Communication
[ undergraduate program | graduate program | faculty ]
Courses
For course descriptions not found in the UC San Diego General Catalog, 2011–12, please contact the department for more information.
Lower Division
General Communication
COGN 20. Introduction to Communication (4)
An historical introduction to the development of the means of human communication, from language and early symbols through the introduction of writing, printing, and electronic media, to today’s digital and multimedia revolution. Examines the effect of communications media on human activity, and the historical forces that shape their development and use. Offered fall, winter, and spring quarters.
COGN 21. Methods of Media Production (4)
This course explores fundamental technical and social constraints shaping media production. We read film and television as texts by considering history, theory, genre and practical technique. COGN 22 and COGN 21 taken concurrently is strongly recommended. COGN 22 is required for students interested in advanced communication production in media courses. Majors must enroll for a letter grade. Offered winter and spring quarters.
COGN 22. Methods of Media Production Lab (2)
In groups in lab students work hands-on with video and new media equipment, exploring fundamental technical constraints shaping media production. COGN 21 and COGN 22 strongly recommended concurrently. COGN 22 is required for students interested in advanced communication production courses. Majors must enroll for a letter grade. Prerequisites: COGN 21 (may be taken concurrently).
COGN 87. Freshman Seminar (1)
The Freshman Seminar Program is designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments and undergraduate colleges, and topics vary from quarter to quarter. Enrollment is limited to fifteen to twenty students, with preference given to entering freshmen. Prerequisites: none.
Upper Division
Communication as a Social Force
COSF 100. Introduction to Communication as a Social Force (4)
A critical overview of areas of macro communication and analysis, with special emphasis on the development of communication institutions, including broadcasting, common carriers, and information industries. Questions regarding power, ideology, and the public interest are addressed. Prerequisites: COGN 20. Offered winter quarter.
COSF 123. Communication, Dissent, and Social Movements (4)
Emergence of dissent in different societies, and relationship of dissent to movements of protest and social change. Movements studied include media concentration, antiwar, antiglobalization, death penalty, national liberation, and labor. Survey of dissenting voices seeking to explain the relationship of ideas to collective action and outcomes. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 124. Black Women, Feminism, and the Media (4)
This course examines the challenges that arise in using feminist theory to understand black women’s experience in Africa and the United States. It also looks at the mass media and popular culture as arenas of black feminist struggle. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 126. The Information Age: In Fact and Fiction (4)
Analysis of the forces propelling the “Information Age.” An examination of the differential benefits and costs, and a discussion of the presentation in the general media of the Information Age. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 127. The Internet Industry (4)
The political economy of the emergent Internet industry, charted through analysis of its hardware, software, and services components. The course specifies leading trends and changing institutional outcomes by relating the Internet industry to the adjoining media, telecommunications, and computer industries. Prerequisites: COSF 100.
COSF 128. Cultural Industries (4)
We examine how people interact with products of popular culture, production of cultural goods by looking at conditions in cultural industries. We examine film, music, publishing, focusing on how production is organized, what kind of working conditions arise, how products are distributed. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 129. Television and Citizenship (4)
Television is a contested site for negotiating the rationales of inclusion and exclusion associated with citizenship and national belonging. Historical and contemporary case studies within international comparative contexts consider regulation, civil rights, cultural difference, social movements, new technologies, and globalization. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 130. History of Electronic Media (4)
This course considers the social, cultural, economic, and technological contexts that have shaped electronic media, from the emergence of radio and television to their convergence through the internet, and how these pervasive forms of audiovisual culture have impacted American society. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 133. Science Fiction (4)
Focuses on science fiction’s critical investigation of history, identity, and society across a range of media forms, including film, television, and literature. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 134. Communication, Politics, and Citizenship in America (4)
(Formerly COCU 134.) Selected topics, both historical and contemporary, on the public sphere, political participation, and the meaning of citizenship. Topics may include: voting practices, the role of political parties, social and cultural dimensions of citizenship, and shifts in public understanding of what counts as “political.” The course may require five to ten hours of internship work, arranged through the AIP office. See instructor for further information. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 135. Communication and Religion (4)
The secularization thesis—that as society becomes more modern and standards of living rise, the importance of religion will diminish and be confined to the private sphere—may be wrong. We address religion, communication, culture, and politics in the United States. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 139. Law, Communication, and Freedom of Expression (4)
(Previously COSF 139A). Examination of the legal framework of freedom of expression in U.S. Covers fundamentals of First Amendment law studying key cases in historical content. Prior restraint, incitement, obscenity, libel, fighting words, public forum, campaign finance, commercial speech, and hate speech are covered. Students may not receive credit for COSF 139A and COSF 139. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or Poli Sci 40 or DOC 2.
COSF 140A. Comparative Media Systems: Asia (4)
The development of media systems in Asia: focusing on India and China. Debates over nationalism, regionalism, globalization, new technologies, identity politics, censorship, privatization and media piracy. Alignments and differences with North American and European media systems will also be considered. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 140B. Comparative Media Systems: Europe (4)
The development of media systems and policies in Europe. Differences between European and American journalism. Debates over the commercialization of television. The role of media in post-communist societies in Eastern Europe. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 140C. Comparative Media Systems: Latin America and the Caribbean (4)
The development of media systems and policies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Debates over dependency and cultural imperialism. The news media and the process of democratization. Development of the regional television industry. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 140XL. Foreign Language Discussion (1)
Students will exercise advanced foreign language skills to discuss materials and the correspondingly numbered communication language foreign area course. This section is taught by the course instructor, has no final exam, and does not affect the grade in the core course, COSF 140C. Prerequisites: concurrent enrollment in COSF 140C.
COSF 141. History of US Telecommunications (4)
This course provides a sustained historical focus on the developing social form and industry structure of US telecommunications, beginning with the Post Office. Policy issues are regularly incorporated into readings and discussions. Emphasis is placed on the emergence, around the turn of the century, of the regulated, national telephone network system dominated by AT&T and its extension. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 142. The Internet in Social and Historical Perspective (4)
This course explores the social, cultural, legal, and political-economic dimensions of the Internet from the 1960s to the present. Students also are introduced to theories and methods developed in communications and related fields for studying online media and their uses. Prerequisites: COSF 100.
