Courses

This course investigates the mediation of music & music-like sounds in both private & public life. Commercial venues, from restaurants to rest rooms, pipe Muzakl into its spaces; radios broadcast more music than any other content today; soundtracks imprint the texture of signifying associations for television shows & films; we carry personal playlists on mobile music players; & musical media & technological, ideological & metaphysical dimension; as well as the relation of music to mass media (radio, television, the internet) & the film and music industries.

Cultural meanings of health and disease are shaped not only by scientific and medical discourses but also by media and communication technologies. This course examines the role of media – from scientific instruments to public health campaigns to data visualization – in shaping what counts as normal and pathological; governmental logics of care, public understanding of biotechnology; and individual and collective contestations of biomedical knowledge. Readings are drawn from anthropology, history, science & technology studies, communication studies, and medical memoir.

This course investigates the ways human & natural environments have been shaped by media representations & technologies, extending from newspapers, photography, & popular literature, to film, television, & video games. Integrating eco-cinema, eco-criticism, environmental communication, & environmental studies, the course explores how environments are represented in visual media through different historical & social contexts, beginning with the rise of landscape photography, scientific representations of nature, & “fictional” wildlife films, to environmental media works in the 1960s to the role of contemporary interactive & “recycling” based aesthetics.

The course investigates dominant critical perspectives within the field of Environmental Communication, the premise of which is 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 nature. We access various conceptual frameworks for addressing questions of environment, culture, and communication. Students explore topics such as nature/wildlife tourism, consumerism, representations of the environment in popular culture, and environmental activism.

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.

This course explores media in and about the Middle East and North Africa, focusing primarily on contemporary media cultures across Arab nations and communities. Students examine how news, film, music, digital media, and other cultural forms shape and contest representations of and within the region. Topics include cultural politics, state power and popular resistance, war and violence, memory, identity, and the relationship between media and contemporary geopolitical events.

Explores theoretical, methodological, and archival strategies for research on early or obsolete media artifacts. This seminar functions as an ongoing research studio while discussing central texts in the field of media archaeology.

An examination of the great debate concerning the effects of mass media and mass communication on our society. Analysis and application of major perspectives and approaches used in formulating modern theories of mass communication.

An examination of the great debate concerning the effects of mass media and mass communication on our society. Analysis and application of major perspectives and approaches used in formulating modern theories of mass communication.

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.

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

New York has played a crucial role in the history of media, and media have placed 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.

This class is designed to equip MCC students with the ability to translate their academic background in media and cultural analysis into a career working within a facet of the media industry and to expose them to the latest industry practices from a master media practitioner. Students are guided by an alumni instructor to make
connections between their academic coursework and current industry practice with the goal to help them understand the media industry application of their intellectual studies. Industry focus is dependent on alumni instructor’s expertise.

This class is designed to equip MCC students with the ability to translate their academic background in media and cultural analysis into a career working within a facet of the media industry and to expose them to the latest industry practices from a master media practitioner. Students are guided by an alumni instructor to make
connections between their academic coursework and current industry practice with the goal to help them understand the media industry application of their intellectual studies. Industry focus is dependent on alumni instructor’s expertise.

This course focuses on enhancing classroom practice through exploration of the uses of media and technology. The course addresses the development of media literacy skills with an added focus on developing methods to utilize media as a tool to enhance content in the art classroom. The potential of media and technology to assist in the development of innovative curricula in all content areas is examined, with attention to interdisciplinary curricula integrating the arts. There is a substantial lab component to this course, providing extensive hands-on experience in available technologies. Additional topics include the changing classroom in the information age; visual literacy; the role of media technologies for communication in a diverse, democratic society; authenticity and reproduction; inquiry-based learning and technology.

Students are placed in field internships in a variety of professions related to digital media design for learning including product development, user experience, instructional design, educational technology, media design and development and educational research. Students learn through supervised participation in professional settings including corporate, cultural, communications, non-profit, health, K-12 and higher education, among others.

Examines theoretical approaches that are central to the study of media, culture, and communication. provides students with a historical and critical framework for understanding the literature and research traditions within the field of media studies with an emphasis on media and communication as institutional actors, technological artifacts, systems of representation and meaningful cultural objects.

This course examines the relationship of visual media to historical narratives and cultural memory. It looks at photography, film, television, and forms of new media in relation to theories of historiography and cultural memory.

This seminar treats the body as a bio-political medium and media as mimetic, cyborgian and visualized forms of flexible embodiment. We will explore the political encoding of bodies as a crucial, yet under-analyzed, mode of modern political communication encompassing the racialized, colonized, gendered, medicalized, technologicalized, disabled and terrorized body.