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This course offers an overview of the social, cultural, political, and economic impact of mediated communication on modern culture. Combines critical discussions with experiments working with different media. Media covered include radio, television, film, the printed word, and digital technologies. Topics include the nature and function of

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This class examines frameworks for making and sharing visual artifacts using a trans-cultural, trans-historical, constructionist approach. It explores the relationship between perceived reality and the narrative imagination, how an author's choice of medium and method of construction constrains the work, how desire is integrated into the st

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This course will serve as an introduction to the interdisciplinary academic study of videogames, examining their cultural, educational, and social functions in contemporary settings. By playing, analyzing, and reading and writing about videogames, we will examine debates surrounding how they function within socially situated contexts in ord

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The television landscape has changed drastically in the past few years; nowhere is this more prevalent than in the American daytime serial drama, one of the oldest forms of television content. This class examines the history of these "soap operas" and their audiences by focusing on the production, consumption, and media texts of soaps. The

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This course provides practical instruction in the design and analysis of non-digital games. Students cover the texts, tools, references and historical context to analyze and compare game designs across a variety of genres, including sports, game shows, games of chance, card games, schoolyard games, board games, and role–playing games. In

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An historical examination and analysis of the evolution and development of games and game mechanics. Topics include a large breadth of genres and types of games, including sports, game shows, games of chance, schoolyard games, board games, roleplaying games, and digital games. Students submit essays documenting research and analysis of a va

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This course examines the interplay of art, science, and commerce shaping the production, marketing, distribution, and consumption of contemporary media. It combines perspectives on media industries and systems with an awareness of the creative process, the audience, and trends shaping content. There will be invited discussions with industry

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This class does intensive close study and analysis of historically significant media "texts" that have been considered landmarks or have sustained extensive critical and scholarly discussion. Such texts may include oral epic, story cycles, plays, novels, films, opera, television drama and digital works. The course emphasizes close reading f

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This course centers on historical eras in which the form and function of media technologies were radically transformed. It includes consideration of the "Gutenberg Revolution," the rise of modern mass media, and the "digital revolution," among other case studies of media transformation and cultural change. Readings cover cultural and social

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This course looks at the history of avant-garde and electronic music from the early twentieth century to the present. The class is organized as a theory and production seminar for which students may either produce audio/multimedia projects or a research paper. It engages music scholarship, cultural criticism, studio production, and multi-me

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History of Media and Technology addresses the mutually influential histories of communications media and technological development, focusing on the shift from analog to digital cultures that began mid-century and continues to the present. The approach the series takes to the study of media and technology is a multifaceted one that includes

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How can we harness the emerging forms of interactive media to enhance the learning process? Professor Miyagawa and prominent guest speakers will explore a broad range of issues on new media and learning - technical, social, and business. Concrete examples of use of media will be presented as case studies. One major theme, though not the onl

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This course fulfills the first half of the Comparative Media Studies workshop sequence requirement for entering graduate students. The workshop sequence provides an opportunity for a creative, hands-on project development experience and emphasizes intellectual growth as well as the acquisition of technical skills. The course is designed to

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This class will explore the cultural history and media industry surrounding the masculine drama of professional wrestling. Beginning with wrestling's roots in sport and carnival, the class examines how new technologies and changes in the television industry led to evolution for pro wrestling style and promotion and how shifts in wrestling c

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This course serves as an in-depth look at literacy theory in media contexts, from its origins in ancient Greece to its functions and changes in the current age of digital media, participatory cultures, and technologized learning environments. Students will move quickly through traditional historical accounts of print literacies; the majorit

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This course is an introduction to the interdisciplinary study of commercial videogames as texts, examining their cultural, educational, and social functions in contemporary settings. Students play and analyze videogames while examining debates surrounding how games function within socially situated contexts. Readings include contemporary ga