Programs Offered
Master's Degree
Doctoral Degree
Contemporary media practitioners, both professional and amateur, influence the values and behaviors of national and global populations, challenging and shaping the authority, legitimacy and control exercised by governments and other powerful social institutions. Because of this, media and cultural studies are central to research about the complex intersections of culture, politics and economics from the local to the global levels. Appropriately, the Department of Media Studies emphasizes the history, nature and impact of mediated sounds, images and texts from a wide range of inter- and cross-disciplinary perspectives.
The Department of Media Studies examines ways of thinking about and conducting research into the intersection of media, communication and cultural practices in both historical and contemporary perspectives. Encompassing humanistic, social scientific and artistic approaches to the study of media and culture, and interdisciplinary in its theoretical and methodological approaches, the degree spans traditional boundaries between theory and practice. It fosters media "literacy" in the broadest sense by providing students with critical skills to analyze contemporary media and culture, along with technical, aesthetic and intellectual principles that facilitate strong media practices.
Course code for this program is MDRP and MDST.
Faculty
While many faculty teach both undergraduate and graduate students, some instruct students at the undergraduate level only. For more information, contact the faculty member's home department.
Ardizzoni, Michela
Assistant Professor, Director; PhD, Indiana University Bloomington
Berggreen, Shu-Ling Chen
Associate Professor; PhD, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Calabrese, Andrew
Professor; PhD, Ohio State University
Echchaibi, Nabil
Associate Chair; PhD, Indiana University Bloomington
Fisher, Jolene
Assistant Professor; PhD, University of Oregon
Frost, Steven
Instructor, Associate Chair; MFA, School of Art Institute of Chicago
Goldstein, Donna M.
Professor; PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Hall, Kira
Professor; PhD, University of California, Berkeley
Hoover, Stewart
Professor; PhD, University of Pennsylvania
McLean, Polly E.
Associate Professor; PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Mody, Bella
Professor Emeritus; PhD, Gujarat University, India; PhD, Gujarat University, India
Oakes, Tim
Professor; PhD, University of Washington
Peck, Janice Anne
Professor Emerita; PhD, Simon Fraser University (Canada)
Rajabi, Samira
Assistant Professor; PhD, University of Colorado Boulder
Ristovska, Sandra
Assistant Professor; PhD, University of Pennysylvania
Rowland, Willard D.
Professor Emeritus
Schneider, Nathan Todd
Director, Associate Faculty Director; MA, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shepperd, Josh
Assistant Professor; PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Simonson, Peter D.
Professor; PhD, University of Iowa
Stevens, John Richard
Associate Professor, Chair; PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Striphas, Theodore G.
Associate Professor; PhD, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Tracey, Michael
Professor Emeritus; PhD, Univ of Leicester (England)
Trager, Robert
Professor Emeritus
Courses
MDST 5000 (3) Media Genre Studies
Introduces students to the critical study of genres in media cultures. Genre exists as a form of organizing and packaging mediated content, but also as formulaic patterns for analysis that work for and against audience expectations to produce culture. Topics will vary by genre, medium, and transmedia strategies.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: MDST 4000
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
MDST 5001 (3) Connected Media Practices
Provides a crucial frame through which students understand the evolution of film, television and gaming in the digital era. Explores an impending revolution in how screen media are created, circulated and consumed. Relates to a larger trend across the media industries to integrate digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5002 (3) Media Activism and Public Engagement
Explores politics of media activism. Relies on survey of existing theory and scholarship on media activism and close analyses of activist practices within both old and new media and on local, national and global scale. Special attention paid to questions of relativity and efficacy and value of media activism as both aesthetic and political activity.
