By following this pathway, students will hone their critical digital skills by exploring the myriad ways that technological systems shape social relations and experiences. Students will develop capacities focused on critical understandings of the economic, political, aesthetic, and cultural factors that shape media and technology’s affordances, its uses, and its potential. This pathway will also invite inquiry into production, negotiation, and contestation of cultural meanings as identities within media spaces. Students pursuing this pathway will seek out careers as media analysts, critics or producers working in the technology industry, or at think tanks, foundations, or in government organizations focusing on media law, policy, regulation, and user rights. View PDF here.
Pathway Starting Point Courses
COMM 130 Introduction to Media Production (3 credits)
COMM 140 Introduction to Media History, Theory, and Criticism (3 credits)
COMM 150| Introduction to New Media (3 credits)
COMM 224 Introduction to Gender and Communication (3 credits)
COMM 249 Introduction to Communication Technology, Culture, and Society (3 credits)
COMM 330 Introduction to Writing for Film and Television (3 credits)
Lower-Level Courses
COMM 75 9 First-Year Seminar: Researching Society and Culture (3 credits)
COMM 83 First-Year Seminar: Networked Societies (3 credits)
COMM 86 First-Year Seminar: Surveillance and Society (3 credits)
COMM 88 First-Year Seminar: Technologies of Popular Culture (3 credits)
COMM 89 First-Year Seminar: Special Topics (3 credits)
COMM 142 Popular Music (3 credits)
COMM 230 Audio/Video/Film Production and Writing (3 credits)
COMM 251 Introduction to American Film and Culture, 1965-Present (3 credits)
COMM 318 Cultural Diversity (3 credits)
COMM 335 198 Film Story Analysis (3 credits)
COMM 337 Visual Storytelling for Screenwriters (3 credits)
COMM The Social Life of Things (3 credits)
COMM 345 Gender and Film (3 credits)
COMM 348 Algorithms and Society (3 credits)
COMM 349 Technology and Social Justice (3 credits)
COMM 350 Practices of Cultural Studies (3 credits)
COMM 355 Terrorism and Political Violence (3 credits)
COMM 360 Social Media and Society (3 credits)
COMM 372 The Rhetoric of Social Movements (3 credits)
COMM 390 Special Topics in Communication Study (3 credits)
COMM 393 Internships (1-3 credits)
COMM 396 Independent Study and Directed Research 1-3
Upper-Level Courses
COMM 412 Critical Theory
COMM 430 History of American Screenwriting
COMM 431 Advanced Audio Production (3 credits)
COMM 432 Visual Culture (3 credits)
COMM 450 Media and Popular Culture (3 credits)
COMM 453 The History of New Media Technology in Everyday Life
COMM 454 Media and Activism
COMM 455 Sound Studies
COMM 470 Political Communication and the Public Sphere
COMM 490 Special Topics in Communication Studies *
COMM 499 The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication
COMM 524 Gender, Communication, and Culture
COMM 532 Performing the Screenplay
COMM 534 Aesthetic and Technical Considerations in Making Short Videos (3 credits)
COMM 549 Sexuality and Visual Culture
COMM 564 Performance and Popular Culture (3 credits)
COMM 574 War and Culture (3 credits)
COMM 576 Making and Manipulating “Race” in the United States (3 credits)
COMM 596 Advanced Independent Study/Directed Reading (1-3 credits)
COMM 624 Hate Speech (3 credits)
COMM 635 Documentary Production (3 credits)
COMM 636 Interactive Media (3 credits)
Game Design (3 credits)
COMM 640 Game Studio (3 credits)
COMM 644 Documentary Production: First Person Filmmaking? (3 credits)
COMM 645 The Documentary Idea (3 credits)
COMM 650 Cultural Politics of Global Media Economies (3 credits)
COMM 652 Media and Difference
COMM 655 Television Culture (3 credits)
COMM 656 Sound for Film and Video: Theory and Practice for Motion Picture Sound
Design (3 credits)
COMM 658 Surveillance Cultures (3 credits)
COMM 661 Race and Ethnicity (3 credits)
COMM/DRAM 666 Media in Performance (3 credits)
COMM 676 Digital Media and Live Performance (3 credits)
COMM 682 History of the Moving Image: Pasts, Presents, Futures (3 credits)
COMM 690 Advanced Topics in Communication Studies (3 credits)
COMM 693H Honors (3 credits)
COMM 694H Honors (3 credits)
COMM 695 Field Methods (3 credits)