BA in Communication Studies

Social science research informs the practices of various actors, ranging from government to business to nonprofit corporations and beyond. But in order for social scientific knowledge to be used correctly and well, certain principles pertaining to both research methods and data interpretation must be understood. In this introductory research methods course, students will both evaluate the quality and meaning of social scientific research and put the principles of effective research into professional practice. They will also evaluate popular media representations of social scientific research. This work will involve critically analyzing the ways journalists represent the truthfulness, reliability, and validity of social science research; critiquing the design and interpretation of published social science research studies; and evaluating the ethics of research design, implementation, and publication.

See full syllabus

BA in Communication Studies / BA in Sociology

Many of the most significant social and cultural changes in modern history have been achieved through sustained collective action—through groups of people coming together around a common set of problems and fighting to change the status quo in ways that alleviate or at least mitigate those problems. These collectives—which we refer to as social movements—are fundamentally communicative in nature. Movements are formed through communication and it is through communication that they achieve much of their strategic objectives. Moreover, movements are inextricably linked to communications channels. As media and communication technologies have transformed, so too have the structures and the practices of social movements. This course explores the complex relationships between communication and social movements, bringing together theories from communication studies, sociology, and political science, as well as tracing historically how social movements have developed new practices of achieving social change.

See full syllabus

MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprise

Brands are ubiquitous to modern society. The logics of branding shape how we view nearly every aspect of social life and, oftentimes, how we view ourselves. But the practices of brand management—of creating, shaping, maintaining, and contesting brand meaning—have transformed dramatically in recent decades. Technological changes have “opened up” the processes of branding and shifted the distribution of communicative power within consumer culture. At the same time, brands have become more “personal,” taking on public personalities and more explicit stances on issues of identity and justice. This course provides an overview of how these changes have altered the practices of brand management, bringing together both critical and administrative perspectives on contemporary branding. The ultimate aim is to provide students with a practical understanding of how brand management works, while also providing them with the conceptual tools to critique those practices.

See full syllabus

PhD in Media, Technology, and Society

“Communication” as a field does not, per se, exist. As Silvio Waisbord has argued, communication is a “post-discipline,” held together more so by a set of academic institutions, professional societies, and publication venues than by any coherent canon of theories or set of standard methodologies. Yet you are here to receive training in this so-called field, under the presumption that you will become experts in “communication.” This graduate seminar provides an overview of theories that are widely considered foundational to various subdisciplines under the umbrella of communication studies. The goal here is not to exhaust the set of “core” theories, but to provide a starting point for investigation into a few of the most common areas of study. Additionally, the seminar aims to train you in the processes of producing social theory regarding media and communication.

See full syllabus

PhD in Media, Technology, and Society

The field of communication does not have a canon, per se. But it does have a set of thinkers whose ideas are treated as foundational and whose work forms the basis of most graduate and undergraduate education in the field. And, as is true in so many fields, those thinkers are overwhelmingly white, cisgender, male, heterosexual, and from Europe and North America. This has produced a distinct vision within our field of what communication is, how it functions, and what normative ideas it should uphold. It theorizes communication from one specific standpoint, but then generalizes that standpoint to generate supposedly universal truths. This course aims to break free of this vision and the constraints it places on both our understandings of the world and our own theorizing. To do so, it assembles a “new canon” of germinal research in communication studies on race, nation, gender, and sexuality. These works do not merely theorize different forms of alterity that have been ignored or disregarded by the mainstream of the field, but rather theorize from alterity to challenge the field’s foundational assumptions. These works help us develop a new vision of what communication is, how it functions, and what normative ideas it should uphold by forcing us to approach these questions from outside the assumptions of whiteness, cis-ness, maleness, heterosexuality, and Euroamericanness.

See full syllabus