COSF 143. Propaganda and Persuasion (4)
Propaganda, in political-economic, national settings, Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, US World War I and II. Propaganda films, contribution of film-makers to propaganda campaign. Explore issues in propaganda, persuasive communication, political propaganda, persuasive advertising, public relations, practical, ethical perspectives. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 160. Political Economy/Global Consumer Culture (4)
This course critically examines social and economic forces that shape the making of this new global consumer culture by following the flows of consumption and production between the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds in the 1990s. We will consider how consumers, workers, and citizens participate in a new globalized consumer culture that challenges older distinctions between the First and the Third World. In this course, we will focus on the flows between the U.S., Asia, Latin America. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 161. Global Economy and National Identity (4)
Examine the interplay of globalization as a discourse and set of practices focusing on free movement of commodities and ideas, nationalist fragmentation marked by ethnic rivalry and identity conflict, seeks to examine those places where dualism is most pronounced. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 169. Law of Mass Communication (4)
(Previously COSF 139B.) Examination of different legal treatments accorded print, broadcasting, cable, common carriers, Internet. Decline of broadcast regulation, breakup of AT&T, rise of the Internet, the relation between market and state and the question of the public interest are of central concern. Students my not receive credit for COSF 139B and COSF 169. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 171A. American News Media (4)
(Same as Soc 165A.) History, politics, social organization, and ideology of the American news media. COSF 171A surveys the development of the news media as an institution, from earliest new newspapers to modern mass news media. COSF 171B deals with special topics, including the nature of television news, and with methods of news media research, and requires a research paper. Prerequisites: COSF 100 for COSF 171A.
COSF 172. The Cultural Politics of Sport (4)
Examine sport as play, performance, competition, an arena where there are politics, culture, power, identity struggles. Establishing the social meanings of sport, we address: ethics, race, class, nation, gender, body, science, technology, entertainment industries, commerce, spectatorship, consumption, amateurism, professionalism. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 173. Transparent Society (4)
How have politics, media, and society made visible features of life that were once hidden? From the women’s health movement to gay liberation to laws requiring public disclosure, frankness challenges civility, privacy, and taste. How can this be understood? Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 175. Advanced Topics in Communication: Social Force (4)
Specialized study in communication as a social force with topics to be determined by the instructor for any given quarter. Past topics include information as a commodity and book publishing. May be repeated for credit three times. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 176. Communicating Religion (4)
Religion and politics around the globe with a focus on Christianity and Islam. Examines: fundamentalism; the tension between religion and secularism; secular and religious (in)tolerance; and the role of religion in social movements and questions of social identity. Prerequisites: COSF 100.
COSF 177. Media and Politics in Nondemocracies (4)
Authoritarian vs. totalitarian states. Communist vs. fascist dictatorships. Role of media in sustaining regimes. Elite pacts and mass (de)mobilization under authoritarian rule. Collaboration, co-optation, resistance to nondemocratic governments. Humor and cynicism as elements of public culture. Regime change over time. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 180. Political Economy of Mass Communications (4)
The social, legal, and economic forces affecting the evolution of mass communications institutions and structure in the industrialized world. The character and the dynamics of mass communications in the United States today. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 181. Political Economy of International Communications (4)
The character and forms of international communications. Emerging structures of international communications. The United States as the foremost international communicator. Differential impacts of the free flow of information and the unequal roles and needs of developed and developing economies in international communications. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 182. Surveillance, the Media, and the Risk Society (4)
Contributions of the field of communication to the study of surveillance and risk. Critical and legal perspectives on consumer research, copyright enforcement, the surveillance capacity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), closed-circuit television, interactive media, and the “rhetorics of surveillance” in television and film. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 183. The Politics of World Music (4)
What is world music? How, where, and why did it come into being? Is it a naturally occurring category of music? What makes it distinct from other music? We critically examine history of world music, analyzing how it is produced, circulated, and consumed. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 184. The Mass Media and Politics in Africa (4)
This course will critically examine the role of the mass media in Sub-Saharan Africa in the areas of colonial rule, nationalist struggles, authoritarianism, and popular movements. It will examine general trends regionally and internationally, as well as individual national cases, from the early twentieth century to the Internet news services of the information age. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 185. Gender, Labor, and Culture in the Global Economy (4)
This course introduces students to different theories of globalization and of gender. Against this theoretical background, students critically examine the gendered (and racialized) nature of labor in the production of material, social and cultural goods in the global economy. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 186. Film Industry (4)
A study of the social organization of the film industry throughout its history, addressing such questions as who makes films, by what criteria, and for what audience. The changing relationships between studios, producers, directors, writers, actors, editors, censors, distributors, audience, and subject matter of the films will be explored. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COSF 187. Culture Wars: Creationism vs. Evolutionism (4)
Explore current debate from a variety of perspectives, rhetorical styles, political views, academic disciplines, media, popular culture, different interest, political, religious, cultural groups, and constituencies. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or consent of instructor.
COSF 188. Representations of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (4)
The conflict between the state of Israel and the group of people known as Palestinians is arguably the most intractable conflict in the world today. This course is a critical engagement with debates about this conflict, and the different representations of these debates. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
Communication and Culture
COCU 100. Introduction to Communication and Culture (4)
Processes of communication shape and are shaped by the cultures within which they occur. This course emphasizes the ways in which cultural understandings are constructed and transmitted via the variety of communication media available to members. A wide range of cultural contexts are sampled, and the different ways that available communication technologies (language, writing, electronic media) influence the cultural organization of people’s lives are analyzed. Prerequisites: COGN 20, or HDP 1, or consent of instructor. Offered spring quarter.
