Courses

160 Mass Media 
Required for Media Studies concentration 

This introductory-level course is part of a two-course sequence that encourages students to assess and shape their personal relationship to mass media.  Its premise is that we are all, to some extent, uninformed and uncritical consumers of media products and services rather than conscientious and socially minded users of them.  In this spirit, the course provides a comprehensive historical overview of the various print and electronic media that have shaped, and continue to shape, our lives.  By examining the issues that have influenced the development of the mass media, the course considers ideological, cultural, aesthetic and ethical perspectives. 

260 Media and Contemporary Culture 

This course focuses on contemporary media, primarily film and television, from theoretical and critical perspectives.  Primary emphasis is given to the specific identifying characteristics of news, advertising and entertainment media, and to how those media serve as forums for cultural negotiation in our society.  In particular, attention is paid to how media representations of race, class and gender presently exist as both products and producers of contemporary cultures.  Prerequisite: Media Studies 160 or permission of instructor. 

294, 394 Internship 

298 Independent Study 

398 Independent Research 

Approved Courses 

German 249 German Cinema*

German 249: GERMAN CINEMA (in English). Counts toward Film Studies and Media Studies concentrations. ALS-A, HWC, German FLAC available
Class meets 1:00-3:00 p.m. MWF in Old Main 35

The course examines German history through its most renowned films, beginning with the eerie expressionist classics of the silent era, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene, 1919) and Nosferatu. A Symphony of Horrors (Murnau, 1922); the early "talkies" The Blue Angel (von Sternberg, 1930)," and M. (Lang, 1931); moving from the "haunted screen" of Weimar cinema to the hauntingly beautiful, "fascinating fascism" of The Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1936); and finally to the post-Holocaust struggles with the collective remembering / forgetting of the Nazi past in masterpieces like The Murderers are Among Us (Staudte, 1946), The Marriage of Maria Braun (Fassbinder, 1979), and The Counterfeiters (Ruzowitzky, 2008).

Open to first-year students. No prerequisites. No knowledge of German required.