Undergraduate Courses

• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 0003 - History of Media and Communication
  This course surveys the history of media forms and communication technologies, charting the historical trajectory from the alphabet to the Internet. It explores mediation in and across time and the emergence and development of different media forms in relation to particular social, economic, perceptual, and technological conditions and historical moments.
  
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• MCC-UE 0005 - Introduction to Human Communication and Culture
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 0014 - Media and Cultural Analysis (formerly titled "Introduction to Media Criticism")

  An introduction to the theoretical approaches and practices used to analyze the content, structure, and context of media in society. Students will explore factors shaping modern media texts, including: politics, economics, technology, and cultural traditions. The dominant critical perspectives that contribute to our understanding of media will be read, discussed, and employed. The course has three broad objectives: Develop a critical awareness of media environments, develop a familiarity with concepts, themes and theoretical approaches of media criticism, and the terms associated with these approaches, and develop an ability to adopt and adapt these frameworks in your own analyses of mediated communication. 

  
  Note: Course MCC-UE 9014 / E59.0014099 may be offered at NYU Prague. Consult your academic advisor for availability.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1003 - Introduction to Digital Media
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1012 - Crime, Violence and Media
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1013 - Political Communication
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1014 - Mass Persuasion and Propaganda

  This course presents a critical analysis of the development, principles, strategies, media, techniques, and effects of propaganda campaigns from ancient civilizations to the modern technological society. The course focuses on propaganda in the context of government, religion, revolution, war, politics, and advertising, and explores implications for the future of propaganda in the cybernetic age.

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• MCC-UE 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.

  Note: This course counts under two Fields of Study: Images and Screen Studies as well as Technology and Society. It may be offered at NYU Prague. Consult with your academic advisor for course availability and description abroad.
  
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• MCC-UE 1016 - Media Audiences
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1018 - Kids in Media Culture
  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 response.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1022 - Latino Media
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1023 - East Asian Media and Popular Culture

  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1024 - Amateur Media
  This course will track the various manifestations of media amateurism over time and medium, while also exploring the theoretical concerns and cultural discourses that surround the work of amateurs and their social construction, especially in relation to notions of professionalism, community, networks, artistic practice, collectivism, and marginalization.
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1026 - Disability, Technology and Media

  In this course, we will examine the significance of technology to the definition and experience of disability; the relationship between disability and the development of new media; the politics of representation; and current debates between the fields of disability studies and media studies. Specific topics will include: biomedical technology and the establishment of norms; the category of “assistive technology”; cyborgs and prostheses as fact and as metaphor; inclusive architecture and design; visual rhetorics of disability in film and photography; staring and other practices of looking; medical and counter-medical performance; media advocacy, tactical media, and direct action.

  sample syllabus

• MCC-UE 1027 - Environmental Communication

  This course will investigate the dominant critical perspectives that have contributed to the development of Environmental Communication as a field of study. This course explores the premise that the way we communicate powerfully impacts our perceptions of the “natural” world, and that these perceptions shape the way we define our relationships to and within nature. The goal of this course is to access various conceptual frameworks for addressing questions about the relationship between the environment, culture and communication.  Students will explore topics such as nature/ wildlife tourism, consumerism, representations of the environment in popular culture and environmental activism.

  *New MCC course to run in future semesters.  

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1030 - Architecture as Media: Communication Through the Built Environment
  This class reads architecture and the built environment through the lenses of media, communication, and culture. The course takes seriously the proposition that spaces communicate meaningfully and that learning to read spatial productions leads to better understanding how material and technological designs are in sustained conversation with the social, over time. Through analyses of a range of spaces ? from Gothic Cathedrals to suburban shopping malls to homes, factories, skyscrapers and digital cities ? students will acquire a vocabulary for relating representations and practices, symbols and structures, and for identifying the ideological and aesthetic positions that produce settings for everyday life.
  