COCU 108. Visual Culture (4)
This course considers how visual images contribute to our understanding of the world and ourselves. Theoretical approaches from media studies, art history, gender studies, and social theory will be used to analyze cultures of science, art, mass media, and everyday life. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 110. Cinema in Latin America (4)
Analysis of the changing content and sociopolitical role in Latin America of contemporary media, including the “new cinema” movement, recent developments in film, and popular television programming, including the telenovela. Examples drawn from Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and other countries. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 120. The Problem of Voice (4)
This course will explore the problem of self-expression for members of various ethnic and cultural groups. Of special interest is how writers find ways of describing themselves in the face of others’ sometimes overwhelming predilection to describe them. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 123. Black Women Filmmakers (4)
Students examine film and video media produced by black women filmmakers worldwide. This course will use readings from the writings of the filmmakers themselves as well as from film studies, women’s studies, literature, sociology, and history. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 124. Documentary History and Theory (4)
History of nonfiction film and video. Through film and written texts we survey the nonfiction film genre, considering technological innovations, ethical issues, and formal movements related to these representations of the “real.” Students write a research paper in lieu of a final. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 125. How to Read a Film (4)
This course increases our awareness of the ways we interpret or make understandings from movies to enrich and increase the means by which one can enjoy and comprehend movies. We will talk about movies, explore a range of methods/approaches to film interpretation. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 126. African Cinema (4)
History, theory, and aesthetics of African cinema developed by selected filmmakers from the continent. Through film screenings and a wide range of readings, students will discuss such topics as cinema and national identity, cinema and social change, and Hollywood dominance. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 127. Folklore and Communication (4)
Folklore is characterized by particular styles, forms, and settings. Course introduces a range of folklore genres from different cultures, historical periods, oral narrative, material folk arts, dramas, rituals. Study of the relationship between expressive form and social context. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 129. Public History and Museum Studies (4)
This course will explore the role that public history—history as created for general audiences—plays in communicating cultural and national identities by examining museum exhibitions, their controversies, and how material objects mediate interpretations of the past. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 130. Tourism: Global Industry and Cultural Form (4)
The largest industry in the world has far-reaching cultural ramifications. We will explore tourism’s history and its contemporary cultural effects, taking the perspective of the “toured” as well as that of the tourist. Prerequisites: COCU 100; majors only.
COCU 131. Cinema of the Cuban Revolution (4)
Overview of the Cuban Revolution (1959–2000) and cultural policies through the study of its film production, as a cultural industry and representational style. Cuban film in context of domestic and international events, particularly treatment of race and gender dynamics. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 132. Gender and Media (4)
Course examines work of women artists, history of representation of women in media. Introduction to feminist media theory. Focus on representations of gender, narrative, experimental strategies used by women media makers, the role of the female spectator. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 136. Concepts of Freedom (4)
This course examines some of the changing cultural, social, technological, and political meanings, practices, and aspirations that together constitute what is, and has been, called “freedom.” Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of the instructor.
COCU 137. The Politics of Bodies (4)
This course will explore the construction of gendered bodies and gendered sexuality in postindustrial culture(s) through political, historical, and media analysis. Topics may include abortion, eating disorders, body modification, work and consumption, AIDS, and genetic engineering. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 139. Reproductive Discourse and Gender (4)
In this course we will examine as a problem of discourse and culture the controversies surrounding the development and use of the new technologies of human genetics and reproduction. Of particular interest will be the way in which these new technological practices and processes test, erode, or undermine traditional understanding of human nature and relationship while enforcing traditional understanding of gender. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or CGS 2A or 2B or consent of instructor.
COCU 140. Television, Culture, and the Public (4)
How and what does television communicate? Emphasis will be on contemporary US television programming, placed in comparative and historical context. Special topics may include: TV genres; TV and politics; TV and other media. Frequent in-class screenings. Prerequisites: COGN 20 or consent of the instructor.
COCU 141A. Media and Technology: Global Nature, Global Culture (4)
Considers globalization’s impact on concepts of nature in and through media texts, information systems, circulation of consumer goods and services, the emergence of global brands, science, health initiatives, environmental media activism, technology transfer in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or COCU 100 or COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 141B. Media and Technology: Gender and Biomedicine (4)
From historical and cultural aspects of media, information, imaging technology use in biomedical research, clinical care, health communication to constructions of gender and identity. We approach the subject through audiovisual texts and writings from fields including science and technology studies and cultural studies. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or COCU 100 or COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 141C. Media and Technology: Disability (4)
Cultural and historical ways of defining and understanding disability relative to communication and assistive technologies, including the impact of digital technologies and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Use of audiovisual texts and writings from fields including science and technology studies, and cultural studies. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or COCU 100 or COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 142. Holocaust Discourse (4)
Legal, visual, historical, cultural discourses and debates that contribute to represent the Holocaust as a coherent and cohesive event, and as a touchstone of moral and political discourse in the U.S., entailing powerful stories about pluralism, tolerance, democracy, human rights, and justice. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 143. Culture and Media: Theories and Methods (4)
Considers in greater depth the theories and methods introduced in COCU 100. Advanced approaches to the analysis of media texts in everyday life and the study of concepts such as representation, culture, reality, and the virtual. Prerequisites: COCU 100.
COCU 144. The Globalization of Culture and Communication (4)
We live in a world of transnational flows of media, money, goods, and people. What representational and methodological challenges does globalization pose for the study of culture and communication? We will explore such questions from a cross-cultural and global perspective. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 145. Cultures of Consumption (4)
This course examines the cultural politics of consumption across time and cultures through several concepts: commodity fetishism; conspicuous consumption; taste, class, and identity formation; consumption’s psychological, phenomenological, and poetic dimensions; and contemporary manifestations of globalization and consumer activism. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 148. Communication and the Environment (4)
Survey of the communication practices found in environment controversies. The sociological aspects of environmental issues will provide background for the investigation of environmental disputes in particular contested areas, such as scientific institutions, communities, workplaces, governments, popular culture, and the media. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 160. Performance and Cultural Studies (4)
Explores performance as a range of aesthetic conventions (theater, film, performance art) and as a mode of experiencing and conveying cultural identity. Texts include critical writing from anthropology, psychology, linguistics, media studies as well as film/video, play scripts, live performance. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 162. Popular Culture (4)
An overview of the historical development of popular culture from the early modern period to the present. Also a review of major theories explaining how popular culture reflects and/or affects patterns of social behavior. Prerequisites: COGN 20.
COCU 163. Popular Culture in Contemporary Life (4)
Treats products of modern culture industries, and theories of social political importance. Study cultural forms: including music, television, fashion, food, landscapes. How popular culture is consumed, what it means to audiences, gender and racial/ethnic differences among producers and consumers. Prerequisites: upper-division standing, or instructor approval.
COCU 164. Representing Race, Nation, and Violence in Multicultural California (4)
How does media representation of race, nation, and violence work? Taking multicultural California as our site, we will explore how social power is embedded in a variety of visual texts, and how media not only represents but also reproduces conflict. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 165. History, Memory, and Popular Culture (4)
What role does popular culture play in shaping and creating our shared memory of the past? The course examines diverse sources such as school textbooks, monuments, holidays and commemorations, museums, films, music, and tourist attractions. Prerequisites: COGN 20.
