COM - Communication and Media

This course unpacks key theories, perspectives, and inquiry modes in communication and media. It also develops research and writing strategies for critical, scientific, and rhetorical work. Learning activities spur critical, applied thinking and improve conceptual conclusions about communication and media in the world.

Change cannot happen without knowing how to create and present ideas that are lucid and persuasive. Students learn the importance and the essential nature of oral public communication. Students will be introduced to the theories and models of effective oral communication as well as have opportunities to practice these theories.

This course provides a relational approach to studying interpersonal communication by understanding how concepts such as affection, conflict, and listening are constrained and enabled in close relationships across diverse contexts. Students learn to see personal agency in interactions that shape quality of life, while also identifying and practicing the importance of dual perspective-taking, inclusion, civil discourse, and relational justice.

This course explores the nature of organizing as an outcome of symbolic interaction. We will learn several theoretical perspectives that provide a knowledge framework for observing, interpreting, and critiquing communication patterns for the informational and ideological meanings that influence how and why organizing happens as it does in any context–from corporations to social movements.

This class introduces students to key communication and cultural studies concepts like "culture," "media," "mass media," and "ideology." In addition to looking at the production, consumption, and political economy of media, students will examine how communication, culture, and power intersect and shape society. Applying communication and cultural studies approaches, we will analyze media representations of various identities and current events.

Communication or organizational communication majors may undertake on-the-job training positions with professional organizations. This course provides reflective, specific guidance in applying students’ academic experience to a professional communication experience. Students may receive an IP (In Progress) grade until the completion of their internship. May be taken twice. Only 1 credit can apply to the major.

This course investigates the role of social science research in building knowledge to improve human communication. Students learn about the scientific method and its application in conceiving, designing, and conducting an original quantitative research project. Students further learn skills in research collaboration and discuss research ethics and how to evaluate and critique others’ research.

Students make sense of their media ecosystem through close reflection and learning media theories. This course provides critical analysis of mass media, including social media and technology, to explore how students’ lived experiences with media intersect with sensemaking around democracy, attention, and decision-making. Students explore biases, narratives, and assumptions for a more intentional, informed relationship with our media’s ecosystem.

Influential leaders speak well. This course helps future organizational and community leaders develop their ability to speak well and influence others. The class helps students to recognize, understand, and apply persuasive and rhetorical theories in order to engage and influence audiences and to promote healthy democratic participation. COM 107 is a prerequisite.

In this course students develop an understanding of the nature and application of argument in the context of advocacy. Students learn how to create, access, and apply arguments to advocate for the welfare of the marginalized and voiceless. Students study the work of Dr. King to gain an appreciation of what it means to be an advocate who argues well.

This course introduces qualitative research methods as the study of how humans create culture through symbolic communication. Students learn about qualitative methods through application in a semester-long project. Students will develop a research focus, gain access to a research site, design an ethical research study, collect and analyze data, and create an interpretation and representation of the data for others.

The nature of work is changing rapidly. New professions proliferate, new technologies disrupt, and new social and political changes impact communication inside and outside of organizations. This experiential course prepares students for “future” work. Students will draw from cutting-edge research on labor, organizing, and technology to develop an understanding of the future organization and their role in it.

Study of theory and practice of creating advertising messages as a creative. Course includes case studies and work on a dynamic set of projects replicating advertising industry creative practices. Key focus of course is also on advertising ethics and a cultural critique of advertising.

Survey course provides understanding of the role of public relations in the profit-making and non-profit sectors, and specific working knowledge of the various facets of the public relations process, including social media. Planning and implementing public campaigns will be discussed.

This course will investigate the vast body of empirical work on the effects of both media content and media technology upon users and audiences. In particular, social, attitudinal, and behavioral approaches will be the focus to infer effects of media and technology. Classic and new media effects theories will be critically analyzed, discussed, and used to develop practical and theoretically grounded media effects projects.

Survey course designed to increase student's understanding of the United States First Amendment law as it relates to individual citizens, mass media, environmental protections, organizational, and health communication. Ethical considerations inherent in communication law decisions are emphasized.

East Africa is one of the planet's richest sites of human and nonhuman ecological histories and provides the ideal space to study diversity and difference. Topics will include evolution and ecology, marine ecology, land use conflict, and sustainability.

This course develops the ability to identify and analyze assumptions underlying theoretical models of communication that shape knowledge about ourselves, others, and reality. The course investigates major explanatory theories of communication. Students develop foundational knowledge about the communication discipline, equipping them in all other courses in their major.

This course investigates dynamics of differences that frame, enable, and constrain people’s communication opportunities across diverse social identity groupings. Focusing on ‘isms’ related to race, gender, sex, social class, ability, sexuality, and age, its learning activities apply theory and scholarship to understand, integrate, and more insightfully navigate interactions across the welcome range of human differences.

Students study American political culture using a rhetorical lens. They analyze the rhetorical strategies used in political messages, that create, maintain, and denigrate our political institutions. Students gain an appreciation and understanding how humans use symbols and how the symbols that humans create use them. They can see how political rhetoric can liberate us and confine us.

Students learn about and explore romantic, familial, platonic, earthly, and sometimes “radical” relationships through various interpersonal, mediated, and culturally-situated communication concepts and theories. Special focus is given to the ways love, care, and/or grief inform our lived experience(s) over the life cycle. Topics span philosophies of birth, death, suicide, joy, fertility, queerness, eco-spirituality, and otherness.

This course explores the intersection between bodies and place, with particular attention to our natural ecosystems in the creation of meaning and regeneration within the arc of trauma. It draws on a range of communication and ecological perspectives on health, land, community, imagination, and media representations of identity to critically examine relationships between micro and macro systems of belonging and embodiment.

This course offers an advanced investigation of organizational culture. Students will identify symbolic organizing practices and ideological meanings tied to them, and examine how plural cultural meanings and beliefs inform organizing practices. Topics include organizational ethnography, cultural diversity, and social justice. Drawing from interpretive and critical traditions, students will design and implement an advanced research project.

Examines the cultural significance and accomplishments of visuality. Considers the social and political implications of “looking” practices, the impact of “representation” in contemporary culture, and the circulation of images (through virality and sharing practices). Specific focus on race, gender and class and the role that visual images play in cultural perceptions of and practices toward race and racialized bodies.

Students closely analyze mediated messages as cultural repositories of meaning and investigate the interaction between media and culture. Emphasis is on the method, stance, and purpose of media criticism.

This course investigates theoretical and practice-based evidence for the powerful role communication plays in the knowledge, maintenance, and promotion of health and wellness across individuals and communities. Students learn issues in health communication campaigns with particular attention to misinformation, public health disparities, and the consequences on health outcomes. Students will design and implement health communication research and intervention projects.

This course provides critical analysis and instruction about news that seeks to serve the public’s interest. Students learn to research, report, and write in-depth, interpretive, and analytical stories on public affairs in areas such as crime and police, environment, healthcare, politics, and education. Students learn how the press can best serve democracy and its role in public knowledge and debate.

This course teaches the fundamental nonfiction storytelling techniques of professional media production. These skills are applicable to careers in public relations, marketing, journalism, or any modern communication field. Students gain hands-on experience with photo, audio and video production gear, analyze the work of professional producers and their peers, and discuss the many ethical questions that come along with nonfiction storytelling.

Students learn and apply communication theories to critically analyze contemporary discourses and counter-discourses surrounding ecology, environmentalism, and environmental justice. Students unpack and interrogate how their own assumptions, beliefs, language, and practices support and/or resist various environmental narratives around plants, nonhuman animals, food systems, and climate communication.

This course provides a space to reflect, synthesize, and apply knowledge developed as a Communication and Media Major. Students design and implement a semester-long culminating capstone project that showcases majors’ knowledge and competence in communication. Senior projects integrate theories, concepts, and processes learned as a major to generate knowledge and new applied communication practices about social issues.

This course provides reflective, specific guidance in applying communication theories to a professional communication setting. Students learn how to observe and apply theory to practice, increasing their understanding and ability to function successfully in a professional communication setting by working directly with a qualified internship supervisor and academic internship director. May be taken twice, only 3 credits apply to major.

This course is under the direction of a faculty adviser or within a class context, leading to a scholarly thesis document with a presentation of results. Students demonstrate advanced knowledge and research expertise in the communication field by designing, conducting, and implementing an original thesis study.

This course investigates the role of social science research in building knowledge to improve human communication. Students prepare graduate-level research papers while learning about the scientific method and its application in conceiving, designing, and implementing an original quantitative research project. Students further learn skills in research collaboration and discuss research ethics and how to evaluate and critique others’ research.

Protest and activism play an important role in struggles for social and environmental justice. From hashtag activism to visual culture and performance to building solidarity, communication is at the heart of protest and activism. This course will examine several different examples (BLM, Climate Strikes, and more) to consider the visual, embodied and discursive practices at work in the formation and growth of activist movements.