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• MCC-UE 1032 - Social Media Networking

  This course will examine “social media” from a cultural perspective, with a focus on how media technologies figure in practices of everyday life and in the construction of social relationships and identities. We will work from an expansive definition of what constitutes “social media,” considering social network sites, smartphone apps, and online games, among other technologies.  The course itself will involve communication in social media channels in addition to the traditional seminar format, thus we will be actively participating in the phenomena under study as we go.

   

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 1034 - Media, Technology and Society
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1037 - Music and Media

  This course investigates the mediation of music and music-like sounds in both private and public life. Commercial venues, from restaurants to rest rooms, pipe Muzak into its spaces; radios broadcast more music than any other content today; soundtracks imprint the texture of signifying associations for television shows and films; we carry personal playlists on mobile music players; and musical media and technologies for making music are more readily available to us on our home computers than ever before. We examine music and media from a variety of perspectives, including its cultural, sensory, technological, ideological and metaphysical dimensions; as well as the relation of music to mass media (radio, television, the internet) and the film and music industries. 

   

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 1040 - Health Media and Communication

  The meanings of health and disease are shaped not only by scientific and medical discourses, but by media, communication, and the cultures of health.  This course examines the impact of media and health cultures on what counts as normal and pathological, how medical environments are understood and experienced, popular tactics for communicating and contesting biomedical information, public understandings of biotechnology, and how media representation and popular culture help to shape understandings of disease and health. Through the topic of health, we will look at nationhood and population management, subject-formation and stigma, individual and environmental risk. At the level of language, we will question the metaphoric uses of disease and their consequences. Readings, films (and other sources) will be drawn from a variety of genres, including epidemiology, public health, anthropology, history, communication studies, and medical memoir. 

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 1065 - Media Events and Spectacle

  This course examines the role played by media events and spectacle in the shaping of belief, attitudes, and actions, with particular attention paid to the concept of the masses and its changed meaning over time. The course examines concepts of mass culture, the decentralization of cultural forms, and the rise of convergence culture. It explores the history of the media event and the theories that have shaped it, and the role of spectacle in society from the Renaissance to modern society to the age of digital media.
  
  Sample Syllabus 

• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 1140 - Screening History: The Construction of American History in Hollywood Films

  This course explores the ways in which popular Hollywood films construct the historical past, the ensuing battles among historians and the public over Hollywood?s version of American history, and the ways that such films can be utilized as historical documents themselves. We will consider films as products of the culture industry; as visions of popularly understood history and national mythology; as evidence for how social conflicts have been depicted; and as evidence of how popular understanding and interpretations of the past have been revised from earlier eras to the present.

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• MCC-UE 1150 - Media Fieldwork*
  Students earn academic credit and real world work experience through this service learning course. Open to non-majors. Departmental permission required. *Only offered at select NYU Global campuses
• MCC-UE 1151 - Media History of New York
  New York has played a crucial role in the history of media, and media have played a crucial role in the history of New York. New York has been represented by media since Henry Hudson wrote his reports to the Dutch. Media institutions have contributed centrally to its economy and social fabric, while media geographies have shaped the experiences of city living. This course explores media representations, institutions, and geographies across time and is organized around the collaborative production of an online guidebook to the media history of New York.
  
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• MCC-UE 1152 - Cultural Capital: Media and Arts in New York City

  This course explores the multi-faceted nature of New York City as a cultural and economic hub for media and the arts, arguably the cultural capital of the world. Classroom instruction is supplemented by site visits, guest lectures, and field research to develop an appreciation of the ways that media and the arts have shaped the work and leisure of life in New York City for the past one hundred years. How did New York City become such a focal point for the creative industries?  What goes on behind-the-scenes? Topics include: Time Square and live spectacle, the Broadway theatre, Madison Avenue and modern advertising, the museum of New York, galleries, artists, and the art market, the Harlem Renaissance, alternative media and Bohemian arts.  Open to majors and non-majors including special students. Letter grade, no prerequisites.

  sample syllabus

• MCC-UE 1200 - Senior Media Seminar

  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.
  
  

  Fall 2012 - JUST ANNOUNCED!