COCU 166. Cartoons (4)
This class relates cartoon programming for children to the history of western childhood and the contemporary American culture of the child. While other classes may deal with the effects of television on children, this one is designed to encourage students to review the long-standing western traditions of hope and fear associated with children that shape these concerns. Prerequisites: COGN 20 and COCU 100 or consent of the instructor.
COCU 168. Latino Space, Place, and Culture (4)
Develop a critical understanding of the history, politics, and poetics of the Latino barrio as a distinct urban form. Course covers key concepts such as the production of space, landscapes of power, spatial apartheid, everyday urbanism, urban renewal and gentrification. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 169. Cultural Domination and Resistance (4)
Explores theories and narratives of cultural power, contemporary practices of resistance. Texts from a wide range of disciplines consider how domination is enacted, enforced, and what modes of resistance are employed to contend with uses and abuses of political power. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 170. Advertising and Society (4)
Advertising in historical and cross-cultural perspectives. Topics will include the ideology and organization of the advertising industry; the meaning of material goods and gifts in capitalist, socialist, and nonindustrial societies; the natures of needs and desires and whether advertising creates needs and desires; and approaches to decoding the messages of advertising. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 172. The Cultural Politics of Sport (4)
(Previously COSF 172.) Examine sports as play, performance, competition, an arena where there are politics, culture, poser, identity struggles. Establishing the social meanings of sport, we address: ethics, race, class, nation, gender, body, science, technology, entertainment industries, commerce, spectatorship, consumption, amateurism, professionalism. Students may not receive credit for both COCU 172 and COSF 172. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 175. Advanced Topics in Communication: Culture (4)
Specialized study in Communication and Culture with topics to be determined by the instructor, for any given quarter. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 177. Computer Game Studies (4)
Course considers computer games both as media and as sites of communication. Games are studied through hands-on play and texts from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Course encompasses commercial, academic, and independent games. Writing papers, analyzing games required. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 178. American Television in the 1970s (4)
Course will explore the politics and culture of the 1970s through the lens of network television programming and the decade’s most provocative sitcoms, dramas, variety shows, and news features. Students will analyze television episodes and read relevant media studies scholarship. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 179. Colonialism and Culture (4)
This course examines colonial narratives, slave accounts, essays, and stories by both colonizers and colonized. It also explores the issue of nationalism in determining the limits of colonialism among minority groups in the United States and in the Third World. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 181. Architecture as Communication (4)
This course examines how buildings, cities, towns, gardens, neighborhoods, roads, bridges, and other bits of infrastructure communicate. We consider both the materiality and language-like properties of physical things in order to understand how built environments are represented, experienced, and remembered. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COCU 182. Black Popular Music (4)
Examine black popular music as social practice, cultural product, historically. African American musical expressions, discussions of race and intercultural exchange, power, social change, sound and identity, music industry, black performance. Music making, hearing, performance are examined. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COCU 183. Popular Music, Social Practices, and Cultural Politics (4)
Focuses on popular music as a social, aesthetic, historical, political formation. Relationship between musical and extra-musical forces (institutions, communities, industries, identities) will be examined. Music making, hearing, performance will be engaged as sites of expressive practice, cultural politics, social identity. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
Communication and Human Information Processing
COHI 100. Introduction to Communication and the Individual (4)
An introduction to theories of human mental processes that emphasizes the central role of mediation. The course covers methods of research that permit the study of mind in relation to different media and contexts of use. The traditional notion of media effects is critically examined in a number of important domains, including television, film, writing, and oral language. Prerequisites: COGN 20 or HDP 1, or consent of instructor. Offered fall quarter.
COHI 112. Interaction with Technology (4)
In this class we will look closely at the everyday ways in which we interact with technology to discuss: sociocultural character of objects and built environments; situated, distributed, and embodied character of knowledges; the use of multimodal semiotic resources (i.e., talk, gesture, body orientation, gaze, etc.) in interaction with technology. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 113. Communication and Social Machines (4)
An examination of the questions that developments in robotics pose to the scholars of communication: How do we communicate when our interlocutors are nonhumans? How do we study objects that are claimed to be endowed with social and affective character? Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 114. Bilingual Communication (4)
This course is designed to introduce students to the multiple settings in which bilingualism is the mode of communication. Students will examine how such settings are socially constructed and culturally-based. Readings on language policy, bilingual education, and linguistic minorities, as well as field activities will constitute the bulk of the course. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 115. Education and Global Citizenship (4)
The course introduces students to concepts, possibilities, and dilemmas inherent in the notion of global citizenship. Students will formulate goals and instructional strategies for global education and the expected competence of an individual within a global society—able to focus simultaneously upon many diverse elements, issues, and contexts. It will examine the role that communication and curriculum can play in the formation of identity, language use, and civic responsibility of a global citizen. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 117. Language, Thought, and the Media (4)
This course examines the ways in which various communicative channels mediate human action and thought. A basic premise of the course is that human thought is shaped in important ways by the communicative devices used to communicate. There is a particular emphasis on how thought develops, both historically and in the individual. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 119. Learning to Read (4)
This course explores learning to read as a process involving individual, cultural, and social resources. Reading difficulty is understood as induced by lack of resources, such as access to books or access to strategies for decoding, comprehension, and analysis of written text. Activities of reading are taken as a basic context for understanding patterns of chronic and pervasive reading difficulty in their populations. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 120. Reading the Web (4)
This course explores how networked computing has helped change many aspects of modern life, from how we manage illness to how we see ourselves culturally. The focus of the class is the online venue—how has the web become part of daily life? What is different about goods, services, and events that transpire online? What theories of communication and social interaction are useful in understanding online behavior? Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 121. Literacy, Social Organization, and the Individual (4)
Course examines the historical growth of literacy, interrelation between literate technology and social organization, and the impact of literacy on individuals. Examines questions on impediments to teaching reading/writing skills to normal children in technological societies and relation between literacy/national development in the Third World. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 122. Communication and the Community (4)
This course examines forms of communication that affect people’s everyday lives. Focusing on ways that ethnic communities transmit and acquire information and interact with mainstream institutions, we examine a variety of alternative local media, including murals, graffiti, newsletters, and community radio. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 123. Children and Media (4)
A course that analyzes the influence of media on children’s lives. The course adopts an historical as well as social perspective on childhood within which media plays a role. Among media studied are books, films for children, video games, computer games, and television. Prerequisites: COGN 20 or HDP 1.
