Undergraduate Courses in Communication Studies 2015-2016

As the only required course in our minor, COMS 210 offers an introduction to the field of Communication Studies as it is practiced at McGill. Students will be introduced to a variety of ideas and debates within contemporary communication studies. In this version of COMS 210, the focus of the course will be largely on new media theory and participatory models of communication. As such, the course is divided into three separate parts. The first section, People and Machines, will introduce students to questions about the meaning of communicationand to theories of communication technology. The second section, Ownership, Infrastructure, Participation, Representation will elaborate on the meaning of communication by considering the complex network of economic, physical and cultural forces that are created and maintained through varying communication and media technologies. The third section, Emotion, Experience, Design, will evaluate the experience of new media and communication technology by considering the particular affective properties of media experiences and will close the course by considering the impact of developing technologies and ubiquitous media on our everyday life experiences.

Pop Quizzes ----- 10%
Conference Participation ------ 10%
Group Presentation ------- 10%
​Reading Response ------- 15%
Term Paper --------- 25% (November 25th)
Final Exam ------- 30% (Registrar Scheduled)
 

This course introduces students to a range of issues surrounding the relationship between communication, media and politics in contemporary liberal-democratic and capitalist societies. Starting from the premise that media and communication are central to the possibilities of the democratic public sphere(s), the course will critically examine the role, performance and structure of contemporary mass media, democratic governance of media and communication, and emerging political practices and selected issues surrounding digital information and communication technologies and network media.

Course requirements:
Mid-term exam  - 20%
Conference participation  - 20%
Term paper  - 30%
Final exam  - 30%

Course description

This course is designed to introduce undergraduate students to the field of media governance. Depending on academic traditions, this field of study is interchangeably called media policy, media regulation or media governance. In the framework of this course, we will understand the term “governance” as describing complex situations in which various kinds of actors (political, economic, social) intervene to influence the establishment of norms, standards and rules in the media system. This course will be divided into three consecutive modules. The first one will expose students to a selection of major theories of power and policy in order to build their capacity to critically analyse complex situations in the realm of media governance. The second module will introduce students to major components of the media system (content and conduits) and some of the issues surrounding them. In the third module, we will discuss a series of major challenges that are currently being debated by academics and other actors involved in this field. At the end of this course, students will have a general understanding of the field of media governance, and they will have developed their capacity to critically analyse contemporary media governance situations.

Assignments and evaluation

Pop Quizzes 15%
Mid-term assignment 30%
Group project 20%
Final exam 35%

This seminar will introduce students to scholarly literature from science studies and the history of science. We will particularly explore the role of the human senses, sensory practices and media technologies in scientific practice and put them into dialogue with broader questions on media, communication and culture. By doing so we will question traditional theories and quotidien views that regard epistemic concepts such as rationality, objectivity, observation, or proof to be primarily connected to the sense of vision, graphic representation, and image technologies. Readings include both classic texts and recent scholarship in order to familiarize students with ethnographic as well as historiographic approaches to study the meaning of science as both an epistemic and a cultural arena.

This seminar will introduce students to scholarly literature from science studies and the history of science. We will particularly explore the role of the human senses, sensory practices and media technologies in scientific practice and put them into dialogue with broader questions on media, communication and culture. By doing so we will question traditional theories and quotidien views that regard epistemic concepts such as rationality, objectivity, observation, or proof to be primarily connected to the sense of vision, graphic representation, and image technologies. Readings include both classic texts and recent scholarship in order to familiarize students with ethnographic as well as historiographic approaches to study the meaning of science as both an epistemic and a cultural arena.

Assignments (and % of Semester Grade): 

I. Seminar participation and exercises (25 %)
II. Weekly response papers and “the image of science” presentation (25 %)
III. Book review (10 %)
IV. Semester project (40 %)

COMS 310 exposes students to current scholarship and writing in feminist studies of the media. Feminist Media Studies is a broad ranging and, at its best, deeply engaged and socially conscious area of inquiry. It addresses a wide range of media practices and theories from diverse feminist perspectives. Our readings and guest speakers this term will help us dig into and interrogate several current media practices uses the concepts and tools of different feminist approaches.

This term, the course will focus in particular on feminist and queer-identified new media studies and critical race feminisms. Across our readings, authors examine new and emerging contours of feminist thinking, doing, and debating in a number of media platforms. We will pay particularly close attention to current feminisms as they are practiced in and through social media and other emerging platforms, and the debates therein. By exploring current developments in feminist scholarship around studies of emerging social media and technology, our aim is to examine the social, political and epistemological dimensions of feminist and queer media making and critique, and the ways in which they can be extended and challenged. While the course and professor do not espouse a particular feminist politics, part of our task is to openly and vigorously discuss the present, past and futures of feminist thinking, feminist research, and feminist activisms in their relation to gendered, sexed, raced, classed and otherwise socially differentiated relations of power.

Assignments
In-Class Writing Assignments [20%]
Three Media Reports [15%]
“Feminist Social Media Artifacting” Short essay [30%]
Selfie Essay Assignment [35%]

The category of "visual culture" encompasses the range of images which circulate within our social and cultural worlds.  "Visual culture" may include prestigious forms of image-making, such as high art painting, or less respectable forms, such as the popular cultural imagery of advertising and television.  The institutions of justice and policing have used visual images for a variety of purposes, from cataloguing suspected criminals to reconstructing the scenes of crimes.  Painters and photographers have used images of crime to "prove" prejudices about the criminal personality, to aestheticize the contemporary city, to raise metaphysical issues of life and death, to transgress cultural norms of tastefulness and acceptability and so on.  

