Courses

Master's thesis preparation and presentation class. The class will cover academic writing, research methods, testing with human subjects, data analysis, oral presentation techniques, and feature class discussions about published papers and theses. It will conclude with an oral thesis defense required of all graduating master's students.

This course serves as the first-semester master’s thesis research and writing class. It covers research methods, testing with human subjects, data analysis, and academic writing. Students are expected to complete the major pre-writing work on their projects by the end of the semester.

This course serves as the master’s thesis writing and presentation class. It covers academic writing and oral presentation techniques, and features class discussions about published papers and theses. It concludes with an oral thesis defense required of all graduating master’s students

This course focuses on further developing a body of work for exhibition & a correlating written thesis. Students work closely with a leading artist, writer, or critic to develop a narrative context for their thesis & final exhibition.

Students develop detailed proposals for their thesis research, obtain IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval (when applicable) and commence thesis work.

This seminar supports students in developing, researching and writing their
Master’s thesis. The purpose of the Master’s thesis is to facilitate the integration of theory and practice in drama therapy and to provide a foundation from which students are able to articulate their interests in the field. This seminar was designed to clarify the scope, options, and timeline associated with the thesis project and to facilitate successful completion.

This course introduces students to the purposes, theories, & methods of a family of approaches to social science research variously called ethnographic, qualitative, case study, naturalistic, or interpretive. Throughout this course, we will draw on resources in anthropology & sociology to explore issues that are central to understanding the epistemology & methodology of interpretive inquiry. The purposes of this course are to: (a) examine the nature, purposes, theories, & methods of qualitative inquiry; (b) introduce several approaches to qualitative inquiry; & (c) learn how to assess the quality & trustworthiness of qualitative inquiry.

This course examines Tonmeister theories & techniques related to recording acoustic music in concert hall settings. Students will sharpen their recording skills with class lectures & live recording sessions. Producing classical music is the primary focus, however other acoustic music genres including jazz, world, & folk will be examined. Topics include spot and stereo microphone technique, concert hall acoustics, & record production.

Course examines advanced Tonmeister music production theories & techniques related to recording acoustic music for playback on immersive sound systems. Students will sharpen their recording skills through class lectures & live recording sessions. Topics include surround sound (Dolby 5.1), surround with height channels (Auro-3D), wave field synthesis (WFS), immersive audio, & object based systems (Dolby ATMOS).

Focus on particular topics allows students to broaden skills and expression. Topics vary from semester to semester and are chosen as a result of both faculty and student interest.

Focus on particular topics allows students to broaden skills and expression. Topics vary from semester to semester and are chosen as a result of both faculty and student interest.

Focus on particular topics allows students to broaden skills and expression. Topics vary from semester to semester and are chosen as a result of both faculty and student interest.

Focus on a particular topic allows students to broaden skills and expression. Past topics have included animation, 3-D modeling, interactive design, digital printing in large format, and advanced PhotoShop. Topics are chosen as a result of faculty and student interest.

Designed for current theoretical research in digital media. It is expected that course themes will vary to reflect debates in the field. Topics may include the following: computers and pedagogy: on-line communities; on-line publishing; the cultural history of software; video games studies.

This seminar will introduce students to the range of recent materialist research, while at the same time maintaining a skepticism about claims of the "newness" of this approach and the coherence or unity of the "material turn" in social theory. While including materialist media theory, the course will also focus on the elemental aspects of digital media "from codes and circuits to power generation and storage" in order to assess the usefulness of materialist and infrastructural analytics for understanding contemporary media systems.

As our society becomes increasingly "datified", algorithms are capable of penetrating and reconfiguring our daily experience to an unprecedented extent. This course takes a critical approach to data analytics and practices to better understand the connections between emerging socio-technical systems and cultural transformations. It provides the knowledge foundation and conceptual sensitivity for comprehending the ongoing "algorithmic turn" of our culture.

Artificial intelligence research has always been accompanied by optimistic claims about what computers can do and critiques exposing what they can't. This course tracks the historical and philosophical frameworks of such controversies. Through case studies, the seminar examines the development of AI programs and critical reflections on them. It focuses on the intersection among theories of subjectivity and the project of building intelligent artifacts. The course ends by investigating recent theoretical discussions of algorithmic processes and instrumental reason.

A critical, humanities-based exploration of games, focusing largely on digital gaming. First half of semester explores foundational texts and topics within game studies (narratology vs. ludology, play culture, gender and gaming), while second half covers recently published scholarship in the field.

This class will study hacking by looking at technology (what hackers do), politics and law (how hackers changed both), and society (how hackers are understood). We will study cryptography and privacy, digital infrastructure, the Internet of (hackable) Things, monetization and industry, whistleblowing, reverse engineering and hardware analysis, hacker ethics, free and open source information, the rise of state-sponsored hacking, and social media manipulation. The class will cover technical topics but assumes no prior technical knowledge by the students.

Platforms are instrumental in mediating a wide range of phenomena, including social interaction, economic transactions, resource access, information circulation, cultural experiences, and more. Their ubiquity in everyday life is documented in concepts of platformization and platform capitalism and an emerging discipline of platform studies. This course explores the metaphors, histories, logics, and materialities of platforms. Through lenses of media studies, political economy, and anthropology, students investigate the implications of platforms in contemporary life.