COHI 124. Voice: Deaf People in America (4)
The relationship between small groups and dominant culture is studied by exploring the world of deaf people who have for the past twenty years begun to speak as a cultural group. Issues of language, communication, self-representation, and social structure are examined. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 125. Communication in Organizations (4)
Organizations are analyzed as historically-evolving discursive systems of activity mediated by talk, text, and artifacts. The class covers sense making, coordinating, symbolizing, talking, negotiating, reading and writing, story-telling, joking, and visualizing in organizations. Exemplary case studies, employing several complementary theoretical frameworks, are used to analyze these communicative processes. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 127. Biography and Life Stories (4)
Course examines several different ways of telling stories as a form of communication: our own life and about the lives of others. There are also the occasions that the life stories of ordinary people are told at and celebrated: for example, funerals, festschrifts, retirement dinners, fiftieth-anniversary parties, and retrospective art shows. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 128. Mobile Communications (4)
Movement is central to our lives. This course draws on the latest research into how we travel, trade, and move. Diverse topics will be covered including kids in cars, the New York subway, and theories of mobility. Prerequisites: COGN 20; upper-division standing.
COHI 129. Borderlands (4)
Communicative and identity aspects of “marginality”—belonging to more than one race, community, or nationality, and on the literature about insiders and outsiders. Considers contemporary race-critical and feminist theory, including cyborg anthropology, the historical concept of race in America, and the problematics of multiple memberships of various sorts. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or content of instructor.
COHI 130. Cross-Cultural Communication (4)
Explores psychological and communicative processes that create and sustain culture and shape intercultural interaction. Students engage in creating simulated cultural groups. Course readings focus on micro-genesis of culture, idio-cultures, culture as an evolutionary strategy, relationships between cultural groups. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 134. Language and Human Communication (4)
This course examines the interaction of language and culture in human communication. Beginning with language evolution, the course then discusses a broad range of human languages including indigenous languages, sign languages, and hybrid languages spoken in urban centers. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
COHI 135. Language and Globalization (4)
The interaction of language and culture in human communication. New and old languages, standard and dialect, dominant and endangered, are the special focus. Selected languages as examples of how languages exist in contemporary contexts. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 136. Gender and Science (4)
This course will focus on arguments about cognitive differences between men and women in science. We will review current arguments about essential differences, historical beliefs about gender attributes and cognitive ability, and gender socialization into patterns of learning in school. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 137. Communication Theory (4)
How are messages created, transmitted, and received? What is the relationship between thinking and communicating? How are linguistic processes embedded in sociocultural practices? Discusses classic texts in the field of communication theory stemming from linguistics, semiotics, philosophy of language, literary theory. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COHI 175. Advanced Topics in Communication: Human Information Processing (4)
Specialized study of communication and human information processing with topics to be determined by the instructor, for any given quarter. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or consent of instructor.
Communication Media Methods
COMT 100. Nonlinear/Digital Editing (4)
Prepare students to edit on nonlinear editing facilities and introduce aesthetic theories of editing: time code editing, time line editing on the Media 100, digital storage and digitization of audio and video, compression, resolution, and draft mode editing. Prerequisites: Communication majors, COGN 21 and COGN 22, or consent of instructor.
COMT 101. Television Analysis and Production (6)
An introduction to the techniques and conventions common in television production with equal emphasis on method and content. Studio sessions provide students with opportunities to experiment in framing subject matter through a variety of cinematographic methods. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22, or consent of instructor.
COMT 102. Introduction to Media Use in Communication (4)
Students will engage in projects, using media, to address theories of communication. Students can use film, video, computers, pen and paper, photography, posters, or performances for their projects. Prerequisites: COGN 20 and COGN 21 and COGN 22.
COMT 103. Television Documentary (6)
An advanced television course that examines the history, form, and function of the television documentary in American society. Experimentation with documentary techniques and styles requires prior knowledge of television or film production. Laboratory sessions apply theory and methods in the documentary genre via technological process. Integrates research, studio and field experience of various media components. Prerequisites: COMT 101 or consent of instructor.
COMT 104. Studio/TV (6)
This course offers students the opportunity to produce and engage in critical discussions around various television production formats. We will study and produce a variety of projects including public service announcements, panel programs, scripted drama, and performance productions. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22, or consent of instructor.
COMT 105. Media Stereotypes (4)
An examination of how the media present society’s members and activities in stereotypical formats. Reasons for and consequences of this presentation are examined. Student responsibilities will be: (a) participation in measurement and analysis of stereotype presentations; (b) investigating techniques for assessing both cognitive and behavioral effects of such scripted presentations on the users of media. Course can be taken to meet COCU major requirement. Prerequisites: COCU 100 or consent of instructor.
COMT 108. Writing for Digital Media (4)
Practice, history, and theory of writing for digital media. Text combines with images, sounds, movement, and interaction. New network technologies (email, blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds) create new audience relationships. Computational processes enable texts that are dynamically configured and more. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22.
COMT 109. Digital Media Pedagogy (4)
This course teaches techniques for teaching digital media: such as Word, Photoshop, PageMaker, digital cameras, digital video, nonlinear editing. What are the special challenges digital media present to teachers and students? How do digital media compare to older technologies such as typewriters, film cameras, and analog video? How do gender, class, and age affect the way students and teachers respond to digital media? At least six hours of fieldwork at a computer lab of their choice or at Seiter’s project at Adams Elementary will be required. Experience with computers and/or digital imaging recommended. Prerequisites: communication majors only.
COMT 110. News Media Workshop (4)
Designed for students working in student news organizations or off-campus internships or jobs in news, public relations, or public information. A workshop in news writing and news analysis. Prerequisites: upper-division standing.
COMT 111A. Communicating and Computers (4)
This course introduces students to computers as media of communication. Each quarter students participate in a variety of networking activities designed to show the interactive potential of the medium. Fieldwork designed to teach basic methods is combined with readings designed to build a deeper theoretical understanding of computer-based communication. Courses can be taken to meet COHI major requirement. Prerequisites: COHI 100, communication major or consent of instructor.