  MCC-UE 1200-001   Senior Media Seminar: PUBLIC RELATIONS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE 
  
Instructor: Rodney Benson

   

  As news organizations have laid off journalists in droves, public relations practitioners have become increasingly powerful shapers of public debate. Or so we are told: too often, PR's power is presumed rather than systematically studied. What kind of influence does PR, as practice and as industry, actually wield in the public sphere? Do PR practices tend to reinforce business or governmental power, or help social movements challenge the status quo? How do news media practices shape PR, and vice versa? What is ethical PR, and to what extent do ethical considerations guide day-to-day PR practice? What better place to study these questions than at NYU where PR "father" Edward Bernays taught the world's first university course on public relations in 1923. Course readings will include texts by Jurgen Habermas, Stuart Ewen, Pierre Bourdieu, Walter Lippmann, and others. Course assignments include a midterm examination, a team debate, and two debate "judging" essays. Note: The course is a critical theoretical and historical examination of PR, not a how-to course; however, the professor's academic training is supplemented by his professional experience as a congressional press secretary and speechwriter, political consultant, and freelance journalist, and students are encouraged to relate their work experiences to course readings and discussions. 

   

  MCC-UE 1200-002   Senior Media Seminar:  THE RACIAL WEB
  Instructor: Charlton McIlwain

  This course examines the content, sources and flow of racial discourse on the web. From social networking sites to the blogosphere, online dating sites to web-based political news and commentary – this course draws on critical race theory, theories of social influence, narrative theory and normative democratic theory to discover how race and racism are produced, reproduced and challenged in the digital space of the internet.

   

  MCC-UE 1200-003   Senior Media Seminar: CONSUMPTION, CULTURE AND IDENTITY
  Instructor:  Laura Portwood-Stacer

  This seminar offers students the opportunity to engage with theories of communication and culture through the context of consumption and contemporary consumer society. Our focus will be on the role of commodities and consumer practices in everyday life and in culture at large. We will give particular attention to consumption's role in the construction of social and cultural identities, including class status, nationality and citizenship, race and ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. We may also explore other cases according to student interest, such as religious identity, environmental activism, political affiliation, subculture membership, etc. In the concluding weeks of the course, we will consider critical responses to consumer culture, including the resistance and refusal of consumption as well as the attempted mobilization of consumption towards social change. Upon completion of the course, students will be equipped to critically evaluate messages about consumption as well as to thoughtfully participate in social, political, and economic discourses of consumption as they move into careers in the communication field. 

   

  MCC-UE 1200-004   Senior Media Seminar: DYSTOPIA
  Instructor:  Mark Crispin Miller 

  The purpose of this course is to study certain classics in the genre of dystopian fiction (including cinema)—works that envision or propose a dark alternative reality in some imaginary future time. We will consider how these works illuminate the worlds in which they each were written, and also how (or if) they shed light on the world we live in now.

  Our reading will include E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," Jack London'sThe Iron Heel, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We,  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, among other works.

   

  MCC-UE 1200-005   Senior Media Seminar:  Topic To Be Determined by June 1st 
  Instructor:  New Faculty/Visiting Faculty
   

  MCC-UE 1200-006   Senior Media Seminar: MEDIA AND THE FUTURE
  Instructor: Arvind Rajagopal

  Most scholars agree that the modern era saw drastic changes in prevailing conceptions of time, and these changes have been influential across the world. Instead of thinking of the past as a golden age, and the future as divinely ordained catastrophe, early modern thinkers began to see the future as open-ended and subject to human will, as perfectible and continuously improving upon the past. Whether as stone tablets or as the printing press, successive media technologies have been means to envision the future, and with new media it often seems that they are themselves the future being envisioned, until the next new media arrive. Rather than assume progress in media leads to future progress as such,  students will research the history of one communications medium, for a selected period, to show how variously the relationship between technology and time has been, and can be, conceived. Readings will be designed to assist in preparing students for their research projects, and to conduct discussions on relevant questions.