Requisites: Requires a prerequisite course of MDST 5001 (minimum grade C-). Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5003 (3) Digital Media Production and Design
Introduces techniques, technologies of online development and online media presentation. Contextualizes the technical and social implications of the Internet through historical and critical perspectives. Students engage in online media projects designed to emphasize the affordances, conventions and usability considerations of effective online communication.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: MDST 4003
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Grading Basis: Letter Grade
MDST 5005 (1) MAPE Workshop
Connects classroom work to community practice. Students will discuss applied projects and collaborate on public initiatives.
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 4.00 total credit hours.
MDST 5071 (3) Screenwriting
Students will learn the fundamentals of screenwriting, but will also learn from peers. Students will workshop scenes, share, and discuss. Students will work scenes through description, dialogue, and action, combine those scenes into sequences, and those sequences into scripts. Students will learn how to create dramatic tension, how to write compelling dialogue, how to deal with character development.
MDST 5121 (3) Deconstructing Disney: Mediated American Mythology
Explores various Disney cultural products ¿ some with which students will be very familiar, some students may have never seen ¿ in order to discuss the cultural messaging The Walt Disney Company has presented over its long and illustrious history. Students will conduct analysis research in popular culture studies.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5211 (3) Asian Media and Culture
Offers an understanding of the various people, cultures and nations of East Asia through their media systems. Provides a critical overview of the historical, cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of East Asian communication systems in today's digitally connected/disconnected world.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: MDST 4211
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5220 (3) Viral Video & Media
Students will examine how viral videos are produced and shared on social media platforms by developing an understanding of the components that make a viral video as well as by engaging in a critical analysis of those viral videos. Students will engage in critical analysis, consider strategies for virality, and learn about production and publishing. Students will analyze their own and their peers¿ work in terms of genre, convention, format, structure, and audience.
Recommended: graduate students only.
MDST 5311 (3) Mass Communication Criticism
Introduces the critical perspectives most often employed in qualitative media analysis: semiology, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytical criticism, sociological criticism. Texts from contemporary print and broadcast media.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: MDST 4311
MDST 5331 (3) Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Popular Culture
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 5341 (3) Designing Alternative Media Platforms
This course helps students construct alternative form of media to exhibit their research and build connections with relevant community leaders. Through the practice and examination alternative exhibition traditions of such as Social Practice and Relational Aesthetics students connect with community members to design alternative platforms for media projects that respond to the needs of external communities.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5401 (3) Fan and Audience Studies
Drawing upon a variety of theoretical perspectives and tools of measurement, students will explore the structures, forces and environments that produce culture. Students will also interpret popular culture as a site of cultural meaning, and to understand the historical approaches scholars have used to analyze meaning in media messages, fan practices, and institutional responses.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5402 (3) Transmedia Worldbuilding
Guides students to develop entertainment concepts for transmedia delivery. Students will develop concepts and characters built around storytelling themes capable of producing serial and multimedia storylines. This course considers essential elements of storytelling; how to design and actively participate across media platforms; essential elements of meta-narratives; and how to create an immersive and inter-active experience for audiences using digital communication tools.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5405 (3) Queer and Trans Identities in Popular Culture
Give students the theory, media history, and cultural frameworks to advocate for better queer & trans presentation in popular media. Uses queer studies, critical theory, media surveys, and trans theory as a tool for discussing and addressing gaps in media representation. Explores the emergence, codification, and rejection of queer and trans identities and deconstructs the popular media that contributed to the formation of these identities.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: MDST 4405
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5841 (1-3) Graduate Independent Study
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5851 (1-6) Graduate Professional Project
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5871 (1-3) Special Topics
Special topics in Media Studies.