COMT 112. Ethnographic Methods for Media Research (4)
This is a practical course on ethnographic fieldwork—obtaining informed consent interviewing, negotiating, formulating a research topic, finding relevant literature, writing a research paper, and assisting others with their research. Course can be taken to meet COHI major requirement. Prerequisites: COSF 100 or COCU 100, upper-division standing.
COMT 115. Media and Design of Social Learning Contexts (6)
(Same as HDP 115). A combined lecture/lab course cross listed in Communication and Human Development. Students attend lecture, write fieldnotes, and spend three hours per week in specially designed after-school settings working with children and designing new educational media and producing special projects. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or HDP 1.
COMT 116. Practicum in Child Development (6)
(Same as HDP 135.) A combined lecture and laboratory course for juniors and seniors in psychology and communication. Students should have a solid foundation in general psychology and communication as human information processing. Students will be expected to spend four hours a week in a supervised practical after-school setting at one of the community field sites involving children. Additional time will be devoted to readings and class prep, as well as, six hours a week transcribing field notes and writing a paper on some aspect of the fieldwork experience as it relates to class lectures and readings. Please note that the enrollment size for each site/section is limited. See department course listing for site/section descriptions. Prerequisites: COHI 100 or HDP 1 or Psych 101.
COMT 120. Documentary Sketchbook (4)
Digital video is the medium used in this class both as a production technology and as a device to explore the theory and practice of documentary production. Technical demonstrations, lectures, production exercises, and readings will emphasize the interrelation between production values and ethics, problems of representation, and documentary history. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22, or consent of instructor.
COMT 121. Sound Production and Manipulation (4)
Advanced seminar in sound production, design, editing. Students create projects by recording original sounds, editing on a Pro-Tools system. We consider the potential of sound in film, radio, TV, and the web by reviewing work and reading sound theory. Prerequisites: communication majors only and COGN 21 and COGN 22.
COMT 122. Social Issues of Media Production (4)
Analyze forms of social issue media production, photography, audio/radio, arts, crafts, web, print zines, political documentary. Students work with several forms of media making: video, audio, web design, and a project in their chosen format. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22, or consent of instructor.
COMT 125. Representing Communication (4)
This is a small hands-on class about how to represent an academic Communication department to a wider community. Students create quarterly electronic newsletters and special events. Selected readings on the entrepreneurial university and communication are required. Communication majors only.
COMT 175. Advanced Topics in Communication, Media Methods (4)
Specialized practice in communication: media methods with topics to be determined by the instructor in any given quarter. May be repeated for credit three times. Prerequisites: communication majors only.
COMT 175A. Advanced Topics in Communication, Media Methods Production (4)
Specialized practice in communication: relating to media methods production with topics to be determined by the instructor in any given quarter. Prerequisites: COGN 21 and COGN 22.
General Communication
COGN 150. Senior Seminar in Communication (4)
This course examines in detail some topic in the field of communication, bringing to bear several of the approaches and perspectives introduced in the basic communication curriculum. Seminars will be limited to twenty-five students and class participation is stressed. A research paper is required. Prerequisites: senior standing or consent of instructor.
COGN 175. Advanced Topics in Communication: General (2)
Specialized study in general communication with topics to be determined by the instructor, for any given quarter. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: must be taken with AIP 197.
COGN 191A-B. Honors Seminar in Communication (4)
Preparation of an honors thesis, which can be either a research paper or a media production project. Open to students who have been admitted to the honors program. Grades will be awarded upon completion of the two-quarter sequence. Prerequisites: admission to the honors program.
COGN 192. Senior Seminar (1)
The Senior Seminar Program is designed to allow senior undergraduates to meet with faculty members in a small group setting to explore an intellectual topic in Communication (at the upper-division level). Topics will vary from quarter to quarter. Senior Seminars may be taken for credit up to four times, with a change in topic, and permission of the department. Enrollment is limited to twenty students, with preference given to seniors. Prerequisites: department stamp, consent of instructor, and upper-division standing.
COGN 194. Research Seminar in Washington, DC (4)
(Same as PS 194, USP 194, Hist 193, SocE 194, Erth 194.) Course attached to six-unit internship taken by students participating in the UCDC program. Involves weekly seminar meetings with faculty and teaching assistants and a substantial research paper. Prerequisites: participation in UCDC program.
COGN 198. Directed Group Study in Communication (4)
Directed group study on a topic or in a field not included in the regular curriculum by special arrangement with a faculty member. (P/NP grades only.) May be taken three times for credit. Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
COGN 199. Independent Study (4)
Independent study and research under the direction of a member of the staff. (P/NP grades only.) Prerequisites: consent of instructor.