  Winter Intersession 2012

  MCC-UE 1200.001 Hollywood and History: Myths of American Innocence and Masculinity in Crisis 
  Instructor:  Brett Gary
  In the 20^th century Hollywood’s studio films were undoubtedly the most powerful medium for producing a collective understanding about the American past, and hence about American mythologies – especially myths of American innocence and myths of undaunted manhood. This course will examine the formation of those two interrelated “myths,” and then explore how, in post-WWII feature films, we’ve seen a seismic shift in the protagonists of our films, from heroic and courageous men, to damaged, unsteady, and ill-equipped men, and how this might correspond with a simultaneous puncturing of the myths of American innocence, a fragmenting of the narrative of  shared national purpose, and even optimism about present and the future.  What are the social, cultural, and historical factors resulting in these “crises” of masculinity and national mythologies?  To explore this topic, we will read fiction, consider the work of historians, sociologists, film critics, media studies scholars, anthropologists, journalists, and others.  And will we examine a number of films, possibly including:  “On the Waterfront,” “High Noon,” “Twelve Angry Men,” “Best Years of Our Lives,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Taxi Driver,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Coming Home,” “Falling Down,” “Do the Right Thing,” “The Messenger,” and “In the Valley of Elah.”

  Spring 2012

  MCC-UE 1200.001 Structures of Feeling
  Instructor:  Ben Kafka
  Feelings are both deeply personal and widely shared. We think of them as all our own, yet our experiences and expressions of them are mediated by any number of cultural habits and codes. This course will investigate structures of feeling through the close, careful reading of texts in art, literature, and philosophy, with an emphasis on recent contributions of Marxism, feminism, and psychoanalysis.  PLEASE NOTE:  OPEN ONLY TO THOSE MCCU SENIORS THAT HAVE TAKEN MCC-UE 1009 "Psychoanalysis: Desire and Culture" or with faculty permission.  ACCESS CODE REQUIRED.  CONTACT Jillian Sullivan at jek9@nyu.edu.  

  MCC-UE 1200.002 The Legacy of Neil Postman
  Instructor:  Terry Moran
  This course is a critical exploration and analysis of the work of Neil Postman in three conceptual domains that formed the foundations of his work – language, education, and media/technology of communication. We will study the man and his work by examining key texts and critiques of these texts. Our central task will be to engage in individual critical thinking and group discussion of Postman’s role in shaping studies in Media, Culture, and Communication.

  MCC-UE 1200.003 Faking It: Cheats, Hacks, Hoaxes, and other Untruths in New Media
  Instructor:  Liel Liebovitz
  We live in the age of the hoax. A major movie star grows a beard and pretends to be a rapper. Millions of
  people cheat on video games, thousands spread false reports of celebrity deaths on Twitter. Why the
  sudden abundance of disinformation? And what, if anything, do our media have to do with it? Looking at
  diverse sources—from made-up memoirs to bogus Facebook pages—this class will examine the shifting
  perceptions of truth in the age of new media, the culture of disingenuousness, and its implications on all
  aspects of society.

  MCC-UE 1200.004 Contemporary U.S. Latino/a Popular Culture
  Instructor:  Juan Pinon
  This course examines the rising visibility of Latinas/os in contemporary U.S. popular culture. Students will look critically at the media interest in this population and will discuss how Latina/os emerged as mass media icons across different cultural realms such as sports, music, theater, television and film. Yet, while corporate America has paid attention to figures such as Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, America Ferrera, Jimmy Smits, Michele Rodriguez, George Lopez, Jennifer Lopez, Alex Rodriguez, Selena Gomez, Oscar de la Hoya, Salma Hayek, and Eva Mendez, making them familiar to audiences around the world, many Latina/os in the U.S. continue to struggle both economically and socially. This class will reveal both the commodified and global Latinidad and students will explore notions of commercial success, manufactured visibility, cultural citizenship and civil rights as strategies of empowerment to Latina/os. 

