Undergraduate Courses
| E03.0001 | New Student Seminar New Student Seminar (NSS) is a required first semester course for new undergraduate students (e.g. freshman and transfers). It orients students to the University, the Steinhardt School, and the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. Students are introduced to the nature of higher education, student life on and around campus and New York City, and to the all important major requirements (also known as program of study). In class, students work together under the guidance of their advisor to actively explore their roles as students in this diverse and global academic community and as future professionals in their chosen fields. |
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| E59.0001 | Introduction to Media Studies Introduces students to the study of contemporary forms of mediated communication. The course surveys the main topics in the field and introduces students to a variety of analytical perspectives. Issues include the economics of media production; the impact of media on individual attitudes, values, and behaviors; the role of media professionals, and the impact of new media technologies. |
| E59.0003 | History of Communication sample
syllabus A survey of the four great revolutions in human communication: orality (speech), literacy (writing and reading), typography (print and mass literacy), and the electronic media (telegraph, telephone, photograph, film, radio, television, computers, and communication satellites). Examines how the semiotic codes, physical structures, and time-space biases of the media wrought by these revolutions have affected such basic human communication forms as memory, myth and ritual, narration and reenactment, and visual imagery. |
| E59.0005 | Introduction to Human Communication
and Culture sample
syllabus Surveys major research perspectives and theories concerning core areas within the field of culture and human communication. Introduces and reviews major approaches to the study of human interaction, rhetoric, language, persuasion, and cultural processes across diverse contexts. |
| E59.0014 | Introduction to Media Criticism sample
syllabus An introduction to approaches and practices used to criticize the content, structure, and context (including effects) of significant media in our society. Background readings, examination of current criticism, and beginning practice in media criticism are employed. |
| E59.1002 | Space and Place in Human Communication This course will build on a core concept of Lewis Mumford who understood media ecology as a component of spatial and urban ecology. Emphasis will be given on how space socially organizes human meaning and on the inscription of space. How do people, through their practices and their being in the world, form relationships with the locales they occupy (both the natural world and the build environment)? How do they attach meaning to spaces to create places? And how do the experiences of inhabiting, viewing, and hearing those places shape their meanings, communicative practices, cultural performances, memories, and habits? Course themes include: mapping and the imagination; vision and space, soundscape, architecture and landscape, new media and space/time compression; space and identity; spatial violence; spatialization of memory. |
| E59.1003 | Introduction to Digital Media sample
syllabus This course is an introduction to digital media, focusing on networks, computers, the Web, and video games. Theoretical topics include the formal qualities of new media, their political dimensions, as well as questions of genre, narrative, and history. |
| E59.1005 | The Culture Industries A survey of the contemporary arts and journalism, with particular attention to the impact of corporate concentration on the working atmosphere and final "product" in each field. Through broad reading and interviews with weekly guests, we will probe the working life today in television, radio, cinema, magazine writing, book publishing, Web production and the music business. |
| E59.1006 | Television: History and Form Analysis of television as a medium of information, conveyor and creator of mass culture, and a form of aesthetic expression. Course examines the historical development of television as both a cultural product and an industry. |
| E59.1007 | Film: History and Form Analysis of film as a medium of information, conveyor and creator of mass culture, and a form of aesthetic expression. Course examines the historical development of film as both a cultural product and an industry. |
| E59.1008 | Video Games: Culture and Industry The course examines the emergence of video games as site of contemporary cultural production and practice. It pays special attention the symbolic and aesthetic dimensions of video games, including their various narratives forms and sub-genres, and concentrates on their interactive dimensions. The course provides insight into the emerging trends in the interface between humans and media technologies. The course also situates video games within the business practices of the entertainment industries. |
| E59.1009 | Psychoanalysis: Desire and Culture Explores the subject of desire in modern media and culture. Freud’s ideas have had a profound influence on everything from the earliest manuals on public relations to the struggles of modern feminism. We will read a range of psychoanalytic theorists while studying how their insights have been put to work by both the culture industry and its critics. |
| E59.1010 | Censorship in American Culture An upper level course on the topic of censorship in American culture, from the late 19th century to the present. The broader context for our exploration will be the public sphere, understood in two ways: as the classic, liberal ideal-a space for civil, and equitable exchange of ideas and opinions open to all citizens-and in the more contemporary reality-a highly contested space of public discussion, where the boundaries concerning who can participate, what topics are allowed, and how the exchange takes place are drawn and redrawn. The tension between ideal and real forms of public communication plays out in highly charged debates around censorship, which take place in diverse public spaces, including literature, film, theatre, art galleries, the press, the internet, sidewalks, courts, and bars. Because these debates are cultural and legal ones, and are frequently deeply divisive within American society, the goal is for the students to have an enhanced understanding of the historical contexts in which important cultural and legal struggles over censorship took place, and to bring that understanding to bear on contemporary debates about the arts, sexuality, gender, privacy, national security, media technology, and government involvement in the marketplace of ideas and images. |