Graduate
COGR 200A. Introduction to the Study of Communication as Social Force (4)
This course focuses on the political economy of communication and the social organization of key media institutions. There will be both descriptive and analytical concerns. The descriptive concern will emphasize the complex structure of communication industries and organizations, both historically and cross-nationally. The analytic focus will examine causal relationships between the economic and political structure of societies, the character of their media institutions, public opinion, and public attitudes and behaviors expressed in patterns of voting, consuming, and public participation. The nature of evidence and theoretical basis for such relationships will be critically explored. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 200B. Introduction to Study of Communication: Communication and Culture (4)
This course focuses on questions of interpretation and meaning. This course will examine how people use texts to interpret the world and coordinate their activities in social groups. Students will study both theories of interpretation in the conventional sense and theories about the act of interpreting. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 200C. Introduction to the Study of Communication: Communication and the
Individual (4)
This course will draw on theorists who examine human nature as constituted by social, material, and historical circumstances. This course considers the media in relation to the ontogenetic and historical development of the human being and an examination of the individual as socially constituted in a language-using medium. The role of new communication technologies as part of research methodologies is explored in lecture-seminar. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201B. Ethnographic Methods for Communication Research (4)
A supervised and coordinated group project will allow students to develop competence in a variety of ethnographic approaches to communication. Subjects covered include choosing a fieldwork site, setting or process for participation; entry and development of relationships; techniques of observation, interviewing, note-taking, and transcription. Course may also include photography and video as research tools. All participant observation and interviewing strategies fall under the review of the Committee on Human Subjects. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201C. Discourse Analysis (4)
Review and critique of studies employing discourse analysis, focusing on the ways that “discourse” is identified, recorded, and reported. A working notion of discourse will develop from works representing diverse disciplinary approaches. Students will record, transcribe, and report on segments of talk in an everyday setting. All participant observation and interviewing strategies fall under the review of the Committee on Human Subjects. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201D. Historical Methods for Communication Research (4)
Different approaches to conducting historical research in communication. Such approaches may include the social history of communication technology; structuralist and poststructuralist accounts of language, media, and collective memory; and new historicist treatments of cultural history. Sources, documentation, and the nature of argument from historical evidence are emphasized. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201J. Comparative Analysis (4)
The logic of comparative analysis and its role in communication research. Scientific inference in qualitative research. Selection of cases. Problems of translation across cultures. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201L. Qualitative Analysis of Information Systems (4)
Historical and ethnographic studies of information systems—the design and use of information and communication technologies in their social, ethical, political, and organizational dimensions. Objects of study range from the invention of file folders to e-mail use and distributed databases as communication systems. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201M. Content Analysis (4)
History uses methodology of quantitative analysis of media content. Includes conceptual issues concerning the quantification of meaning and practical procedures for coding and data analysis. Students read examples of studies using content analysis and carry out their own pilot analyses. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 201N. Genealogical Analysis (4)
Training in genealogical analysis based on Foucault and Nietzsche. Weekly exercises in genealogical methods, and class discussions of findings. A final paper: a genealogy of an object, practice, utterance, or discourse. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 210. Information and Society (4)
The social, legal, and economic forces affecting the evolution of mass communication institutions and structure in the industrialized world. Differential impacts of the free flow of information and unequal roles and needs of developed and developing economies. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 211. Memory Practices (4)
Examines theories of social and distributed memory—Maurice Halwachs to Ed Hutchins, John Sutton, and nature of the Archive (Foucault and Derrida), reading databases (as memory prostheses), beginning with Manovich’s work. Enquiry into mediated nature of memory practices. Prerequisites: graduate standing.
COGR 215. Regulation of Telecommunications (4)
The course will look at the history of, and rationales for, the regulation of mass communications in the United States. The course will cover both broadcasting and common carrier regulation. We will analyze telecommunications regulatory structures as they were constituted historically with the 1934 Communications Act and examine their breakdown in the late 1970s. In a larger vein, the course will examine the rise and functions of regulatory agencies in modern American history. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 219. Discourse and Organizations (4)
A central part of organizational life is talk: interaction both in formal and informal meetings and social situations. In this course we will examine the discourse of organizations, drawing on conversational analysis, discourse analysis and the sociology or organizations. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 220. The News Media (4)
History, politics, social organization, and ideology of the American news media. Special attention will be paid to: historical origins of journalism as a profession and “objective reporting” as ideology; empirical studies of print and TV journalism as social institutions; and news coverage of Vietnam and its implications for theories of the news media.
COGR 221. The State (4)
What is that thing we call the “state”? What is its relationship to government, citizenship, and power? Will consider different approaches to the study and theorization of the state, from European Enlightenment to post-9/11 reflections on sovereignty, rights, future. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 223. Communication Law and Policy (4)
This course examines the legal and policy framework for free speech in the United States. We cover First Amendment case law, free speech theory, copyright, and the different legal and regulatory treatment historically accorded print, broadcasting, cable television, telephone, and Internet. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 224. Geographies of Difference, Exclusion, and Conflict (4)
This course is a critical geography of how territorial environments shape entanglements of power and conflict between dominant and subordinate groups, and how, in turn, such conflict between these actors reshapes spatial landscapes. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 225A. Introduction to Science Studies: Part 1 (4)
Study and discussion of classic themes and texts in history of science, sociology of science, and philosophy of science, and of work that attempts to develop an interdisciplinary science studies approach. Prerequisites: enrollment in the Science Studies Program or consent of instructor.
COGR 225B. Seminar in Science Studies (4)
Study and discussion of a selected topic in the science studies field with an emphasis on the development of research and writing skills. The topic varies from year to year. Prerequisites: enrollment in the Science Studies Program or consent of instructor.
COGR 225C. Colloquium in Science Studies (4)
A forum for the presentation and discussion of research in progress in science studies by graduate students, faculty, and visitors. Students must attend the colloquium series for their entire first and second years. They receive course credit in one quarter each year. Prerequisites: enrollment in the Science Studies Program.
COGR 225D. Introduction to Science Studies Part II (4)
Continuing the introduction developed in Part 1, this course examines recent key topics and problem situations in science studies. Emphasis is on recent theoretical perspectives and empirical studies in communication, history, philosophy, and sociology of science and technology, and the interplay between them. Prerequisites: completion of COGR 225A, HIGR 238, Phil 209A, or SOCG 255A or consent of instructor.
COGR 237. Performance Theory (4)
Course is designed to introduce graduate students to the disciplinary, intellectual, and artistic genealogies of performance studies that brings together critical work from the fields of anthropology, art history, communication, critical gender studies, ethnic studies, film studies, literature, and theatre studies. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 238. The Frankfurt School on Mass Culture Social Theory (4)
This reading seminar will consider works by Frankfurt School theorists (Horkheimer, Adorno, Pollock, Lowenthal, Marcuse, Benjamin, Habermas) on mass media, mass culture, idology, art, authority and the individual, and their relevance in the analysis of contemporary capitalism. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 239. Computer Game Studies (4)
Course considers computer games as media, rule systems, technology, and sites of communication. Approaches include hands-on play and reading material from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Course encompasses both commercial games and the longer, more diverse academic and independent traditions. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 240. The Culture of Consumption (4)
(Cross-listed with HIGR 273.) This course will explore the development and cultural manifestations of consumerism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Topics will include the rise of museums, the development of mass market journalism and literature, advertising, and the growth of commercial amusements. Readings will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the United States. Students will be encouraged to think comparatively. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 241. Geography and Communication (4)
Geographies as media of political cultural communication. Not simply mapping but also territorial engineering as a way of constituting geographical significance. Cross-mapping practices—intersecting representational practices—as political forms of communication. Geographies as visual practices of power. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 242. Globalization (4)
Examination of historical and contemporary re-orderings of space, time, and experience through culture and commerce, social movements, war and trade, communication institutions and practices. Considers various disciplinary modes of analyzing the forms of life produced by these processes as well as the possibilities for intervention and transformation. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 243. Media Technologies (4)
Media technologies from books to electronic media. Consideration of both technological design processes and shifting uses of media. Reflection on media and broader patterns of technological innovation. Attention to the distinctive role of media in technological change. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 244. Cultural Studies (4)
Course traces theoretical approaches to the study of culture from the Birmingham School to poststructuralist critiques of power, resistance, consumption and pleasure. Students combine critical theory and empirical research in order to interpret the cultural politics of everyday life. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 245. Science and Technology Studies and Communication (4)
Course explores human-technology interaction, social constructivism, actor-network theory, gender and technology, critical and cultural studies of science and technology, and public understandings of science and technology. Emphasis on what STS can contribute to the study of media and communication. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 246. Playable Media (4)
Course provides an introduction to the design, evaluation, and development of media that invite and structure play. This includes digital and nondigital games, as well as related forms. Exercises, readings, and projects are required. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 247. Writing for Media (4)
Course explores the potential and constraints specific to writing for one or more media forms. Approaches include writing exercises, studying media, reading theoretical and historical texts, and project work. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 248. Visual Culture (4)
The visual is an increasingly important component of communication in everyday life. This course covers post-1968 theories of visual culture in domains such as art, film, news, the media, popular culture, medicine, sciences, and many other aspects of everyday life. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 250. Third World Cinema Screening (4)
Course examines the historical impetus, development, and construction of “Third Cinema”—a particular style of media making in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. An interdisciplinary approach interrogates how Third Cinema influences world cinema of today. Additional screening session required. Prerequisites: graduate standing.