  MCC-UE 1200.005 Media and the Future
  Instructor:  Arvind Rajagopal
  Most scholars agree that the modern era saw drastic changes in prevailing conceptions of time, and these changes have been influential across the world. Instead of thinking of the past as a golden age, and the future as divinely ordained catastrophe, early modern thinkers began to see the future as open-ended and subject to human will, as perfectible and continuously improving upon the past. Whether as stone tablets or as the printing press, successive media technologies have been means to envision the future, and with new media it often seems that they are themselves the future being envisioned, until the next new media arrive. Rather than assume progress in media leads to future progress as such,  students will research the history of one communications medium, for a selected period, to show how variously the relationship between technology and time has been, and can be, conceived. Readings will be designed to assist in preparing students for their research projects, and to conduct discussions on relevant questions.

  Summer 2012 - JUST ANNOUNCED!  

  MCC-UE 1200.001 Film Classics of Propaganda
  An examination of classics of film propaganda in terms of their aesthetic qualities and the techniques of persuasion used in these films in an attempt to distinguish between communication and propaganda, art and propaganda, information and propaganda, education and propaganda. 

   

   

  
  

  
  

• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1303 - Privacy and Media Technology
  Few values have been as unalterably disturbed as privacy by developments in new media and other information technologies. This course presents an inquiry into the impact of information and digital communications technologies upon privacy and its meanings, in order to examine at a deep level technology?s place in society and the complex ways that technology and privacy each shape the other in iterative cycles of cause and effect. Philosophical analysis is balanced with significant contributions by legal scholars, computer scientists, social scientists, and popular social critics.
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 1306 - Transnational Media Flows
  This class examines the intersecting dynamics of media genres and geo-linguistic cultural markets in the configuration of global and regional media flows. It looks in particular at the way media genres travel and how their circulation raises issues about the cultural power of certain media narratives in specific historical, political and social conditions of consumption. We will examine the battle for national, regional, and global media markets as a struggle for the ?legitimate? cultural and political view of the world expressed through information (news), scientific discourse (documentaries), and popular culture (films, telenovelas, reality television, music) to understand the complex global flow of television programs and films.
• MCC-UE 1310 - Culture and Media in Urban China

  What does it mean to be “urban” in China and how is Chinese urbanism mediated by new cultural formations? In this course we will examine the culture and media that define city life in China, including Chinese state and popular media, television and film, music, fashion, verbal art and literature (in print and online) and visual art. We will focus on the period from the building booms of the mid-to-late nineties to the present. Students will work in teams to make presentations on urban culture, and use primary sources in translation and secondary sources to write individual essays. Chinese language ability appreciated but by no means required. 

  *This course will run as a Global Honors Seminar in Fall 2012  and will have an additional travel component in the January 2012 term.  Students must apply for the program.  Contact comm.advisors@nyu.edu for more information.  

  Sample Syllabus 

• MCC-UE 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. [Also offerred in Tel Aviv as MCC-UE 9340 - Religion and Media]
  
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• MCC-UE 1341 - Islam, Media and the West
  This course examines contemporary media in (primarily Arab parts of) the Middle East and the US and their relationship to the perceived rift between Islam and the West. Readings and media examples focus on the politics of culture, religion, modernity, and national identity as they shape and intersect with contemporary geopolitical events, cultural formations and media globalization.
  
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• MCC-UE 1342 - Sounds In and Out of Africa
  This course investigates cultural influence and exchange between Africa, the African diaspora, Europe, and America with a particular emphasis on sound and music. How has the sound of Africa been transcribed, recorded, stored, transported, and represented in the West? What can this tell us about global cultural flow? How do specific recording techniques articulate with global music markets? The course analyzes the transatlantic feedback between Africa, America and Europe; evaluates the politics of transcription, ethnographic description, and recording; and examines the changing role for traditional African music in a global world.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
  Note: This course counts under two Fields of Study: Images and Screen Studies as well as Interaction and Social Processes. The course may be offered at NYU Paris. Consult with your academic advisor for course availability and description abroad.
  
