedia Performance Techniques; Cueing Video and Sound for Contemporary Performance/Theatre/Dance; Projection Mapping; Live Video Feeds. Prerequisite(s): Two prior courses in design. Students who have completed production courses in art/technology/performance such as MSCT323, Fundamentals of Video Production or ART233, Photography 1 are welcome to contact the Professor directly for permission to enroll.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

From fashion shows, football, and film to baking powder, baseball, and butter, images of Native Americans are everywhere in pop culture. This course turns to the long history of the representation of Native Americans in popular culture, examining both how non-Natives have appropriated Indigenous imagery and how Native people have pushed back against this appropriation. Fulfills North America; Public History; and Race & Indigeneity requirements for History majors.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Join us in Fall 2021 as we explore the roots and routes of Native Cultural Studies through photography, film, television, print and media. How have Indigenous people been represented in visual culture? And what can Indigenous visual artists or film theory teach us about the past, present and future in the United States? No previous coursework required.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Varies by semester. Consult the department or class schedule for current listing.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials

Neoliberal theory posits the relative autonomy of the economic sphere from both culture and politics. Rejecting this assumption, the course will give students the ability to understand the interconnection of economic, political and cultural practices as well as the ways that economic theories are shaped by cultural assumptions about what constitutes a person, a life, a society, etc. We will read some of the foundational texts from the neoliberal school of economic thought (Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman) alongside more contemporary reflections on the culture and politics of neoliberalism from the fields of Anthropology, Geography, Philosophy, Cultural Studies, and Critical Race Studies. Additionally, we will look at both the global institutions that craft and enforce economic policies as well as their impacts in multiple international contexts. This course will emphasize interdisciplinarity and original research. Finally, in addition to key texts, we will examine recent documentaries that attempt to render economic structures visible.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

In the capstone seminar, students working on an independent project in line with the theme of the seminar share their scholarship, integrating what they have learned in the major, emphasizing knowledge gained in their focus area, as well as presenting their work at a concluding mini-conference. The capstone experience involves close analysis of cultural artifacts that examine at a higher level issues first raised in the introductory course. The department plans to offer two seminars every year, at least one in media studies, enabling students to select the seminar most relevant to their intellectual development. In exceptional cases, students with sufficient preparation may take the seminar prior to their senior year. Students may take more than one MCST senior seminar as long as content varies. Recent seminar topics have included: Image/Text: Metaphor, Myth and Power; Advanced Film Analysis; Advanced Studies in War and Media; Postmodernism, Identity and the Media; Whiteness and the Media; Advanced Queer Media. Prerequisite(s): MCST 110 - Texts and Power: Foundations of Media and Cultural Studies or permission of instructor. MCST 128 - Film Analysis/Visual Culture recommended for film studies seminars. Non-majors are welcome if they have taken MCST 110 or a comparable course.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials