Communications and Cultural Theory

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide students a broad background in communications and cultural theory. COMMS 500 Communications and Cultural Theory (3) This course is an advanced study of various interpretive approaches and methodological tools that are central to the analysis of media artifacts, including newspaper articles, magazines, films, advertising, and television programs. It begins with an overview of various interpretive traditions, including culturalism, psychoanalytic theory, structuralism, ethnic and racial critiques, poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies, and queer theory. It prepares students to critically examine philosophical assumptions regarding the relationship between the nature of knowledge, expression, writing and creative production on one hand, and conceptions of personhood, community, social structures and authority, on the other. Students are required to do significant reading and writing in this course, and to propose and conduct analyses of communication artifacts.