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Undergraduate Catalog 2012

Media & Comm Studies

MCS 101 (4.00)

Media Literacy

This course is designed to help students critically engage with the media of communication, information, entertainment, and surveillance that surround us. Critical engagement includes understanding the history, political economy, and rhetorical power of these media. It also includes an introduction to the basic skills of multi-modal media production. Reading, writing, editing, composing, and publishing¿these traditional liberal arts skills are at the heart of this new media literacy, along with newer ones like remixing.
   Course ID: 101777
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Laboratory, Lecture

MCS 101L (1.00)

Multimedia Literacy Lab

This one-credit lab section will provide students with basic skills in digital media production. Students will receive hands-on training on a variety of software including Final Cut Express, Garage Band and Photoshop. In addition students will gain experience with digital still cameras, video cameras and audio recording equipment. On completing this course students will be able to self-publish multimedia content in various formats, including DVD and online video.
   Course ID: 100224
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Laboratory

MCS 222 (3.00)

Introduction to Media & Communication Studies

This course offers students an introduction to the critical perspectives and research methods that are central to the analysis of mass communication policy and programming, new media, interpersonal communciation, and audience reception. The course will provide students the skills to design and apply a range of interdisciplinary concepts and methods to media analysis projects. Themes of the course will situate various forms of media within specific historical and cultural contexts.
   Course ID: 051254
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Course Equivalents: MCS 222H
   Attributes: Arts and Humanities (GEP), Arts and Humanities (GFR)

MCS 222H (3.00)

Introduction to Media & Communication Studies

This course offers students an introduction to the critical perspectives and research methods that are central to the analysis of mass communication policy and programming, new media, interpersonal communciation, and audience reception. The course will provide students the skills to design and apply a range of interdisciplinary concepts and methods to media analysis projects. Themes of the course will situate various forms of media within specific historical and cultural contexts.
   Course ID: 100348
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Course Equivalents: MCS 222
   Attributes: Arts and Humanities (GEP), Arts and Humanities (GFR)

MCS 333 (3.00)

History and Theory of Mass Communication and Media Studies

This course will introduce students to the history of the discipline of mass communications and media studies, which have their origins in the sociology of "mass society" at the turn of the twentieth century in the US and Europe. The course will chart the shift from a "Mass Communications" approach emphasizing "media effects" approaches that merged in the 1970s as part of a larger shift in studies of human behavior and expressive culture. The course will consider the ways that changes in the technologies of communication, information, entertainment, and surveillance have helped to shape the paradigms under which scholars study audiences, messages, and culture. Further, the course will examine how these same changes have shaped the way producers think about and communicate with audiences.
   Course ID: 055394
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Requirement Group: You must have completed MCS 222 with a C or better.

MCS 334 (3.00)

Media & Globalization

This course is designed to help students to learn about the global flows of media images and the networks, capital, and people that shape and are shaped by them. Students will study a broad range of case studies and investigate new media practices that will help them to become critically aware of the relationships between global mass media and transnational cultural, political, and economic institutions. Students will also develop learn how to analyze media practices comparatively. Recommended Course Preparation: MCS 101, MCS 222, MCS 333
   Course ID: 101813
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Requirement Group: You must complete MCS101, MCS222, MCS333 with a grade of 'C' or better.

MCS 355 (3.00)

Social Media: Networking and Mobility.

This course is designed to encourage students to critically engage with the growing role that social media, online networks, and mobile communication technologies play in their understanding of self and community, sociability and privacy. Students will reflect on the centrality of collaboration, networking, and participation in social media technologies. Assignments and readings will require students to interact with core questions surrounding the emergence of social media and the impact of living increasingly mediated lives. Special attention will be paid to the centrality of writing in a digital world, even as the platforms for composition, editing, and publication have changed.
   Course ID: 101852
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Requirement Group: You nust complete MCS 101 or MCS 222 with a C or better.

MCS 370 (3.00)

Special Topics in Media and Communication Studies

A study of key concepts, skills, or themes in the areas of media and communication studies. Topics to be announced each semester offered. Recommended Preparation: MCS 222
   Course ID: 055395
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Topics: Facebook Culture, Special Topics In MCS, Desktop Publishing, Hip Hop Media and Culture, New Media Production and Theor, Television Production, Vampire Media and Culture, Media Ecology: Everyday Life in the Digital Age, Transcultural Studies in Global Television, Political Writing, The Avant-Garde at the Movies

MCS 377 (3.00)

Desktop Publishing and the Web

An introduction to desktop publishing on the Macintosh platform. The course will focus on the Adobe Design software. The course will aid students in solving design problems and developing skills in visual communication. Students will develop skills in vector and raster graphics and develop a website as well as become familliar with the use of the graphics in desktop publishing.
   Course ID: 100014
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture

MCS 390 (3.00)

Transcultural Studies in Global Television

This course will study the concepts, institutions, distribution channels, production and marketing practices, products and audience reception of globally distributed television programming. Special emphasis will be placed on localization strategies, aesthetic conventions and genre traditions, notions of cultural proximity, and debates around hybridity and transculturality. Students enrolled in MLL 480 will be expected to have advanced foreign language proficiency and will be expected to examine foreign language television productions and discuss issues in the secondary literature in that language. MLL 480 students will need department consent to take the course. Recommended Course Preparation: MCS 333.
   Course ID: 100677
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Same as Offering: MLL 480
   Requirement Group: You must have completed MCS 222 with a C or better.

MCS 395 (3.00)

Television Production Techniques I

Development of skills pertaining to the operation of cameras, recorders, control consoles, lighting instruments and general operating procedures. Each student gains experience as a team member of on-campus TV productions.
   Course ID: 052388
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture
   Same as Offering: ART 395

MCS 400 (1.00 - 6.00)

Independent Projects in Media and Communication Studies

Independent projects are designed and the number of credits determined by individual students in consultation with an advisor or instructor.
   Course ID: 055396
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Independent Study

MCS 404 (3.00)

Internship

For students intersted in an introductory internship experience. Students are expected to commit 40 hours a semester per credit. For example, for three credits, the expectation would be 120 hours of field work. The internship allows students to apply academic concepts and ideas to a work environment. Interested participantsmust see a Media and Communciation Studies faculty member before registering. Recommended Preparation: Permission of instructor
   Course ID: 055397
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Independent Study

MCS 499 (3.00)

Capstone Senior Seminar

The Capstone Experience Seminar encourages students to integrate the subject matter and interdisciplinary methods of the major by focusing on a significant problem in the study media and communications studies. Emphasis is placed upon the involvement of students in both the process and content of cultural analysis and interpretation. Importantly, the form that students'' projects take may be either traditional research paper or a new media production, for example a digital story telling project. Recommended Preparation: MCS 222, MCS 333
   Course ID: 055398
   Consent: No Special Consent Required
   Components: Lecture