Course Descriptions

COMM395: Media, Culture, and Community in Liverpool
Dr. Teresa Heinz Housel

Britain has a rich tradition of national, regional, and alternative/activist print and broadcast media. These various mass media have historically forwarded the interests of the country’s diverse political, social, racial, ethnic, and religious communities. The North of England, especially, is a fascinating place to study media, culture, and community. Liverpool is a culturally heterogeneous city with a historically active local media. A critical cultural studies perspective will allow students to examine how various communities in Liverpool, and the surrounding Northern region, has used the mass media today and in the past to both communicate and resist dominant ideologies of music, race and ethnicity, homelessness, religion, and workers’ rights. Through readings, discussions, and visits to local media outlets, each student will create a website that is a case study of a local Liverpool media outlet’s role in shaping and reflecting community against sometimes seemingly impossible odds.

Key Questions to be Explored:
What is the field of cultural studies and its history in Britain?
What is a community?
Can the mass media function as a community activist?
How have Liverpool’s communities communicated messages through the mass media?
How has today’s electronic media culture shaped Liverpool’s local media?

IDS495: Senior Seminar
From Facebook to Faces: Ways of Belonging
Dr. Isolde K. Anderson

This course will examine the many ways we connect with one another and create community – face to face and online. We will critique our consumer society, consider ways to reweave the social fabric when it has worn thin, and reflect on the possibilities of virtual community. We will use the city of Liverpool, U.K., as our resource for learning about different types of communities. Liverpool Hope University will be our home base for producing personal websites to record our research and analysis. Readings and discussion, creation of a personal website, and a world-and-life-view paper will provide a framework for reflecting on where you live (geographically and virtually) and what you live for.

Key Questions to Be Explored:
What is community?
What does a healthy neighborhood look like?
What is online community?
What is Christian community?
What resources for community-building are available in the Christian tradition?