In this course, we will be looking at a wide range of images which deal in some way with crime.  Some of these will be in the form of "moving" images -- that is, films or television programs.  Others will be "still images":  photographs, paintings, drawings, newspaper and magazine covers, maps, etc.  The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of many of the genres and styles through which crime comes to be represented visually.   

Please note that there are no tutorials/discussion groups for this class.

Grading and Assignments:
Visual Analysis 1: Still Image 20%
Visual Analysis II: Moving Image 30%
Readings comments posted to MyCourses 20%
​Final Exam: 30% ​​

In this fourth-year seminar, we will focus on two broad dimensions of urban life in North America: violence and reclamation. “Violence” here refers to numerous processes, structures, and actions, ranging from police violence and surveillance; to displacement, gentrification, and homelessness; to the slow violence of poverty and addiction; to the specificity of gender-based violence. In the second half of the course, we will turn to acts and strategies of reclamation, re-appropriation, rebellion, and regeneration. We will consider “place-making” and other means of refashioning urban space, as manifest in the practices of (and discussed in the writings of) migrants, refugees, queer and trans people, artists, and planners. We will also discuss reclamations through protest and commemoration, as in the recent “Black Lives Matter” social movement. During the final three classes, we will examine specific interventions into urban space and culture, on the part of disability activists, architects and designers, and amateur cartographers.

Throughout the course, we will look at how popular cultural producers have approached and interrogated urban violence and urban reclamation, using film, video, photography, mobile apps, web-based games and projects, and street theatre. Seminar participants can expect to develop a greater facility with theoretical texts, hone their seminar discussion and critical analysis skills, and improve their understanding of contemporary urban sociocultural transformations. They will be expected to read, comment on, and engage in debate about the critical perspectives in the course readings, as well as to develop original analyses of urban sites and/or interventions.

Grading scheme:
15% Attendance and seminar participation: Show up on time, listen to each other, do all the readings, don’t text or surf during class. Also, say something every week, even if you are nervous. I suggest you each prepare a comment or two about the readings in advance.
20% Oral presentation (15 min.): Each student will present a case study, in relation to the week’s readings (sign up January 19, in class). Case studies can be: original analysis of an urban site; analysis of an artistic, popular, and/or activist intervention; proposal for (and enactment of, possibly) a new urban intervention in Montreal.
25% Mid-term take-home essay: Distributed FEB 18, due FEB 25 (these are Fridays: I will post the midterm on the website on the 18th, and you will submit your essay by the end of the day on the 25th).
10% Final paper proposal and bibliography (3 pp.): Due MARCH 15.
​30% Final paper (12-15 pp.): Due APRIL 12 (last class). For the final paper, students will choose 2-3 weekly “themes” (see weekly schedule, below), and supplement their engagement with the weeks’ texts by doing additional research and a brief case study. A detailed description of the final paper requirements will be distributed in class. 

This seminar will introduce students to seven major terms related to current media technologies: big data, algorithms, data visualization, networks, platforms, infrastructures and formats/codecs. It will enable students to become acquainted with current debates in the field of media and communication studies and to develop critical perspectives toward the social, economic, political and cultural ramifications of current media technologies. Depending on their interests and programs, students develop semester projects from a communication studies or an art history perspective (or both). Next to reading and discussion scholarly literature and other materials, students will also attend two important scholarly events held at McGill University this spring: first, the symposium “Hardwired Temporalities: Media and the Material Patterning of Time” (March 11 & 12) and second, this year’s Media@McGill colloquium “Aisthesis and the Common: Reconfiguring the Public Sphere” (March 18 & 19). This will provide the opportunity to meet internationally renowned scholars in person. The seminar will be held in cooperation with Media@Mcgill, McGill’s hub of research, scholarship and public outreach on issues and controversies in media, technology and culture. A Media@McGill representative, Sophie Toupin, will participate in the seminar as a guest. She will also provide more information about Media@McGill’s activities (http://media.mcgill.ca/).

Assignments 
I. Seminar participation (10 %)
II. Weekly response papers and session facilitation (25 %)
III. Conference attendance and reflections (10 %)
IV. Semester project: annotated bibliography, presentation and final paper (55 %)

This course engages with questions of the social and cultural implications of major developments in communications from prehistory to the electronic era. Taking theories of knowledge as the backbone of these developments, students will be introduced to a range of practices, systems and technologies of communication that have emerged at various points in history. In order to understand both the development and reception of these communication practices and technologies within larger social, cultural and political histories, this course will consider a diverse range of communication forms and cultures, including the alphabet, the codex, the printing press, the novel, the telegraph, the radio, photography, cinema and the internet. Throughout this expansive timeline, an emphasis will be placed on the continuity, and divergences, between different historical moments. As such, students will be asked to consider how old forms of communication continue to haunt the present moment, and further, how histories of communication can shed light onto our understanding of new technologies and new ideas.

Assignments
In-Class Writing 15%
Group Presentation 15%
Conference Participation 10%
Reading Response Take-Home Final Exam 30% (2 responses, 15% each)
30% (Assigned May 30th, Due June 6th)