| E59.1011 | Media and Migration The course examines the role of media in the lives and cultures of transnational immigrant communities. Using a comparative framework and readings drawn from interdisciplinary sources, the course will explore how media practices and media representations (re)define and enable a re-imagining of national belonging, identity and culture in the context of global relocations. |
| E59.1012 | Crime, Violence and Media sample
syllabus This course considers the culture of crime in relation to conventions of news and entertainment in the mass media. Topics include competing theories of criminogenic behavior, news conventions and crime reporting, the aesthetics and representation of crime in the media, the role of place in crime stories, moral panics and fears, crime and consumer culture, and the social construction of different kinds of crimes and criminals. |
| E59.1013 | Political Communication sample
syllabus This course focuses on the essentially communicative aspects of American governing processes, surveying research that analyzes the way in which political candidates at various levels of government are chosen, how they shape their personal image, the process of constructing persuasive message appeals, and their interaction with voters. It will also focus on how elected officials set political and legislative agendas, use public relations strategies to shape public policy, and otherwise engage in the process of political deliberation. The media in which these processes take place will be an additional focus, including the influence of news outlets, political campaign advertising, and the work of political advocacy groups of various kinds. Common methods utilized in political communication research will also be highlighted, including experimental and survey research, and various forms of textual analysis. |
| E59.1014 | Mass Persuasion and Propaganda Analysis of the development, principles, techniques, and results of mass persuasion from its beginnings in ancient civilizations to its evolution into propaganda in the modern technological society. Mass persuasion in war, politics, and advertising is examined. |
| E59.1015 | Advertising and Society This course will examine the emergence of advertising as a form of communication, its influence upon other forms of mediated communication and its impact upon culture and society. |
| E59.1016 | Media Audiences sample
syllabus An introduction to theories of reception, considering both the stakes and the methodological problems of studying audience response. Considers topics such as the histories of reading and spectatorship as well as user-generated content and the evolving relationship between cultural production and consumption. |
| E59.1017 | Youth Media: Communication, Community, & Social Change This course explores the theory, practice, and impact of the non-profit youth media organizations and school-based programs working in this field locally and around the world. Students will also use media production to conduct fieldwork in the New York City area that further builds the subfields of youth media/youth development, teaching and learning, and community building. Research projects will document and investigate how youth media is supporting the development of young people's capacities for 21st century skills of digital communication, critical literacy, and civic engagement. |
| E59.1018 | Kids in Media Culture sample
syllabus In this course, students will examine how young people of different ages and backgrounds use, value, and find meaning in different media in different kinds of contexts, and we discuss the social, cultural, and political implications of these lived experiences. In addition, we will explore how we might address the issues raised by the contemporary communication environment, and by the realities of young people's complex interactions with popular media. Books required are David Buckingham's After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media and Fisherkeller's Growing up with Television: Everyday Learning Among Young Adolescents. A packet of readings will include cultural audience studies investigating different actual kids' relationships to different media in a variety of social contexts. The culminating assignment for this class requires students to write a paper addressing a "real" audience outside of the classroom informing them about the issues of the course, and proposing how that audience might take a course of action in reponse. |
| E59.1019 | Media and Identity Study and exploration of the relationship between the media and the construction of both individual and social identities. Examines the ways in which human identity is increasingly influenced by media representations and the social and personal consequences of this trend. |
| E59.1020 | The Business of Media Detailed examination of the business models and economic traits in a variety of media industries including film and television, cable and satellite, book and magazine publishing, gaming and the Internet. Emphasis on historical trends and current strategies in both domestic and global markets. |
| E59.1021 | Dead Media Research Studio This course is devoted to media archaeology, that is, historical research on forgotten, obsolete, or otherwise "dead" media technologies. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the skills and resources necessary for producing rigorous scholarship on obsolete and obscure media. It will include an exposure to scholarship in media archaeology including writings from Friedrich Kittler and Jonathan Sterne; an intensive introduction to research methods; instruction on the localization and utilization of word, image, and sound archives; and a continuing emphasis on the need to restore media artifacts to their proper social and cultural context. The course follows a research studio model commonly used in disciplines such as architecture. |