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• MCC-UE 1347 - Culture of the Screen: From the Cinematic to the Handheld
  Whether large, small, wide, high-definition, public, personal, shared, or handheld, screens are one of the most pervasive technologies in everyday life. From spaces of work to spaces of leisure, screens are sites for collaboration, performance, surveillance, and resistance. This course traces the cultural history of screens through a range of forms -- from the panorama to the cinema, from the radar system to the television, and from the terminal to the mobile device -- to provide a way of thinking about the development of the screen as simultaneously architectural, material, representational and computational.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 1352 - Empire, Revolution and Media
  This course examines the role of media in the history and emergence of empires and revolutions and the history of media empires. It focuses on the investment in media forces by both empires and revolutions, and the tendency of media to form empires that are subject to periodic revolution? in the marketplace within the contexts of colonization, decolonization and globalization. Media discussed include prints, paintings, photography, journalism, fiction, cinema, the Internet and digital media.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.

  Note: This course counts under one Field of Study: Global and Transcultural Communication. The course may be offered at NYU London. Consult with your academic advisor for course availability and description abroad. 

  * As of Spring 2012, this course will be offered as MCC-UE 9400 "Culture, Media and Globalization." 

• MCC-UE 1401 - Global Cultures and Identities
  Note: This course will replace E59.1735 Intercultural Communication in the Fall 2010 semester. If you have taken Intercultural Communication you should not take this course. 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.
• MCC-UE 1402 - Marxism and Culture
  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.
• MCC-UE 1403 - Postcolonial Visual Culture
  This courses addresses how colonialism and postcolonialism are shaped and mediated through images and the gaze. The dynamics of colonial history motivate and shape colonial and postcolonial perceptions and influence their patterns of global circulation when the boundary between the world out there and the nation at home is increasingly blurred. We will survey a range of image texts through various media (photography, television, cinema) and sites (war, the harem, refugee camps, prisons, disasters): nationalist mobilization, counter-insurgency, urban conflict, disaster management, the prison system, and the war on terror.
  
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• MCC-UE 1404 - Media and the Culture of Money

  This course examines the culture of money and finance, and the role of the media and popular culture in making sense of economics.  It engages with the ways that money, finance, and economics are shaped in part through media representations, that finance is not simply a system but also a culture, and that capitalism shapes world views.  The course examines the history of ways of thinking about money, the centrality of financial markets in 20^th-21^st century globalization, and the examination of financial systems in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. Students will explore the role of money media in shaping attitudes toward consumerism, financial decisions, and finance systems. 

   

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 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.

  View sample syllabus 

   

   

• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1408 - Queer Identity and Popular Culture

  In this course, we will explore queerness as identity, practice, theory, and politics, all through the lens of popular culture. Our approach will be grounded in theories, methods, and texts of communication and media studies, thus it will serve as a complement to other queer theory and culture courses offered across the university. Readings will include both theoretical texts and case studies both historical and contemporary. Students will complete the course with a critical understanding of what it means to be and “do” queer in contemporary culture. Students will also be equipped to bring queer analytical tools to their everyday and professional encounters with popular culture.

   

  Sample Syllabus

• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1411 - Visual Culture of Science and Technology
  This course examines the imagery of science and technology, the role of visuality in the construction of scientific knowledge, artistic renditions of science, and the emergence of visual technologies in modern society. It looks at how visuality has been key to the exercise of power through such practices as cataloguing and identification; the designation of abnormality, disease, and pathologies; medical diagnosis; scientific experimentation; and the marketing of science and medicine. We will examine the development of the visual technologies in the emerging scientific practices of psychiatry and criminology; explore the sciences of eugenics, genetics, pharmacology, brain and body scans, and digital medical images of many kinds; the marketing of pharmaceuticals, and the emerging politics of scientific activism.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.

  Note: The courses listed below count under one Field of Study: Global and Transcultural Communication.

