Programs by Campus
Bloomington
Communication and Culture
Courses
Curriculum
Courses
Faculty
- CMCL-C 501 Introduction to Rhetoric and Public Culture (3 cr.) A first course for students interested in exploring the relationship between rhetoric and public culture as manifest in modes of practical reasoning, the constitution and performance of self/society, and socio-political critique/judgment. Engages the connection between these modalities by focusing on the premodern and late or postmodern rhetorical theory as they implicate the problematics of contemporary social and political theory, including power, agency, ideology, hegemony, mediation, subjectivity, etc.
- CMCL-C 502 Introduction to Performance in Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Introduction to various theories and methods of research in human communication studies. Includes theories of discourse and culture, message production and reception, symbol systems, social constructionism, relational communication, conversation analysis, social influence, communication competence, and other topics.
- CMCL-C 503 Introduction to Media Theory and Aesthetics (3 cr.) Study of classical and contemporary theoretical texts.
- CMCL-C 505 Productive Criticism of Political Rhetoric (3 cr.) Conceptualizes rhetoric as a mode of social critique while focusing on the problem of the scapegoat in public culture. Critically examines constructions of the threatening Other as they foster alienation and victimization within and between polities. Draws on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism as a framework for rhetorical critique.
- CMCL-C 506 Methods of Media Research (3 cr.) Introduction to research methods used in critical studies of media and culture.
- CMCL-C 507 Methods of Ethnographic Research in Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Exploration of ethnographic research methods in the study of communication and culture, including the ethnography of performance, media, and public discourse. The emphasis is on qualitative methods; course work includes exercises in participant observation and interviewing.
- CMCL-C 511 Premodern Rhetorical Theory (3 cr.) Survey of key texts, emphasizing rhetorical theory and practice, in the Greek and Latin traditions. Focus on contextualizing these materials within a continually developing intellectual history of rhetorical studies. Of particular interest is the potential for premodern theory to frame, interpret, and critique contemporary rhetorical practice.
- CMCL-C 512 Rhetorical Theories of Cultural Production (3 cr.) Examines theories of rhetoric as a primary source of cultural production. Features Giambattista Vico on eloquence, tropes, and the poetic wisdom of culture; Friedrich Nietzsche on rhetoric, metaphor, and the will to power; Chaim Perelman on the realm of rhetoric and the problem of justice; and Kenneth Burke on rhetoric, identification, and the drama of human relations.
- CMCL-C 513 Rhetoric and Sociopolitical Judgment (3 cr.) Exploration of the role that rhetoric plays in the production and performance of collective or socio-political judgment. The focus will be on the tension between modern and late or postmodern conceptions of judgment as they implicate the problems and possibilities of rhetorical praxis (i.e., negotiating the relationship between knowledge, understanding, and action) in contemporary democratic policy.
- CMCL-C 545 Introduction to Pedagogy in Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Fundamentals of teaching as applied to communication. Focuses on teaching methods and culture, criticism, communication apprehension, textbook selection, test construction, gender in the classroom, and the place of communication and culture in the liberal arts and sciences.
- CMCL-C 552 Media Institutions and the Production of Culture (3 cr.) Study of media institutions, work practices, products, and their relationships with their sociopolitical environment.
- CMCL-C 560 Motion Picture Production (3-4 cr.) Introduction to 16mm film production including cinematography, editing, and sound.
- CMCL-C 561 Intermediate Motion Picture Production (4 cr.) P: CMCL C560. Introduces students to the making of 16 mm sound films, including the recording and editing of synch sound. The various stages of production are explored in lectures, lab exercises, and discussions. Each student designs, directs, and edits a short synch sound film and participates as a crew member in the other students’ productions.
- CMCL-C 562 The Screenplay (3 cr.) Terminology of screenwriting and form of the screenplay. Development of the screenplay from story outline and treatment to the shooting script. The original screenplay. Techniques of adaptation. Contributions of the screenwriter to the mise-en-scène. Exercises in screenwriting; culmination in the writing of a full-length original screenplay or adaptation. Department is not currently offering this course.
- CMCL-C 592 Media Genres (3 cr.) Topic varies: the evaluation of typical genres; problems of generic description of definition; themes, conventions, and iconography peculiar to given genres, etc. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 593 History of European and American Films I (3 cr.) Survey of the development of cinema 1895-1926 (silent film era). Particular attention on representative work of leading filmmakers, emergence of film movements and development of national trends, growth of film industry, and impact of television. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- CMCL-C 594 Media History (3 cr.) Media historiography, topics in national history, national and international movements and trends. Topic varies. May be repeated once for credit with different topic.
- CMCL-C 596 National Cinemas (3 cr.) Topic varies: historical survey of major national cinemas. Topics may include Brazilian cinema, French national cinema, German film culture, Italian cinema, Indian cinema, and others. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.
- CMCL-C 604 Topical Seminar in Mass Communication and Culture (1-3 cr.) P: Consent of instructor. Department is not currently offering this course.