| E59.1022 | Latino Media sample
syllabus Examines the production, consumption and cultural meaning of Latino media produced in and around the United States (as opposed to that produced in Latin American countries). Focuses on a wide range of mediated cultural production: television, radio, film, advertising, magazines, etc. This course will be a critical investigation into the theories, production and consumption of Latino media and popular culture. Examines the influence popular culture has on politics, identity formation, shaping culture and as a mode of revealing, producing and reproducing ideology and political struggle. |
| E59.1023 | East Asian Media This course explores the evolving media and communication systems in East Asia from economic, political, cultural, technological and network perspectives. Particular attention is paid to the impact of Internet and mobile media on traditional media institutions, the changing role of transnational corporations, and the relations between states and their people. More than half of the course focuses on the Greater China region (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland). Japan and South Korea are also covered. |
| E59.1025 | Race and Media America’s founding principles of equality and equal opportunity have long been the subject of interpretation, debate, national angst and widespread (often violent) conflict. No more is this the case than when we talk about the issue of race. While biological notions of race have lost their scientific validity, race remains a salient issue in American life as a social and political reality sustained through a wide variety of media forms. The broad purpose of this course is to better understand how notions of race have been defined and shaped in and through these mediated forms. Specific attention may be given to the ways that race is articulated in forms of mass media and popular culture. |
| E59.1028 | Ethics and Media The purpose of this course is twofold: 1) to equip future media professionals with sensitivity to moral values under challenge as well as the necessary skills in critical thinking and decision making for navigating their roles and responsibilities in relation to them; and 2) honing those same skills and sensitivities for consumers of media and citizens in media saturated societies. |
| E59.1029 | New Media Research Studio New Media Research Studio is a lab dedicated to examining and deconstructing new information technology tools and environments. Students will be exposed to the contemporary discourse around new media through reading, listening and watching. We will embark on virtual journeys into media and will update the class collaborative blog with travelogues from social networking sites, massive-multi-player online environments, the blogosphere, the open source movement, radical online activist groups, internet art collectives and more. |
| E59.1034 | Media, Technology and Society sample
syllabus An inquiry into the interplay of technology and contemporary society. Examines the ways in which technologies-mechanical, electronic, analog, and digital-have shaped and complicated our culture and society. |
| E59.1100 | Internship Applied fieldwork in Media, Culture, and Communication. The internship program promotes the integration of academic theory with practical experience. Internships expand student understanding of the dynamics of the ever-changing field of communication. |
| E59.1200 | Senior Media Seminar sample
syllabus Open only to seniors in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication or by permission of the instructor. A culminating course integrating models of interpretation derived from the liberal arts with the analytical tools developed in media, culture, and communication coursework. Reflects current research interests within the department and encourages students to explore emerging issues in the field, including media and globalization, professional ethics, and the interaction between audiences and texts. |
| E59.1210 | Senior Honors in Media, Culture, and Communication Prerequisite: senior standing and department approval to pursue honors in the major. Open only to MCC majors with senior standing. Extended primary research in media, culture, and communication focusing on the development and sharing of individual research projects. Students enroll the following semester in 2 points of Independent Study under the direction of a faculty honors sponsor, as outlined in department guidelines. |
| E59.1300 | Media and Global Communication Examines the broad range of activities associated with the globalization of media production, distribution, and reception. Issues include the relationship between local and national identities and the emergence of a "global culture" and the impact of technological innovations on the media themselves and their use and reception in a variety of settings. |
| E59.1304 | Global Media and International Law This course examines public policy issues and institutions of media governance at the international level. It provides a historical overview of the various institutions and actors involved in global media governance, and assesses the various principles and practices that constitute the regime of global media governance, including the regulation of broadcasting, telecommunications, the Internet, and trade in media products. Special attention is paid to current debates within multilateral bodies such as UNESCO, the WTO, and the International Telecommunication Union. |
| E59.1305 | Communication and International Development This course introduces students to theoretical foundations in historical and contemporary issues in communication, media, information and international development. Topics include state-building, modernization, dependency and globalization. Every week will be dedicated to a particular country/region and media development program whereby students will analyze a specific case study. |
