Courses

Critical evaluation of the aesthetic and social impact of visual communication.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand visual media in cultural contexts.
• Describe the major theoretical approaches to the study of visual communication.
• Assess various forms of visual communication and their impact on society.
• Use scholarly research and other data to analyze a form of visual communication.

This course examines what media are and what they do; how specific media technologies affect democratic discourse; how media shape narratives of class, race, ethnicity and gender; the long-running conflict between information and propaganda, and how media conglomerates came to wield such enormous power in modern society.

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand the origins, architecture, and role of the mass media as a cohesive system in modern society.
• Analyze how each new technology has framed our understanding of the world, even the “way” we learn.
• Assess how repeated battles over media narratives were shaped by technological innovation, government communications policy, racial, ethnic, gender and class conflicts, and wars and domestic upheaval.
• Identify important lessons from mass media history that are key to understanding the enormous power media exert on society today.
• Document and discuss the main challenges our current media system poses to personal liberty and privacy, democratic rule, and racial, economic and social justice.