The influence of the media is increased by the fact that campaigns today have become more focused on the individual than on the party. In order to win primaries, individual candidates seek media attention to gain attention from voters. As a result, do voters hold political power, or has the media simply replaced political parties as the primary force behind candidate selection?

Students will explore and see examples of different media types rating how well they communicate an idea, and then identify types of school assignments the different media would be useful for.

Students create their digital story, save and share it. Tips for audio recording and a variety of video examples and options are provided.

Investigates conceptual and formal issues in different media or between media such as sculpture, photography, and video. Explores issues of representation, interpretation, and meaning, and how they relate to historical, social and cultural context.

This interdisciplinary course surveys modern European culture to disclose the alignment of literature, opposition, and revolution. Reaching back to the foundational representations of anarchism in nineteenth-century Europe (Kleist, Conrad) the curriculum extends through the literary and media representations of militant organizations in the 1970s and 80s (Italy's Red Brigade, Germany's Red Army Faction, and the Real Irish Republican Army). In the middle of the term students will have the opportunity to hear a lecture by Margarethe von Trotta, one of the most important filmmakers who has worked on terrorism. The course concludes with a critical examination of the ways that certain segments of European popular media have returned to the "radical chic" that many perceive to have exhausted itself more than two decades ago.

Interdisciplinary survey of people of African descent that draws on the overlapping approaches of history, literature, anthropology, legal studies, media studies, performance, linguistics, and creative writing. This course connects the experiences of African-Americans and of other American minorities, focusing on social, political, and cultural histories, and on linguistic patterns.

This course examines cultural performances of Asia, including both traditional and contemporary forms, in a variety of genres. Students will explore the communicative power of performances with attention to the ways performers, media, cultural settings, and audiences interact. The representation of cultural difference is considered and how it is altered through processes of globalization. Performances are viewed live when possible, but the course also relies on video, audio, and online materials as necessary.

 Advertisements can present a biased cultural representation that can affect our perceptions of others.  For example, a television show may show commercials with some groups of people more than others. A magazine may have advertisements and articles representing a certain type of people in a way that reinforces stereotypes.  Students need to be taught to recognize the culture that is being represented in the media they consume as well as the cultures that are absent from the same media.This is Part 5 of a 5 Part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

In the Information Age, media is everywhere. This course will help you make sense of it all, providing insight into the structure of media firms, the nature of their products and how they make money. Is media biased? Is consolidation of media companies bad for consumers? This course will address those questions as well as how the government affects the structure of media through policies such as net neutrality, copyright, TV regulation, and spectrum allocation. This course will provide a general background on the research from economists on media and journalism. There will be a lot of economics and not too much math.

Students will develop criteria for determining statements of opinion and fact. Students will practice discerning statements of opinion in advertisements.  This is Part 2 of a 5 Part Unit Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying? 

Major narrative texts from diverse Western cultures, beginning with Homer and concluding with at least one film. Emphasis on literary and cultural issues: on the artistic significance of the chosen texts and on their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Syllabus varies, but always includes a sampling of popular culture (folk tales, ballads) as well as some landmark narratives such as the Iliad or the Odyssey, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, Ulysses, and a classic film. This class will investigate the ways in which the formal aspects of Western storytelling in various media have shaped both fantasies and perceptions, making certain understandings of experience possible through the selection, arrangement, and processing of narrative material. Surveying the field chronologically across the major narrative genres and sub-genres from Homeric epic through the novel and across media to include live performance, film, and video games, we will be examining the ways in which new ideologies and psychological insights become available through the development of various narrative techniques and new technologies. Emphasis will be placed on the generic conventions of story-telling as well as on literary and cultural issues, the role of media and modes of transmission, the artistic significance of the chosen texts and their identity as anthropological artifacts whose conventions and assumptions are rooted in particular times, places, and technologies. Authors will include: Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Christian evangelists, Marie de France, Cervantes, La Clos, Poe, Lang, Cocteau, Disney-Pixar, and Maxis-Electronic Arts, with theoretical readings in Propp, Bakhtin, Girard, Freud, and Marx.

Using their new skills in deconstructing advertisements, students will look at advertisements through the lens of gender.  Students will be encouraged to critically analyze the cultural stereotypes for men and women. Students will deconstruct advertisements based on gender representation.Rationale: Students will begin to see how believing in stereotypes can lead towards a negative self image for men and women.  This is Part 4 of a 5 part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?