| E59.1340 | Religion and Media This course examines the ways in which conventional and non-conventional media re-create religious experience. Increasingly, religion is experienced not only in sacred spaces, and through ritual and scripture, but is also communicated through radio, TV, and the Internet, as well as in consumer culture and political campaigns. This course examines the significance of religion in modern life from historical and contemporary perspectives, paying attention to questions of religious and national difference, as well as material and symbolic practices. |
| E59.1345 | Fashion and Power This course examines fashion as a form of communication and culture. Through cultural and media studies theory, we will examine how fashion makes meaning, and how it has been valued through history, popular culture and media institutions, focusing on the relationship between fashion, visual self-presentation, and power. The course will situate fashion both in terms of its production and consumption, addressing its role in relation to identity and body politics (gender, race, sexuality, class), art and status, nationhood and the global economy, celebrity and Hollywood culture, youth cultures and subversive practices. |
| E59.1351 | War As Media This course examines the proposition that contemporary war should be understood as media. War has become mediatized and media has been militarized. This course treats war and poltical violence as communicative acts and technologies and focuses on how they shape our understanding and experience of landscape, vision, body, time and memory. |
| E59.1400 | Communication and Cultural Contexts* Examines the theories and evidence of cultural and political transformations under way in the era of media proliferation, multinational conglomerates, and cyberspace. The course pays particular attention to the international flows of media and cultural products and examines their impact on local and national differences. *Offered as study abroad. |
| E59.1401 | Global Cultures and Identities This course examines globalization as it is inscribed in everyday practices through the transnational traffic of persons, cultural artifacts, and ideas. The course will focus on issues of transnational mobility, modernity, the local/global divide, and pay specific attention to how categories of race, gender, and ethnicity intersect with transnational change. |
| E59.1402 | Marxism and Culture sample
syllabus Explores the various political and philosophical debates within western Marxism. Pays particular attention to the influence of the cultural turn in twentieth century Marxist thought on feminism, postcolonialism, and theories of mediation. Themes include: the commodity, alienation and reification, surplus value, culture, ideology, hegemony and subjectivity. |
| E59.1405 | Copyright, Commerce and Culture Course explores the basic tenets and operative principles of the global copyright system. It considers the ways in which media industries, artists, and consumers interact with the copyright system and judges how well it serves its stated purposes: to encourage art and creativity. Examinies various social, cultural, legal, and political issues that have arisen in recent years as a result of new communicative technologies. The two main technological changes that concern us are the digitization of information and culture and the rise of networks within society and politics. |
| E59.1406 | Hacker Culture & Politics This course takes as its object computer hackers to interrogate not only the ethics and technical practices of hacking, but to examine more broadly how hackers and hacking have transformed the politics of computing and the Internet more generally. We will examine how hacker values are realized and constituted by different legal, technical, and ethical activities of computer hacking-for example, free software production, cyberactivism and hactivism, cryptography, and the pranksih games of hacker underground. |
| E59.1407 | Gender, Sex and the Global This course examines how globalization impacts the construction of gender & sexuality. Through discussions of contemporary issues in various global sites, the course addresses the politics of gender as it is shaped by trans-border flows of media, people & cultural products. |
| E59.1410 | Global Visual Culture This course examines the role of visual culture in the emergence of, concepts of, and processes of globalization and the global cultural flows. In introducing students to the concept of the visual construction of the social field, the course compares the means by which cultures visualize themselves in forms ranging from the imagination to the encounter between people and visualized media. The course takes as its fundamental premise that visual culture circulates and creates meaning in increasing global flows and that the very foundations of global capital, global culture, and global media are based on the dynamics of visuality and the power systems it both affirms and challenges. |
| E59.1450 | Global Media Seminar This umbrella number encompasses topics-based courses offered at NYU global campuses & other international locations that examine the social, political and economic dynamics of media & culture in specific national, regional & historical contexts. |
| E59.1508 | Print: History and Form This course proposes a reflection on the concept of journalistic objectivity and an evaluation of journalistic objectivity as a professional standard. First part is dedicated to philosophical and historical approaches to the notion of objectivity, to an analysis of the criticisms addressed to objectivity as a professional standard and to the study of alternative norms. Second part proposes to grasp journalistic objectivity in terms of performance and to determine criteria for evaluating this performance. |
| E59.1517 | Photography and the Visual Archive This course examines the role and history of photography within the historical landscape of media and communication. Special emphasis is placed on the accumulative meaning of visual archives, tracing how images relation and establish cultural territories across a variety of texts and media. The course investigates and contrasts the mimetic visual strategies within western and non-western traditions, looking at historical and contemporary images in a variety of forms. |