This course develops the ability to identify and analyze assumptions underlying theoretical models of communication that shape knowledge about ourselves, others, and reality. The course investigates major explanatory theories of communication. Students develop foundational knowledge about the communication discipline, equipping them in all other courses as graduate students.

This course investigates dynamics of differences that frame, enable, and constrain people’s communication opportunities across diverse social identity groupings. Focusing on ‘isms’ related to race, gender, sex, social class, ability, sexuality, and age, its learning activities apply theory and scholarship to understand, integrate, and more insightfully navigate interactions across the welcome range of human differences.

This course will investigate the vast body of empirical work on the effects of both media content and media technology upon users and audiences. In particular, social, attitudinal, and behavioral approaches will be the focus to infer effects of media and technology. Classic and new media effects theories will be critically analyzed, discussed, and used to develop practical and theoretically grounded media effects projects.

This class challenges students to think, analyze, and write thoughtfully about public messages that influence your experience, profession, life, and culture. Your study of rhetorical theory and criticism will provide lifelong tools with which you can better understand the possibilities and difficulties of forming, using, and evaluating messages that individuals or groups use to influence or change large public audiences.

Students learn about and explore romantic, familial, platonic, earthly, and sometimes “radical” relationships through various interpersonal, mediated, and culturally-situated communication concepts and theories. Special focus is given to the ways love, care, and/or grief inform our lived experience(s) over the life cycle. Topics span philosophies of birth, death, suicide, joy, fertility, queerness, eco-spirituality, and otherness.

This course introduces qualitative research methods as the study of how humans create culture through symbolic communication. Students learn about qualitative methods through application in a semester-long project. Students will develop a research focus, gain access to a research site, design an ethical research study, collect and analyze data, and create an interpretation and representation of the data for others.

This course integrates social scientific, interpretive, and critical scholarship connections between cultures and interactions. Encoded in communication, it unpacks how people’s cultures shape – and are shaped by – their socio-cultural realities, identities, and interactions across boundaries. It also applies that knowledge to help learners advance their cultural sensitivity, engagement, flexibility, and effectiveness in intercultural situations.

This course explores the intersection between bodies and place, with particular attention to our natural ecosystems in the creation of meaning and regeneration within the arc of trauma. It draws on a range of communication and ecological perspectives on health, land, community, imagination, and media representations of identity to critically examine relationships between micro and macro systems of belonging and embodiment.

This course explores current organizational issues from a critical perspective. Students use organizational communication theory to unpack various topics including gendered and raced labor, culture and identity, work/life balance, and organizational power and decision-making. An underlying theme of this course is the transformative potential of meaningful work in various contexts, such as for-profit, nonprofit, and global organizations.

This course offers an advanced investigation of organizational culture. Students will identify symbolic organizing practices and ideological meanings tied to them, and examine how plural cultural meanings and beliefs inform organizing practices. Topics include organizational ethnography, cultural diversity, and social justice. Drawing from interpretive and critical traditions, students will design and implement an advanced research project.

Examines the cultural significance and accomplishments of visuality. Considers the social and political implications of “looking” practices, the impact of “representation” in contemporary culture, and the circulation of images (through virality and sharing practices). Specific focus on race, gender and class and the role that visual images play in cultural perceptions of and practices toward race and racialized bodies.

Students study and write media criticism which closely analyzes messages as cultural repositories of meaning or which investigates the interaction between media and culture. Emphasis is on the method, stance, and purpose of media critics.

Explores the influence of film on American culture. Students explore theories and ideas concerning film, society, conflict, visual persuasion, and narrative. Students view popular American films as focal points for lecture and discussion.

Students learn and apply communication theories to critically analyze contemporary discourses and counter-discourses surrounding ecology, nonhuman animal rights, land sovereignty, and environmental justice. Students unpack and interrogate how their own assumptions, beliefs, language, and practices support and/or resist various environmental narratives around plants, nonhuman animals, food systems, and climate communication.

Course designed to help students attain professional-level competence in oral and written business communication. Students learn rhetorical principles and apply them to business communication situations. Included: making formal oral presentations, conducting meetings, writing business reports.

This course provides reflective, specific guidance in applying communication theories to a professional communication setting. Students learn how to observe and apply theory to practice, increasing their understanding and ability to function successfully in a professional communication setting by working directly with a qualified internship supervisor and academic internship director. May be taken twice, only 3 credits apply to major.

This course is under the direction of a faculty adviser, leading to a scholarly thesis document with a public presentation of results. Students demonstrate advanced knowledge and research expertise in the communication field by designing, conducting, and implementing an original thesis study. The course must be taken twice for 6 credits, which fulfills two degree elective requirements.