Courses

This course explores how food traditions and heritage are identified, supported, and promoted at national and global levels, and examines their role and functions in Spaniards’ everyday life. Through visits to markets, bakeries, wholesale and retail outlets, tapas and wine bars, restaurants, and menu del día eateries we examine how tradition and heritage are brought into the 21st century in public spaces that are also symbolic for local and national identities. Food professionals and experts, designers and scholars help us understand the dynamics of this unique country.

This master's level course explores the food and foodways of the culturally and historically rich culinary landscape of Mexico. In the city of Puebla, which is considered to be the birthplace of modern Mexican cusine, students will be fully immersed in traditional Mexican culinary and nutritional practices though classroom instruction, guest, lectures, cooking classes, and a wide variety of field trips to markets, local farms, restaurants, and production sites.

In Shanghai, food stalls, restaurants and marketplaces have migrated online. The Coronavirus pandemic intensified this virtualization. This course treats mobile food delivery as a media infrastructure and examines how new delivery systems form part of a distributed urban ecosystem. Students use critical cartography and digital storytelling to explore cultural, economic and political issues raised by the growth of food delivery apps, such as food production reorganization, socio-economic conditions of delivery workers, and shifts in the city's built environment.

We explore the performance of French identity through the lens of food to unpack how gender, race, socioeconomic status, and immigration clash with the espoused French national ideal of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”. Through visits to markets, restaurants, bakeries, wholesale and retail outlets, farms, and cooperatives, we explore the material culture that makes possible acquiescence and resistance to these ideas of identity and ultimately will discover the limits and possibilities implicit in our own personal ideals.

This course is an interdisciplinary and intercultural examination of human communication through food in Shanghai. Explores the social, economic, political, and cultural ramifications of food production and consumption. Students will have a unique opportunity to explore various local, regional and transnational, and food rituals.

Designed for BFA (Studio Art) students, this course is an introduction to the global history of art, exploring the meanings associated with “art.” The class is a series of linked test cases involving specific art objects & the context of their creation. By working closely with a range of materials –– art history & theory, artist’s writings, & documentary film –– we will survey how artists have contributed to the history of art and question how this history matters for contemporary artists.

Explores world history through demographic and technological change, urbanization, nomadic invasions, cross-cultural interactions, empires, and major religious and philosophical world views. Provides broad framework though which to approach teaching and learning of world history: Seeing global patterns and processes over time and space while connecting local developments to global ones; comparing within and among societies; analyzing multiple perspectives of peoples and major debates among historians; exploring persistent relevance of world history to contemporary developments.

This course examines public policy issues and institutions of media governance at the international level. It provides an 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 regulation of broadcasting, telecommunications, the Internet, and trade in media products. Special attention will be paid to current debates within multilateral bodies such as UNESCO, the WTO, and the International Telecommunication Union.

Specifically for students in the Global Media Scholars program, this course is the required culminating
experience taken in the senior year, alongside a travel component during the January term. Course topics reflect
faculty research interests, offering students a chance to explore emerging issues in the field of media studies, and
will be site-specific based on the country chosen for January travel.

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 'Slegitimate' cultural and political view of the world expressed through information (news), scientific discourse (documentaries), and popular culture (films, tele novels, reality television, music) to understand the complex global flow of television programs and films.

With an emphasis on British and European news and journalism, this course explores globalization
from a wide range of theoretical frameworks including political economy, cultural analysis, theories of
representation, and critical race and postcolonial studies. It considers how technologies, diasporic and
transnational communities, and international institutions impact global communications, and how these networks
and organizations are challenging, re-imagining and re-shaping social, cultural and geographic boundaries via
mediated discourse.