| E59.1520 | Print Culture from Common Sense to the Kindle Evolutionary stages of diverse writing & bookmaking practices. From the first recorded-keeping necessities through biblical texts & medieval book practices, to mechanical reproductions & the transformation from print to the computer age. Cultural & social impact of these traditions are examined. |
| E59.1700 | Gender and Communication Does gender influence the ability to communicate? According to recent studies, gender plays a powerful role in how we are perceived by others and often influences the way we communicate with others. This course enables students to understand how to deal with sex roles and sex role development as they affect the ability to communicate in everyday life. |
| E59.1735 | Intercultural Communication Consideration is given to verbal and nonverbal communication processes in United States culture as compared and contrasted with other interacting cultures; stereotypes resulting from differences in communication; and intervention strategies designed to strengthen effective intercultural communication. |
| E59.1740 | Interviewing Strategies This course focuses on the principles and practices of successful interviewing techniques. Students are provided with background on the structure of an interview and learn how to analyze success and/or potential problems. Review of case studies and practice in holding interviews enable students to gain experience and to improve their own abilities. |
| E59.1745 | Organizational Communication This course is designed especially for students entering business, health care, and educational settings who are assuming or aspiring to positions of leadership. Through case studies and class discussion, course work focuses on strengthening communication competency in presentation skills, persuasive ability (i.e., marketing and sales), leadership in meetings, and problem-solving skills. |
| E59.1750 | Public Relations: Theory and Process (formerly
titled Communication and Public Relations) Public relations means different things to different people but it has one undeniable element: communication. This course is concerned with arranging, handling, and evaluating public relations programs. Students work with actual case histories and deal with contemporary topics such as the use of the computer in public relations. |
| E59.1755 | Public Relations: Principles and Practices (formerly
titled Public Relations Techniques) Focuses on techniques of communication in public relations including creation of press releases, press packets and kits, and developing public relations campaigns. |
| E59.1760 | Innovations in Marketing* *Note: This course is being offered with two distinct themes: Section 001 "Multicultural Marketing" Section 002 "Corporate Social Responsibility" |
| E59.1775 | Advertising: Principles and Practices (formerly
titled Advertising Strategies) Course focuses on understanding the communication strategies and fundamentals of effective advertising and the use of advertising communication tools. The emphasis is on techniques, preparation of materials, and the ability to assess the effectiveness of these strategies. |
| E59.1780 | Advertising Campaigns (formerly titled Advanced
Advertising Strategies) This course teaches students who have a basic understanding of advertising techniques how to develop a complete advertising campaign for a product, service, or nonprofit organization. |
| E59.1785 | Marketing for Mass Media Introduces the media studies student to the theory, principles, and practice of marketing management and integrated marketing communications. Analyzes the method, policies and institutions involved in the flow of goods and services from the producer to the consumer. Particular emphasis is placed on critically examining the role of advertising techniques, sales promotion, and public relations. |
| E59.1790 | Introduction to Rhetoric A historic view of rhetorical theory from the ancients (Plato, Aristotle, Quintillian) to the modern (Burke, Weaver, Toulmin). The primary applications of the theory are to contemporary speakers and the nature of American political rhetoric. Questions addressed range from "What is rhetoric?" to "What made the Declaration of Independence persuasive?" to "Why (and how) does the government lie to us?" |
| E59.1795 | Introduction to Rhetorical Criticism An introduction to the art of evaluating speeches. Application of the rhetorical theories-from Aristotle to postmodernism-to famous 20th-century speeches (Kennedy's "Inaugural," Reagan's "Star Wars," etc.). |
| E59.1800 | Political Rhetoric Through the rhetoric of public relations, we examine the principles and assumptions in analyzing the process of political campaigns. Focus is on an analysis of what is reported to the mass media and not the "gatekeepers" - reporters, editors, and producers of news who filter the messages. Also, discussion on how public relations helps create the viewpoints that eventually become well established and widely held. |
| E59.1805 | Public Speaking Analysis of the problems of speaking to groups and practice in preparing and presenting speeches for various purposes and occasions. Hours are arranged for student evaluation and practice. |
| E59.1808 | Persuasion Analysis of factors inherent in the persuasive process; examination and application of these factors in presentations. |
| E59.1815 | Conflict Management Communication Effective communication plays a critical role in addressing, defusing, and managing conflict in professional and personal settings. Through case studies, students learn how factors such as ethnicity, oral and nonverbal communication, gender, culture, and writing contribute to conflict and how we can learn to assess, manage, and defuse conflicts productively. |
| E59.1830 | Interpersonal Communication The application of various systems of communication analysis to specific behavioral situations. Through case-study method, students apply communication theories & models to practical, everyday situations. |
| E59.1835 | Argumentation and Debate Analysis of the problems inherent in arguing and debating; the development of analytical tools for argument; practice in the application and preparation of analysis through debating. Hours are arranged for student evaluation and practice. |