Spring SEMESTER 2010 COURSE OFFERINGS

200-Level

COMM231-Communication & Conflict
This course addresses the theory and practice of conflict resolution from a communication perspective. In the first half of the course, students examine symbolic patterns of destructive conflict behavior, including the role and function of words and images in constructing enemies and dehumanizing others. Role-play, discussion, and lecture are utilized in the second half of the course to introduce students to the theory, practice, and vocation of mediation, a facilitative, non-adversarial conflict resolution process. Students learn how to use communication to maintain mediator neutrality, frame issues, generate problem-solving options, and write agreements. Four Credits - Spielvogel

COMM251-Media Production I.
This course offers an entry-level learning experience introducing students to digital media production from theoretical, aesthetic, and practical perspectives. The course aims to familiarize students with the basic tools and processes of digital media production so that they can communicate their ideas creatively and effectively using various forms of media. The course is divided into seminar and workshop components. In the seminars, students will discover different theoretical approaches to media representation that inform the practice of digital media production. In the workshops, students will gain the technical skills and knowledge required for digital media production, including the use of camera, sound, voice recording, lighting, editing, graphics, and transitions. All students will undertake a series of exercises which demonstrate their understanding, skills, and creativity, and they will present and discuss their own productions. Four Credits - Korf

COMM260-Rhetoric & Public Culture
This course explores the rhetorical strategies, argumentative approaches, and definitional techniques embedded in the texts of popular culture. Contrasting current theories of rhetorical analysis and cultural studies with those of the classical period, the course aims to familiarize students with the rhetorical elements in the symbolic world we inhabit and to sharpen their critical skills as consumers of persuasive messages. The course will also introduce students to some of the basic qualitative research approaches commonly employed in the field of communication studies, including Burkean analysis, culture-centered criticism, and narrative criticism. Four Credits - Kim

COMM280-Research Methods
This course is an introduction to the social science research process used to study human communication. It provides students with the skills to read, understand, and perform basic communication research. Such skills include conducting a review of literature and addressing the implications and ethical considerations of research. Four Credits - DeVries

300-Level

COMM356: Advanced Magazine Features Writing and Production
This course focuses on techniques for advanced magazine features writing, design, and production. This course examines the complex and creative process of communicating ideas through writing and visuals. Over the semester, students create an online campus magazine. Students create a magazine mission statement; design a logotype; analyze our circulation markets; and demonstrate the magazine by writing, designing, and producing an issue by the end of the semester. Four Credits - Housel

COMM360 - The Art and Science of Persuasion
This course incorporates the application of persuasion theory to the production of a comprehensive advertising campaign for an outside client. It provides a comprehensive view of persuasion by analyzing how persuasion operates at both an interpersonal and a social level. The analysis of persuasive contexts includes discussions of popular culture, news media, advertising, cults, social movements, politics, law, families and interpersonal relationships. The study of persuasion will be applied to personal communication skills such as the production of ethical persuasive messages and critical media literacy skills. Four Credits - Johnston

COMM395.01- Communication & Emotion
Emotion, as an essential component of communication in everyday life, has critical influence on our understanding of the social environment and on our well-being. In this course, we will examine the relationship between communication and emotion in the context of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and mediated communication.
Topics will include: (1) effects of emotional messages on information-processing and decision-making; (2) cross-cultural similarities and differences in communication of emotion; and (3) the influence of destructive and constructive emotions on our happiness and well-being. Four Credits - Lee

COMM395.02 - Rhetoric of Film
This course is a special topics seminar in the rhetorical analysis of narrative film, with an emphasis on audience-centered close readings of classic American films from 1930-2000. Students will read widely in film criticism and will write an extended seminar paper. The seminar is conceived as an intensive workshop in rhetorical criticism of media. Students will understand and evaluate the rhetorical dimensions of central formal (e.g., the "Invisible Style") and thematic (e.g., "outlaw" and "official" heroes) cinematic devices of twentieth-century American cinema. The seminar is intended to be relevant to the concerns of students of rhetoric, film studies, media, and communication studies generally. Four Credits - Spielvogel

COMM395.03 - Technoculture and the Information Society
Students can expect to learn key concepts, issues, theories and history of technoculture and the information society. The goal of this class is not just to explore the ongoing popular discourse surrounding the emergence of new media, but to think about it in new and different ways, to put it in historical perspective. Four Credits - Kim

COMM395.04 - Communication & Race/Ethnicity
This course aims to help students gain insight into the mutually constructive relationship between our understanding/misunderstanding of race/ethnicity and the processes and products of communication at various levels. We will discuss issues of race/ethnicity in the context of intrapersonal, interpersonal and group communication, and examine representations of race/ethnicity in traditional mass media (film, TV, and advertising) and in digital media. Four Credits - Lee

COMM395.05 - TV Studio Production
A study and practice in the use of the television studio as a communication tool. Students will learn protocols relating to producing, directing, camera operation, on-camera performance, creation of graphics, special effects, chroma keying, use of teleprompters, audio and video switching. Evaluation will be based on a written examination, a series of video projects, and one’s overall team performance. Prerequisite: COMM251 or permission of instructor. Four Credits - Korf

COMM399-Communication Internship
Students secure an internship with an organization, agency, or communication media industry to observe, assist, and assume regular duties, or engage in special projects under the supervision of skilled professionals. Students are expected to maintain approximately 3 hours of placement per week for each credit granted. Prerequisites: Communication major, junior standing, completion of Internship Workshop, submission of departmental Internship Application and final approval of internship placement by department. Four Credits - Housel

400-Level

COMM470 – Cultural Communication Theory
Drawing on the theories in our readings, this class looks at how culture is constructed and reproduced through (1) larger economic, political, and ideological structures [the nation, identity, gender, social class, language, race, and ethnicity] that influence, and (2) people's everyday signifying practices that include (among many others) shopping, food, fashion, and use of mediated texts such as television, films, magazines, the Internet, and music. Class readings and assignments focus on the link between larger structures and everyday signifying practices that, together, make up "culture." For example, cultural theory allows us to understand how the popularity of Martha Stewart, Target, and Starbucks coffee reflects larger discourses about social class, consumption, and the new “upscale casual luxury” market. As we look at product placement in movies, representations of working-class people in sitcoms, and mainstreaming of the organic foods market, we can begin to pinpoint how power, class, and consumption impact people’s everyday lives. Prerequisites: Communication 101, 160, 260, and 280. Four Credits - Housel

COMM495 - Rhetorical Theory
This course surveys the history of rhetoric, the oldest of several disciplines making up the field of communication. Public persuasive discourse has exerted an unparalleled influence on the western world’s direction and development. Philosophers, politicians, lawyers, theologians, poets—all have tried to determine what takes place when one person sets out to persuade another by the use of symbols, and in particular, by means of rational, aesthetic and emotional appeals. The tradition of their thought on the subject makes up the discipline known as "rhetoric," a discipline dating back more than twenty-five hundred years, and a topic of study currently undergoing an important renaissance. Prerequisites: Communication 101, 160, 260, and 280. Four Credits – Herrick