Undergraduate Courses in Communication Studies 2017-2018

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 exposed to some of the major questions facing Communications Studies
scholars today, learn how to take positions in important debates, and explore emerging issues in the contemporary
media landscape.

Course requirements:
In-lecture writing - 10%
Conferences - 20%
Mid-term exam - 15%
Term paper - 25%
Final exam - 30%

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:
Critical response papers - 25%
Mid-term exam - 20%
Term paper - 25%
Final exam - 30%

“…if the designing of the future and the proclamation of ready-made solutions for all time is not our affair, then we realize all the more clearly what we have to accomplish in the present—I am speaking of a ruthless criticism of everything existing…”
- Karl Marx, letter to Arnold Ruge (1844)

This course will survey foundational texts and thinkers in critical social theory, as they relate to the fields of media and communication studies. This will include core texts in Marxism, the Frankfurt School, feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism, queer theory, indigenous thought, and critical theory of and from the global south. The course will prepare students with key theoretical and conceptual vocabularies for advanced study in the field.

Course requirements:
In-class tests (x7) - 60%
Final exam (take-home) - 40%

The term “visual culture” has been used for a decade or more to describe 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 taste 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, while this course will deal with a variety of social and cultural issues, it is not primarily a course in criminology or social analysis. Rather, we will be looking at the ways in which different media -- artistic, informational and entertainment -- represent crime. Please note that there are no tutorials/discussion groups for this class. 

Grading and Assignments:
Visual Analysis 1: Still Image 25%
Visual Analysis II: Moving Image 25%
Readings comments posted to MyCourses 10%
Final Exam: 40%

Corporate/commercial electronic media platforms that include over-the-air radio/TV/telephony, cable TV/Internet/telephony, social media, and wireline telephony are essential resources for social, economic, political, and cultural life, but they often do not often fulfill their democratic potential as public communication resources. This course introduces students to the theory, history, and practice of community-based alternatives to those media/communication systems/platforms.

The course consists of assigned readings, instructor and guest lectures, peer-led presentations, screenings, group activities, and class discussion. It also includes a number of assignments listed below. Throughout this course, you will be asked to critically engage with the course material by drawing on your own experience and knowledge as opposed to absorbing and reproducing. Please note, collaborative or group work will make-up a portion of our class time. Be sure you take notes on all of the course materials as exams and assignments will draw on all the assigned readings, lectures and presentations, screenings, and class discussions. Where power points will be used, the slides are not meant to substitute your note taking, which is your best resource when preparing assignments.

Assessment will include 2 course module exams (25% each), participation (10%) , a self-reflection essay (10%) related to the learning outcomes for this course, and a final project (30%). 

This course provides an introduction to the history and analysis of video games and their vast cultural influence. Together we will explore the unique characteristics of video games as a medium and question how they are shaped by and influence the contemporary cultural and social environment. The course will begin with an introduction to key concepts in video game studies such as play, games, interactivity, simulation, and procedural rhetoric. Students will then learn how to apply and critique these concepts to analyze games in their social, political, and cultural contexts. We will focus especially on understanding the contributions that feminist and queer theory offer for the study of video games.

After completing this class, students will be able to discuss the relationship between players and game systems and evaluate the influence that game structures, language, and metaphors have had on other fields. Prior experience or skills with video games is not necessary and the class welcomes all levels of gamers and non-gamers as long as students are interested in engaging with games.

Assignments
Attendance (10%)
Participation (15%)
Response Papers (25% total) (5 total papers, 2-3 pages double spaced)
Game (POV) Analysis Assignment (25%): (5-6 pages double spaced)
Final Take Home Exam (25%)

Not available.

The role of philanthropy in social change is emerging as established area of inquiry in political science, third sector studies, and education, among other disciplines and fields. It is also a central topic of various institutes and centers, including the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS), which offers yearly postdoctoral fellowships as well as support for emerging pre-tenure scholars.

Often hidden from view, philanthropic practice plays a vital role in the work of social movements and advocacy coalitions working toward social justice. In this context, this course considers the challenges and opportunities that arise when social justice aspirations meet philanthropic practice. According to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy in the US, social justice philanthropy has a transformational agenda; its aim is to reform institutions in order to create a more equitable distribution of power, thus eliminating the need for ongoing charity. This tall order is the entry point for this 3-part seminar that considers theories of social justice as they pertain to philanthropy in North America around the world along with case studies of social justice philanthropy (SJP) that include guest visits with practitioners.