- CMCL-C 606 Media Criticism (3 cr.) Study of the main schools and methods of media criticism. Course may be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- CMCL-C 608 Images and Critique in Public Culture (3 cr.) This course examines and assesses some contemporary critical thought about visual and non-visual images, especially the role of images in politics. As well as pursuing various strategies for the ideology critique of images, the course explores the possibility of thinking critically through images. It studies different types of images through a variety of theoretical approaches and thematic questions.
- CMCL-C 610 Identity and Difference (3 cr.) Political, social, and cultural dimensions of identity and difference. Interrogates the production of marginal and dominant identities (e.g., racial, sexual, colonial) and the emergence of new forms of identification.
- CMCL-C 611 Topics in Rhetoric and Public Culture (3 cr.) Systematic review of research related to a specific issue or area in rhetoric and public culture. May be repeated for credit when topic varies.
- CMCL-C 612 Constituting Democracy in Rhetorical Discourse (3 cr.) Compares the role of rhetoric in liberal, deliberative democracy to its function in radical, participatory, and agonistic democracy. Considers problematic constructions of democracy in U.S. political culture and their relationship to exaggerated perceptions of national vulnerability. Explores the rhetorical potential of myth and metaphor for reconstituting the image of democracy from a diseased to a healthy political practice.
- CMCL-C 614 Rhetoric, Ideology, and Hegemony (3 cr.) Examination of the relationship between rhetoric, ideology, and hegemony in contemporary social and political thought. The emphasis will be on conceptions of hegemony as a site of praxis for negotiating the tensions between rhetoric and ideology in the production of social and political change (or permanence) in late or postmodernity. Primary readings will draw from twentieth-century rhetorical theory, Marxism, critical theory, and psychoanalysis.
- CMCL-C 615 Rhetoric of Protest in America (3 cr.) Presents key instances of protest discourse both in their historical contexts and through the lenses of rhetorical theories of dissent. The focus is on illuminating the problematic and constitutive role of protest in the public culture of the United States, as manifested across a range of electronic and print media. The American Revolution, southern secession, feminisms, black liberation, and gay/lesbian rights will receive particular attention.
- CMCL-C 616 Rhetorical Critiques of War (3 cr.) Rhetoric as an heuristic for critically engaging discourses of war and transforming the legitimization of war into a cultural problematic. Focuses on the problem of war in U.S. political culture.
- CMCL-C 617 Rhetoric and Visual Culture (3 cr.) Examination of the relationship between rhetoric and visual culture. Key topics to be considered include: the relationship between visual rhetoric and collective memory, social and political controversy and dissent, political style and representation, postmodern media communities, race, gender, identity politics, etc.
- CMCL-C 619 Feminism and Rhetorical Theory (3 cr.) This seminar explores the relationship between feminism and rhetoric by examining advocacy by/for women, patriarchal patterns of oppression, and the development of critical perspectives that have arisen out of desires to politically reevaluate contemporary gendered norms. It may be structured as a survey of a wide range of intersections between feminisms and rhetorical theory; or as an in-depth critical engagement with a specific tension, theme, or trajectory, such as “the body.”
- CMCL-C 620 Media, Politics, and Power (3 cr.) Examination of media institutions (including new media) through various schools of thought. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- CMCL-C 622 Advanced Pedagogy (3 cr.) P: C545 or equivalent. This advanced pedagogy seminar will investigate theories of learning and academic practice. Topics will vary by semester.
- CMCL-C 626 Studies in Contemporary Communication (3 cr.) Systematic review of research related to contemporary problems in the study of communication; may be theoretical, methodological, or critical. Topic varies. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 627 Performance in Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Critical examination of performance as a vantage point on communication and culture in specific societies, world areas, or social formations. Topic varies. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 634 Networks, Systems, and Flows (3 cr.) This course looks at contemporary theoretical approaches to how knowledge and objects travel. Readings in current theories of circulation address the categories used to conceptualize circulation and distribution, such as networks, systems, and flows.
- CMCL-C 635 Humor in Use (3 cr.) Beginning from the premise that humor is a good site for the study of culture, this course looks at a range of cultural contexts for humor, from staged public performance to private joking, and is primarily concerned with the many and varied social uses to which humor is put.
- CMCL-C 636 Reading the Text (3 cr.) This seminar hones students’ skills of close reading, explication and commentary, textual analysis and interpretation, in relation to one or two books central to the academic study of communication and culture. The books studied will be determined in each iteration of the seminar.
- CMCL-C 637 Publics (3 cr.) How can we understand the different ways that publics are composed? This course looks at how one analyzes texts, events and social groups when focusing on publics.