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 15.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 5931 (1-3) Internship
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 3.00 total credit hours.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6031 (3) Documentary and Social Change
Explores how local, national and international filmmakers use documentaries to provide cultural observation, education, entertainment and memories with the hope of making sense of, and transforming, the realities of contemporary societies. The course emphasizes contemporary issues and practices in the production of documentaries, including the participatory means such as the crowd-sourcing of documentary footage, and the use of newer, non-theatrical means of distribution, including YouTube, Vimeo and other digital outlets.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6051 (3) Media Theories
Studies theories and perspectives of mass and networked communication and explores the role of media in society.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6061 (3) Media Research
Introduces concepts, theoretical approaches and research methods of media research. Students apply these frameworks in research on mediated communication. Covers qualitative and quantitative methods of gathering and analyzing data.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6071 (3) Critical Theories of Media and Culture
Introduces students to critical theories and analysis of media and popular culture. Examines major theoretical traditions and/or theorists that significantly inform media studies (e.g., culturalism, structuralism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism) and applies these to media analysis and criticism.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6100 (3) Theory and Practice of Doing: From the Sciences to the Arts and Humanities
Introduces students to the theory of doing and making. Guiding questions include: what does it mean to place "doing" at the center of one's research agenda? What does it mean to do hands-on work in an art/design studio, a digital humanities lab, a media lab, a media archaeology lab, a makerspace or a hackerspace?
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: IAWP 6100
MDST 6201 (3) Global Media and Culture
Explores the historical, cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of media systems in various parts of the world and their relationship with technological and cultural processes. Aims to provide a critical overview of the profound changes in media and culture in today's digitally connected/disconnected world. Formerly MDST 6201.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6211 (3) Communication and International Development
Studies and analyzes communications technologies and techniques used in addressing social problems in developing countries.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6241 (3) Visual Epistemologies: Theory and Practice
Examines visuals as a form of knowledge on its own terms with an emphasis on both theory and practice. It first considers how social, cultural and cognitive mechanisms shape visual ways of knowing, and it discusses methodological approaches for working with and in images. Then it traces the complicated status of visual knowledge over time and across institutional contexts¿religion, art, science, the law, journalism and politics.
MDST 6250 (3) Algorithms, Culture, and Power
Explores how automated computational processes (algorithms) affect the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of media and other cultural goods. Also examines the history and politics of algorithms with respect to their growing prevalence in daily life. Foregrounds themes of power, identity, bias, aesthetics, infrastructure, epistemology, and political economy. Employs theories and methods from media studies, science and technology studies, digital humanities, and/or cultural studies.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6301 (3) Communication, Media, and Concepts of the Public
Introduces students to historical and contemporary uses of fundamental concepts in research and theory about media institutions, particularly public, community, mass, publicity, public space, public opinion, public interest, and the public sphere.
Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: CMCI 6301
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6311 (3) Power, Politics and Mediated Culture
Examines various literatures that consider the role of power in shaping social orders and the social beings that constitute that order and the place of media in both processes.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6341 (3) Children, Youth and the Media
Examines the concepts of children and childhood from the historical, social, cultural, economic and political perspectives, this course explores the interaction between mass media and the socialization and cultivation process of children and youth. Multiple theoretical traditions are used as a framework to study a variety of issues related to children and the media.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6350 (3) Media & Cultural Policy
Survey the research literature and practical significance of cultural policy as it relates to culture as a basis of social definition, inclusion, exclusion and conflict. The study of cultural policy does not focus exclusively on the role of government, but rather on a broader range of institutions that play central roles in governing contemporary culture, including museums, libraries, and media industries.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6351 (3) Media, Culture & Food Politics
Stresses intersections among media industries, food industries, and politics, with an emphasis on how public knowledge and activism about food relate to questions of a sustainable environment, human health and safety, and social justice for food producers and consumers. Examines a wide range of political discourses about food, the politics of food labeling, the globalization and hybridization of food, public policies governing food, food activism, the biopolitics of food, and food-related manifestations of cultural capital. Previously offered as a special topics course.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6551 (3) Media and Communication Policy
Surveys historical and contemporary developments in media and communications policy, emphasizing social and cultural dimensions.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6552 (3) Media and Public Scholarship
Historicizes the role of the public intellectual through readings and discussions of biographies of selected scholars and accounts of historical changes in the habitats ¿ the spaces of politics ¿ in which particular types of public engagement by intellectuals occurred in the past. The course will include a ¿media practicum¿ to enable students to understand what it means to become a scholar who has a public voice through direct and indirect engagement in a media-saturated age. Previously offered as a special topics course.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6671 (3) Media, Myth, and Ritual
Explores cultural practices of media audiences. Addresses theoretical and methodological implications of studying audiences from a culturalist perspective, with particular focus on media audience practices. Students engage in field research projects related to course content. Formerly MDST 6671.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6711 (3) Media and Popular Culture
Introduces fundamental methods for understanding the construction of meaning in film, television, popular music and advertising. Traces the study of popular culture through film theory, mass media analysis and cultural studies. Surveys various strands of research that seek to understand popular culture and its effects.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6721 (3) Feminist Media Studies
Explores the complex relation between feminism and global media consumption and production. Students will be introduced to key theoretical approaches to engage critically with film, print and broadcast media, digital media, and art. Students will engage with themes that frame feminist media studies today: intersectionality, gaze, (in)visibility, consumerism, resistance, bodies, representational narratives, queer identities, decolonial feminism as a theoretical tool of relationality, and explorations of decolonizing feminist practices originating in the global South.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6771 (3) History of Media and Communication: Selected Topics
Examines history of communication, including the means (technologies) of communication, social practices (institutional, collective, individual) that intersect with the study of communication and media, and cultural forms (texts, products). Situates the study of media, technology, and culture within historical contexts, comparative historical research, media archaeology, genealogy and media history.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6781 (3) Political Economy of Media
Examines economic problems and political issues relevant to media institutions and industries.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 6871 (1-3) Special Topics
Special topics. May be repeated up to 15 total credit hours hours
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 15.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6940 (1) Master's Candidate for Degree
Registration intended for students preparing for a thesis defense, final examination, culminating activity, or completion of degree.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
MDST 6951 (1-6) Master's Thesis
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7001 (1) PhD Colloquium Series
Introduce the new doctoral students to the Media Research and Practice program and its faculty members and their research. The colloquium series will also include workshops on program planning, publishing, attending conferences, writing a dissertation, preparing and presenting a job talk, etc.
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 2.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
MDST 7011 (3) Proseminar in Media Communication Theory 1
Introduces the principal concepts, literature, and theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives of media studies and mass communication and their ties and contributions to parallel domains in the social sciences and humanities. Formerly MDST 7011.
Requisites: Restricted to doctoral students in Media Studies (MDST), Journalism (JRNL) or Advertising, PR and Media Design (APRD) only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7021 (3) Proseminar in Media and Communication Theory 2
Continues the introduction of principle concepts, literature, and theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives of media studies and mass communication and their ties and contributions to parallel domains in the social sciences and humanities. Formerly MDST 7021.
Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of MDRP 7011 (minimum grade C-). Restricted to doctoral students in Media Studies (MDST), Journalism (JRNL) or Advertising, PR and Media Design (APRD).
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7051 (3) Qualitative Research Methods in Media
Provides a survey of various qualitative modes of inquiry, attending to the philosophical, conceptual, and practical foundations of qualitative research in media, communication, and information. The course is designed to support students in developing a critical understanding of the different considerations in and stages of qualitative research, including the development of research questions, theoretical and conceptual frameworks, methodological approaches, data collection, data analysis, and assessment of reliability and validity of qualitative data.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7061 (3) Quantitative Research Methods in Media
Examines various methods of quantitative data gathering methods and analysis in mass media and social media contexts.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7841 (1-6) Independent Study
Independent study.
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 9.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 7871 (3) Special Topics
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 15.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDST 8991 (1-10) Doctoral Dissertation
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 40.00 total credit hours.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Core Curriculum and General Electives
MDRP 7871 (3) Special Topics
Special topics.
Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 15.00 total credit hours. Allows multiple enrollment in term.
Requisites: Restricted to graduate students only.