  E59.1451 Global Media Seminar: Media in China
  Counts toward Global and Transcultural Field of Study

  This course is designed to introduce contemporary media industries in China, involving print, broadcasting, film, PR, advertising, and new media. This course reviews the structures, functions, and influences of various forms of media industries. Practical media work is emphasized. Additionally, it analyzes existing issues on these media industries from historical, regulatory, social, and technological perspectives. (Offered in Shanghai)

  E59.1452 Global Media Seminar: Television & Democracy in Italy
  Counts toward Global and Transcultural Field of Study
  Sample Syllabus

  The goal of this course is to present a thorough historical survey of fifty years of television in Italy, with a special emphasis on the relation between television broadcasting and democratic politics. The course will be structured in four parts: the early days of television in Italy, characterized by the monopoly of RAI and the political influence of the Christian Democrats; the political conflicts and policy-making choices of the 70s; the so-called “far west” of commercial broadcasting and the birth of the duopoly during the 80s; the change of political landscape during the 90s and the years 2000, with the increasing competition between RAI and Mediaset, the conflicts of interest of Berlusconi and the advent of pay per view and digital terrestrial television. Conducted in English. (Offered in Florence)

  E59.1453 Global Media Seminar: Post Communist Media Systems
  Counts toward Global and Transcultural Field of Study

  The idea of the course is to inform students about European media in general, and about transformation of the Czech media after the Velvet revolution in 1989 in particular. Czech developments will be presented on the background of a wider European perspective in order to make students acquainted with the basic features of European landscape of print and electronic media. Due to the lack of literature and printed sources in English language on the subject, the course will extensively exploit internet sources related to the topics. (Offered in Prague)

  E59.1454 Global Media Seminar: France and Europe
  Counts toward Global and Transcultural Field of Study

  This course introduces students to the basic structures and practices of media in Europe and their relationship to everyday social life. It pays special attention to the common models and idioms of media in Europe, with an emphasis on national and regional variations. Specific case studies highlight current trends in the production, distribution, consumption, and regulation of media. Topics may include: national or regional idioms in a range of media genres, from entertainment, to advertising and publicity, to news and information; legal norms regarding content and freedom of expression; pirate and independent media; and innovations and emerging practices in digital media. Conducted in English. (Offered in Paris)

• MCC-UE 1508 - Print: History and Form
  An overview of the history and cultures of print. Examines typographic communication and the persuasive power of print. Topics include the print 'revolution'' in early modern Europe, printedness and the public sphere, as well as contemporary relationships between print and digital media. How are digital media making it possible to see new things about print? What can e-books tell us about books?
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1571 - The Rise of Internet Media
  This course examines the emergence of the Internet as a commercial business. It pays particular attention to the various business models and practices employed in media-related enterprises, tracing their development from the late 1990s to the most recent strategies and trends. Case studies include the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), portals, search engines, early game platforms, the Internet presence of traditional media organizations, social network platforms. Trade and industry publications, corporate reports, and industry surveys are integral to course preparation. Guest speakers from the industry will make regular appearances.
• MCC-UE 1700 - Gender and Communication
  This course explores the ways people create, maintain, and augment the meaning of gender, developing insight into understanding gender ideology and the media representation of gender. The course examines how ideas about gender shape our communication practices, and how our practices of communication produce gender.
  
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• MCC-UE 1717 - Listening: Noise, Sound and Music
  This course examines theories, technologies, and practices of listening in the modern world. How has our experience of sound changed as we move from the piano to the personal computer, from the phonoautograph to the mp3? How have political, commercial, and cultural forces shaped what we are able to listen to, and how we listen to it? Finally, how have performers, physiologists, and philosophers worked to understand this radical transformation of the senses?
  
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• MCC-UE 1725 - Business and Professional Communication
  An exploration of the oral and written communication dimensions that exist within professional frameworks. Topics include technology and communication, the interview, group and individual presentations, and defining the professional environment.
• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 1750 - Public Relations: Theory and Process
  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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1755 - Public Relations: Principles and Practices
  Focuses on techniques of communication in public relations including creation of press releases, press packets and kits, and developing public relations campaigns.
  
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• MCC-UE 1760 - Innovations in Marketing (Section 001)

  Fall 2012

  MCC-UE 1760.001 Marketing, Television, Film and Other Media

  *Note: This course is being offered with two distinct themes for Fall 2012. This is Section .001. 

