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 delves into the intersection of food, art, and ethics, exploring how art
can challenge and expand our understanding of ethical issues related to food. Examining a diverse array of artistic expressions reveals how artists use food to encourage, critique, or re-imagine existing power structures and social, economic, environmental, and political dynamics. We critically explore how art can shape belief systems, values, and actions, and offer creative possibilities of how people might live.

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 art students, this lecture course spans a range of histories from across the globe and challenges how we view, understand, and approach concepts of time, globality, and history. We examine canons, works, and phenomena traditionally excluded from art history focusing on key concepts like image, space, material, text, and ritual in artistic practice. Weekly studies of diverse objects and practices explore cultural, historical, and social contexts that shape art. Draws on multiple disciplines, aiming to connect historical periods with contemporary art.

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 paid to current and emerging debates.

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 are site-specific based on the country chosen for January travel.

This class examines how televised media genres travel and circulate in specific historical, political and social conditions of consumption. We 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, soap operas, 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.

The course addresses issues and perspectives in global communication, a rapidly evolving field. Students critically assess shifts in national, regional, and international media patterns of production, distribution, and consumption over time, and critically analyze the tumultuous contemporary global communication environment. Topics include national and global media consolidation, cultural implications of globalization, international broadcasting, information flows, law and regulation, and emerging technologies. The focus of the course is international.

The course acquaints students with Latin American theories, practices, and representations of the media. Departing from a critical approach to Habermas's theory of the public sphere, the course traces the arc of the media in Latin America from independence to the post-neoliberal era and the so-called “Media Wars.” Students engage in current incendiary debates about the role of the media, the new media law, and the complex relationship between the media, politics and the state.

The course introduces students to the basic structures and practices of media in Europe and their relationship to everyday social life. Specific case studies highlight current trends in the production, distribution, consumption, and regulation of media. Topics 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.

This seminar addresses global media developments in the context of key theoretical frameworks. Topics include: the disruption of information flows; challenges to democracy; distrust in journalism; the rise of social platforms; gender and diversity biases; ethics and regulation; fake news and deep fakes; the erosion of privacy; citizen journalism; cancel culture; hacktivism and digital activism; #metoo and #blacklivesmatter; the metaverse and VR/AR; Web 3.0 and blockchain; and generative AI. The focus is international, with an emphasis on Australia.

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.