COGR 251. Media Theory (4)
Theories of the media considered in a historical and comparative context from the rise of preprint reproduction technologies to the digital age. Focuses on communication processes and practices in terms of formality, technology, the politics of subjectivity, and institutions. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 252. Race and Racism (4)
Seminar focuses on race as a social, phenomenal, historical and political formation. The seminar will address the historical emergence and theorization of race and the contemporary ways in which race/racism is a modern principle of social division, exclusion and political mobilzation. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 253. Cultural Study of Music and Sound (4)
Seminar will focus on music and sound as social, aesthetic, historical, can political formations and phenomena. The relationship between musical and extramusical forces will be examined. This course intensively addresses cultural politics of sound/music making, hearing and performance. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 254. Intellectual Property (4)
The conceptual and regulatory boundaries of intellectual property law are increasingly challenged by technological change and by ownership claims over non-Western forms of creativity. Course focuses on those challenges from three interrelated perspectives: historical, philosophical and political. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 255. Studies in Political Theory (4)
Considers classical and contemporary texts in primarily western political thought with an eye toward understanding how such theory is and/or might be brought to bear in grounding different approaches and agendas in the study of communication. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 256. Postcolonial Theory (4)
This course provides an overview of intellectual and political thought developed through decolonization struggles in Africa and the Caribbean, and the subsequent emergence of post-coloniality from Subaltern Studies in the 1980s to contemporary work shaped by globalization and neoliberal philosophies. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 257. Communication and Social Theory (4)
Social theory forms the theoretical foundation for much work in communication, including political communication, questions of the public and public opinion, propaganda and ideology. The course will consider Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Dewey, Habermas, the Frankfurt School and its critics. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 258. Language in Human Communication (4)
In this course language is broadly conceived as a medium of communication, expressed multimodally. Among the topics of this course are: origins of speech and gesture, culture and language, language and social practice and language in performance. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 259. Space, Place, and Media (4)
The course focuses on built environments and the production of space from an interdisciplinary, perspective, using the critical and methodological tools of communication, anthropology, geography, history, psychology, political science, and urban studies. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 261. Mediational Approaches to Culture/Mind (4)
This course will examine theories of mind in which cultural mediation is given a leading role. The work of anthropologists, psychologists, and communication scholars will be studied in depth. Emphasis will be placed on the methodological implication of cultural theories of mind for empirical research. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 275. Topics in Communication (4)
Specialized study in communication, with topics to be determined by the instructor for any given quarter.
COGR 278. Talking Culture, Culture Talking: Voices of Diversity (4)
(Cross listed with EDS 278). This course explores the discourse of culture in American society and the problem of silenced or unheard voices. The interaction of individual and collective voice, language, and identity are discussed as they bear on the ways that culture moves through important social institutions such as schools. Of particular interest are issues of teaching, learning, displacement, inclusion, marginality, and the speaking center. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 280. Advanced Workshop in Communication Media (4)
This course is a project course in which students prepare a production or experiment using one of the forms of media. The course is designed to allow students to experiment in a communication form other than the usual oral presentation in class or a term paper. Students can do a video production, a coordinated photographic essay or exhibit, a computer instructional game, a published newspaper or magazine article directed at a special audience, a theatrical presentation, or some form other than those listed. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 281. Understanding Everyday Life (4)
In this course we review how we might go about studying and thinking about the everyday life both as a concept and as a domain of study. The course will have a balance of both theoretical and empirical work. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 282. Reading and Memory (4)
Approaching reading from a historical perspective, the course concentrates on two analytic frames to connect memory to texts: ideas about "the memory palace," locating memories in things, and figured worlds theory, treating objects as forms of intellectual scaffolding and memory. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 283. Political Economy (4)
Political economy is an older interdisciplinary approach explaining how the state, political environment, law, and economic system influence each other. The course engages classic texts, with attention to issues in the political economy of communication toward the end. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 294. The History of Communication Research (4)
Intellectual history of the field of communication studies from Robert Park to the present. Explication and assessment of major research approaches and classic studies representing both empirical and critical traditions. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 296. Communication Research as an Interdisciplinary Activity (4)
A course that introduces students to the interdisciplinary nature of the field of communication research as represented by the work of faculty in the Department of Communication. Through faculty research, students are presented with concrete examples of communication research theory and practice that can provide them with insights for conducting their own research projects. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 298. Directed Group Study (1-12)
The study and analysis of specific topics to be developed by a small group of graduate students under the guidance of an interested faculty member. Prerequisites: graduate standing or consent of instructor.
COGR 299. Graduate Research (1-12)
Advanced independent study in communication under the guidance of Department of Communication faculty.
COGR 500. Practice Teaching in Communication (4)
A doctoral student in communication is required to assist in teaching undergraduate Department of Communication courses for a total of six quarters. One meeting per week with the instructor, one meeting per week with the assigned sections, and attendance at the lecture of the undergraduate course in which he or she is participating are part of this requirement.