  This course is being offered with two distinct themes for Fall 2011. This class takes an in-depth look at the craft of marketing television, film, and internet content and brands. Students will compare and contrast successful and less successful campaigns, and learn about targeting messaging to both consumers and business partners, including advertisers and distributors. Students will get hands-on experience creating a comprehensive and strategic marketing plan to develop a creative campaign for the media property of his or her choice. Guest speakers will include marketing leaders from the entertainment and publishing community, who will give first-hand accounts of what it takes to break through with an effective campaign and create a major hit. Students will gain a thorough understanding of what it takes to develop, execute and measure the success of a creative marketing campaign.

   

  Spring 2012

  MCC-UE 1760.001 Media Strategy, Engaging in the New Landscape

  *Note: This course is being offered with two distinct themes for Spring 2012. This is Section .001. 
  
  This course examines the challenges associated with engaging consumers in the quickly evolving media landscape and prepares students to address these challenges with proactive and innovative media solutions.  The course begins by grounding students in the media fundamentals essential to a student’s media knowledge foundation and then spends the majority of the semester exploring how marketers can create lasting brand-to-consumer connections through increased media and “advertising” effectiveness.  The course explores the need for the industry to shift from traditional media planning to more breakthrough approaches to media strategy and consumer engagement.  Innovative uses of “traditional” media as well as ground-breaking strategies leveraging emerging media are covered, primarily through real-life case examples and through dialogues with select guest speakers who are true media, entertainment and content “leaders of industry.”  Students will leave the class with a strong theoretical and practical understanding of how media strategies can be developed and implemented so that marketers can more effectively connect with and engage their consumers.     

• MCC-UE 1760 - Innovations in Marketing (Section 002)

  Fall 2012

  MCC-UE 1760.002  Putting the Social back in Social Media Marketing

  *Note: This course is being offered with two distinct themes for Spring 2012. This is Section .002. 
  

  Today, social media has become a powerful and persuasive advertising medium. This course will explore how advocacy is created at the intersection of traditional digital media and social marketing, surveying a wide variety of digital advocacy, branded and user-generated content, from campaigns by brands and activist groups alike. Students will come to understand how these campaigns are devised, including "social media governance"--the rules that make these campaigns possible. We will debate the issues that arise around brands use of "cause" in social media as well. Throughout the course students will have the opportunity to apply their learning to a campaign assignment. This course will be very hands-on, as students will be expected to use social media in weekly assignments in addition to reading assignments.

  
  Spring 2012

  MCC-UE 1760.002  Putting the Social back in Social Media Marketing

  *Note: This course is being offered with two distinct themes for Spring 2012. This is Section .002. 
  

  Today, social media has become a powerful and persuasive advertising medium. This course will explore how advocacy is created at the intersection of traditional digital media and social marketing, surveying a wide variety of digital advocacy, branded and user-generated content, from campaigns by brands and activist groups alike. Students will come to understand how these campaigns are devised, including "social media governance"--the rules that make these campaigns possible. We will debate the issues that arise around brands use of "cause" in social media as well. Throughout the course students will have the opportunity to apply their learning to a campaign assignment. This course will be very hands-on, as students will be expected to use social media in weekly assignments in addition to reading assignments.

• MCC-UE 1775 - Advertising and Marketing
  An introduction to the professions of marketing, promotion, and advertising, with an emphasis on industry structure, branding, integrated marketing communication, effective techniques, and changing communication strategies.
  
  Note: This elective course may be offered at NYU Shanghai. Consult with your academic advisor for course availability and description abroad.
• MCC-UE 1780 - Advertising Campaigns
  This course teaches students who have a basic understanding of advertising techniques how to develop a complete advertising campaign across a range of media for a product, service, or nonprofit organization.
• MCC-UE 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.
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1808 - Persuasion
  Analysis of factors inherent in the persuasive process examination and application of these factors in presentations.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 1821 - Media Policy and Regulation
  This course examines the relationship between public policy and media. It concentrates on the way legislative acts and regulatory instruments, such as the Federal Communications Commission, influence the structure and operation of media according to the norms and values that are set through the political process. Case studies include broadcasting and telecommunications policy, the regulation of media content, and governance of the Internet.
• MCC-UE 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.
  
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• MCC-UE 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.
• More...