Assessment Criteria
40%: Participation in learning
20%: Full attendance is required for consideration for an A in this course. 4 Students are also expected to actively participate in seminar discussions of assigned readings.
20%: Completion (even if absent) of all preparation activities designed to support comprehension of course materials.
60%: Demonstration of learning (options)

This class introduces students to the critical study of the history of communication, technologies and media as sociocultural phenomenon. To limit our study, we will move chronologically from the mid1800s to the early 2000s, focusing on media and communication technologies as they appeared in the (mostly) North American context. This class draws on classic works in several fields, such as anthropology, media and cultural studies, history and philosophy of science, musicology and sociology, while drawing upon a plethora of techniques (memoir, fiction, academic articles and books, digital humanities) that shed light on the media landscape.

What this course aims to investigate is how communication circulates across temporal and spatial contexts and how, through that movement, it becomes a phenomenon that is always evolving along with a society’s set of socio-political, economic, and cultural practices. At the end of this class, you should be able to understand the debates, controversies and issues that shape the history of communication, as well as write critically about communication and media objects, both from the recent past and present

Grading breakdown:
Reading response - 20%
Mid-term paper with proposal - 30%
Pop quizzes and participation - 20%
Team-based media site analysis and presentation - 30%

Feminist Media Studies is a broad ranging and, at its best, deeply engaged and socially conscious area of inquiry. Our course, COMS 310, examines contemporary scholarship and writing in feminist studies of digital culture and new media in dialogue with longer debates about whiteness, intersectionality, the politics of representation, consent, gendered and racialized labour, personal autonomy and other issues in feminist theory and media studies. This semester’s course will focus on feminist new media studies and critical race feminisms. Across our readings, authors examine new and emerging contours of feminist thinking, doing, and debating in the context of changing media environments. We will pay close attention to how current feminisms are being practiced using the tools and infrastructures of social media, mobile phones, apps, and other platforms. We will also analyze the contemporary terrain of online oppressions and the critical tools feminists are using to fight back against it and other problems. 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 a range of intersectional, socially differentiated relations of power. If you take this course, you need to be up for that.

Assignments
In-Class Writing Assignments [20%]
Three Media Reports [15%]
Feminist Social Media Essay [30%]
Feminist Media Activism Essay [35%]

This course provides students with a broad introduction to the interdisciplinary field of sound studies, through a focus on questions of sound, culture, power and media. Students will learn to listen critically to analyze aspects of sound culture from the standpoint of the humanities and interpretive social sciences, and to ask and pursue research questions about sound, culture, media and power. 

Components of Your Semester Grade:
I. Be Ready and Present for Class (25%)
II. Connect the Course to the Culture (5%) 
III. The Listening Project (35%) 
IV. The Sounding Project (35%) 

This course builds on the foundations of critical social thought to engage students in intensive study of emerging and contemporary themes in social and cultural theory related to media and communication studies. Focus will be on current texts and debates of significance in the field, and will include prominent work in areas including political economy, feminism, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial and critical race theory, radical democracy, environmentalism, and media and cultural studies. The focus of the seminar for Winter 2018 will be critical theories of media, culture and environment.

Course requirements:
Seminar participation - 20%
Seminar presentation - 20%
Term paper proposal - 10%
Term paper presentation - 20%
Term paper - 30%

Not available.

In this seminar, we will examine the various ways queerness has been understood as a threat to dominant social orders. Drawing attention to the challenge queerness mounts, not only against heteronormative ideals but also foundational conceptions of human subjectivity and modern identity, we will trace theorizations of queerness that embrace its corrosive effects on society at large. From psycho-analytic accounts that link queer sexualities to the death drive, to philosophical and literary reinterpretations of eroticism and sadomasochism, to recent work on negative affects, racial antagonism, and queer death, we will investigate ways of imagining queerness as a force of negativity that exposes or undoes contemporary structures of violence.

Course Requirements 
Seminar Participation 10%
Seminar Facilitation 15%
Reading Summaries 15%(x3)
Final Essay Proposal 10%
Final Essay 20%

Supervised independent research on an approved topic.