- CMCL-C 645 Topics in the Comparative Study of Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Analysis of communicative forms and practices in comparative perspective. Topic varies. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 646 Pedagogy Practicum (1 cr.) Taken by associate instructors in communication and culture who are pursuing a three-course sequence leading to the Certificate of Pedagogy. Students in C646 will be assigned a faculty mentor who will work with them as they prepare to teach a departmental course that is not under the supervision of a course director. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 650 Ethnography & Social Theory (3 cr.) Scholars build social theory through the analysis of social life and communicative practices. Ethnography is a key vehicle through which theory can be developed. By pairing theoretical and ethnographic works, the course offers a grounding in contemporary social theory and explores how ethnography can develop, hone, or complicate theory. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- CMCL-C 652 Globalization of Media (3 cr.) Explores media institutions, practices, and texts across national borders. Topic varies. May examine particular issues such as globalization of media, transnational implications of media texts, transnational data flows, media and foreign policy. May be repeated once for credit with a different topic.
- CMCL-C 660 Advanced Film Production (4 cr.) Designed for students who have taken basic production classes and who want to embark on a more ambitious film or video project. Each student will produce one product from script to screen, and assist other students on their projects. Course will address creative, technical, and production management questions.
- CMCL-C 661 Environmental Communication and Public Culture (3 cr.) This seminar focuses on how nature and the environment more broadly understood is articulated, represented, and engaged within public culture. Assuming symbolic and natural systems are mutually constituted, this course aims to foster a closer examination of communication practices that impact the environment and cultural perceptions of it such as tourism, social movement advocacy campaigns, corporate and government discourses, popular media, and public participation in decision-making processes.
- CMCL-C 662 Media Audiences (3 cr.) This course studies audiences in the context of film, television, new media, and other media forms. Topic varies, but may include a focus on theories of spectatorship, methodological approaches to audiences, historical reception studies, ethnographic and/or empirical audience studies, global or transnational audiences, performance theory, fan cultures, and subcultures.
- CMCL-C 670 Rhetoric in Contemporary Theory (3 cr.) Examines the role of rhetoric in emerging social, political, aesthetic, and cultural theories and on the implications of such theories for rhetorical inquiry.
- CMCL-C 688 Rhetorics of Transgression and/or Resistance (3 cr.) This seminar compares and contrasts choices to identify, name, and imagine certain rhetorical acts as transgression or resistance. Engaging a range of contemporary theories, methods, and vocabularies, it explores which approaches are productive depending on the particular situation, practices, and actors involved, as well as the questions one is studying.
- CMCL-C 690 Theories of Symbolic Meaning (3 cr.) P: Linguistics L503 or consent of instructor. Intensive study of referential, behavioral, rule-governed, and cognitive theories of symbolic meaning, with attention to comprehension of words, utterances/sentences, and extended discourse. Department is not currently offering this course. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 691 Authorship in Media (4 cr.) In-depth analysis of individuals in the media who become known as “authors.” May be repeated for credit when topic varies.
- CMCL-C 700 Research (1-4 cr.) P: Consent of instructor. This course is eligible for a deferred grade Students must have ample preparation in some theoretical area and in one or more research methods. Designed to allow students to conduct a research study, including the collection and examination of data (broadly defined), to answer a question, to prove a thesis, or to test a hypothesis relating to communication/rhetorical theory. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 701 Practicum in Communication Research (3 cr.) P: Consent of instructor. Consent of instructor. Students must have ample preparation in some theoretical area and in one or more research methods. Designed to allow students to conduct a research study, including the collection and examination of data (broadly defined), to answer a question, to prove a thesis, or to test a hypothesis relating to communication/rhetorical theory. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 705 Research Seminar in Rhetoric and Public Culture (3 cr.) Problems and issues in rhetoric and public culture. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 706 Theories of Performance in Communication and Culture (3 cr.) Critical examination of theoretical problems in the study of performance in communication and culture. Topic varies. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 710 Theories of Performance in Communication and Culture (1-3 cr.) Department is not currently offering this course. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 727 Seminar in Cross-Cultural Communications (3 cr.) May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 790 Seminar: Pragmatic Functions of Language (3 cr.) P: C501 and C502, or consent of instructor. Study of research dealing with the correlates of language variation, including topics such as language clarity, intensity, obscenity, style, dialects, interactions of language with perception/cognition and mental health, and the constituents of pragmatic language competence. Department is not currently offering this course. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 792 Advanced Seminar in Media Theory (3 cr.) Topic varies: advanced study in media history and theory; major movements and historical periods and their relationship to the intellectual and cultural climate of the time; studies of technology and modes of production; advanced work in genre or auteur studies; close reading of major works of media theory; new developments in theory and criticism. May be repeated for credit.
- CMCL-C 793 Seminar in Media (3 cr.) Topics in media studies. May be repeated once for credit when topic changes.
- CMCL-C 800 M.A. Thesis (arr. cr.)
- CMCL-C 810 Ph.D. Thesis (arr. cr.) This course is eligible for a deferred grade.
- CMCL-C 638 Experiments with the Film Camera (4 cr.) P: C560. This course is designed to explore techniques and concepts of experimental filmmaking. It builds on the foundations of other CMCL production classes, and assumes that you have a solid grounding in basic cinematography and visual storytelling, as well as in the fundamentals of digital editing.