This course aims to bring together diverse issues and perspectives in the rapidly evolving and changing area of international/global communication. Through a historical perspective, a framework will be established for the appreciation of the development of the immense scope, disparity, and complexity of this rapidly evolving field. Students will be encouraged to critically assess shifts in national, regional, and international media patterns of production, distribution, and consumption over time, leading to a critical analysis of the tumultuous contemporary global communication environment. Essential concepts of international communication will be examined, including trends in national and global media consolidation, cultural implications of globalization, international broadcasting, information flows, international communication law and regulation, and trends in communication and information technologies. The focus of the course will be international, with attention being paid both to Western-based multimedia conglomerates, as well as to the increasing global prominence of media corporations based in other regions, contributing to the reversal of international media flows and challenging the global hegemony of the Western media producers. Particular emphasis will be on the Czech Republic, as an empirical example of a national media system affected by global media flows.

Using a historical perspective, the course aims to acquaint students with Latin American theories, practices and representations of the media. Departing from a critical approach to Habermas theory of the public sphere, the course will trace the arc of the media in Latin America since independence to the incumbent post-neoliberal area and the so-called “Media Wars”. Given that Argentina is facing an extraordinary conflict between the government and the Clarín media conglomerate (the largest of its kind in Latin America), the students will engage in the current incendiary debates about the role of the media, the new media law and the complex relationship between the media, politics and the state.

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 highlite current rends in the production, distribution, consumption, and regulation of media. Topics may include: national and 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.

The course on “Media, Activism & Democracy” aims at, first, introducing students to the complex and fascinating topic of civil society activism; second, at illustrating them the linkages between activism and media; third, at showing them the impact of civil society’s advocacy on contemporary political systems. In a nutshell, the course aims at providing students with a closer understanding of the civil society activism-media-politics conundrums at the national and global levels.

In this seminar- based subject, students will discuss the latest global
media developments in the context of key theoretical frameworks. Central
topics include: the increasing disruption of established information flows;
challenges facing the fourth estate and democracy itself; the role of soft
power and popular culture; trust in journalism and traditional media;
the rise of social platforms as near-sovereign technocracies; gender and
diversity biases in media and emerging media tech; ethics and regulation;
the proliferation of fake news and
deep fakes; the potential erosion of privacy; the emergence of citizen
journalism; the phenomenon of cancel culture; the influence of hacktivism
and digital activism; inequality after #metoo and #blacklivesmatter; the
emerging architectures of the metaverse and VR/AR; advancements in Web 3.0
and blockchain; as well as the suite of emerging implications resulting
from generative AI, including the intensifying and sometimes intimate
relationships between humans and machines. The focus will be international,
with an emphasis on Australia. Ultimately, the course will examine the ways
in which global communication is undergoing a ceaseless paradigm shift.

Examination of current global music management issues. Topics include international market research, selection of international target markets, planning & decision-making, how to utilize the global reach of the Internet, how to measure & predict global music trends, & cultural diversity issues in the music industry

Global Music Trend Analysis provides undergraduate students abroad with the opportunity to conduct primary & secondary research about the music industry in their local country, compare their findings with students concurrently in different locations, research business expansion into their local country, & propose an international expansion plan to a music company.

A study abroad course program that examines the higher education system of Germany in comparison to the US and other countries. Germany now provides strong leadership in Europe in terms of economic growth and leadership of the European Union; less known is its robust system and diversified system of universities and its commitment to internationalization. Through visits to universities, policy organizations, and government planning agencies, students will have the opportunity to meet with rectors, faculty, researchers, and students themselves. Our goals will be to understand the opportunity structures for all groups in the country, including the large immigrant populations.

Examines globalization and higher education in Brazil with comparison to the United States through an historical overview and an analysis of contemporary issues. Students will gain an understanding of the variety of higher education institutions in Brazil (large/small, public/private/religious, etc.) and will become familiar with issues of equity and access, internationalization in higher education, faculty and student mobility, variation among public versus private universities economic structures, the role of foreign university partnerships, and other higher education issues. Visits to public and private universities and colleges in Brazil allow students to engage in discussions with directors, faculty members, deans and students.