Media Studies

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 8 Week Session, Fall 2024
The objective of this class is to enhance students' knowledge of media's industrial and cultural functions by introducing them to key perspectives and methods of study that stress a) how media systems have and continue to develop in the United States and across the globe as well as b) how we use and make meaning with media as part of our everyday lived experiences. To consider media's social, economic, political, and cultural impact, the course will investigate a number of ways of understanding its production, form, reception, and influence, being careful to recognize how these approaches relate to each other and to a wide array of diverse case studies in television, film, recorded music, print, video games, and online.
Introduction to Media Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2018 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Summer 2016 8 Week Session
The objective of this class is to enhance students' knowledge of media's industrial and cultural functions by introducing them to key perspectives and methods of study that stress a) how media systems have and continue to develop in the United States and across the globe as well as b) how we use and make meaning with media as part of our everyday lived experiences. To consider media's social, economic, political, and cultural impact, the course will investigate a number of ways of understanding its production, form, reception, and influence, being careful to recognize how these approaches relate to each other and to a wide array of diverse case studies in television, film, recorded music, print, video games, and online.
Introduction to Media Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This class enhances your knowledge of media’s industrial and cultural functions by introducing you to key perspectives and methods of study that stress the impact of media systems and practices at both the societal and individual levels--and vice versa. To consider media’s social, economic, and political significance, we will investigate a number of ways of understanding its production, form, reception, and influence, being careful to recognize how these approaches relate to each other and to a wide array of diverse case studies.
Introduction to Media Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018
The Freshman Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small seminar setting. Freshman seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 freshmen.
Freshman Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.
Freshman/Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2010
Sophomore seminars are small interactive courses offered by faculty members in departments all across the campus. Sophomore seminars offer opportunity for close, regular intellectual contact between faculty members and students in the crucial second year. The topics vary from department to department and semester to semester. Enrollment limited to 15 sophomores.
Sophomore Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2019, Spring 2019
Our highly mediated culture provides an ever-intensifying richness of visual information. Using a mix of film, television, photography, advertising, and/or the internet, this class will explore cultural and social theoretical approaches to critically analyzing visual media and viewing practices from a Media Studies perspective. The course is designed to foster a critical understanding of media images, inviting students to question and critique the many and multiple messages at work within visual culture.
Visual Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2018, Spring 2017
In this course, students learn why sound journalism is so important to a healthy, working democracy. Journalism is rapidly changing. The class will give a context to those changes and provide an overview of comtemporary journalistic institutions. Students will examine how news is made, who decides what news is, who makes it, who profits by it, and what rules guide how reporters and editors work. Central issues affecting journalism, such as bias and professionalism, will be discussed. The class is not specifically intended for future journalists, but students will learn why pursuing a career in journalism can be so fulfilling and thrilling, as well as becoming better consumers of the news.
Understanding Journalism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2018
The course considers the history and contemporary meaning of the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and the press. Emphasizing the real world implications of major Supreme Court decisions, the course examines restrictions on speech and press imposed by national security, libel, injurious speech, and privacy, as well as issues of access to information and government regulation of new media.
Freedom of Speech and the Press: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2019
The history of journalism is a broad subject--far broader than can comprehensively be covered in a single course. So necessarily, this course takes an idiosyncratic approach. This course examines how news has been defined, discovered, and communicated from its early modern origins to the present. It will also focus on particular areas of journalism. The class will take a critical look at how wars get reported on, including the current war in Iraq. The class will examine the role of journalists in the rise of the Cold War more than half a century ago. It will also examine the importance of media barons, by studying two highly readable biographies, one of William Randolph Hearst, the other of Katherine Graham. And finally, the class will look at the role journalists played in unseating President Nixon.
The History of Journalism: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020
This course examines issues of privacy in contemporary society, with an emphasis on how privacy is affected by technological change. After an introduction to features of the American legal system and the theoretical underpinnings of privacy law, we will consider privacy in the context of law enforcement and national security investigations; government records and databases; commercial enterprises; and the freedoms of speech and press.
Privacy in the Digital Age: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
This course will examine the history of online news beginning with the earliest experiments with news delivered via dedicated terminals. From there, we’ll look at the impact of the personal computer’s growth and the rise of proprietary dial-up online services. The open, Wild West nature of the early Web brought new possibilities but also the beginning of debates about credibility, free vs. paid content and competitive challenges that continue to this day. We’ll focus on key figures in technology and journalism who shaped the new medium, and trace how its growth undermined traditional economic models even as it enabled the rise of new ones, continuing through today’s world of mobile apps, aggregators and social media.
History and Development of Online News: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020
This is a lecture-format survey course on the history of media forms, technologies, institutions, and regulation—from the origins of writing, invention of print technology, through the development of digital media. Attention to the specific characteristics of individual media, the changing role of media as a force in culture along with the hopes as well as anxieties they provoke, and the continually transforming institutions and business of media will all be touched on. The role of media forms in the creation of public discourse and the social controls on media through censorship, legal constraints, and economic policies will also be examined.
Media History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
This course covers the modern global history of textual and digital media forms, with a focus on interactions between emerging media technologies and emerging modern power structures. We will examine how and why historical agents responded to, made use of, and tried to regulate new information technologies such as the printing press, documents and forms, newspapers, the postal service, the telegraph and teletype, filing and punch-card systems, electro-mechanical and electronic computers, networked databases, and the internet. Lectures will consider the impact of specific media technologies on the historical development of state administrations, colonial empires, ideological movements, and modern global business.
Text and Data Media History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course covers the modern global history of audiovisual media forms, with a focus on interactions between new media technologies and emerging modern power structures. We will examine how and why historical agents responded to, made use of, and tried to regulate emerging representational technologies such as painting, printed images and etchings, maps, the theater, panoramas, photography, the telephone, phonography, radio, television, MP3s, JPGs, and digital video. Lectures will consider the impact of specific media technologies on the historical representation and mobilization of religion, race, class, and nationality, as well as the branding and advertisement of consumer commodities.
Audio-Visual Media History: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course will familiarize you with the often-contentious history of media theory. At issue among scholars working within different theoretical and research traditions are core disagreements about what should be studied (institutions, texts, audiences, and/or technologies) and how media should be studied (for applied, “practical” purposes or with an eye that is critical of power and institutional structures). Course readings and lectures stress an understanding of these various research traditions by focusing on the cultural, historical, political, and social contexts surrounding them, the research models and methods used, and the findings and conclusions reached.
Media Theories and Processes: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
An interdisciplinary examination of the role and power of media for civic engagement and state-public interactions.
Media and Democracy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024
This course offers an introduction to media and globalization. We will examine global media industries (film, television, music, news, advertising, diplomacy, new media, etc.), and explore content produced within these industries through specific case studies. Topics include Bollywood, Hallyu, television format sales, nonwestern news, media imperialism, the globalization of popular cultures, diasporic communities, and global representation. The class reviews theories and histories of media globalization before turning to case studies to learn about the political and cultural roles of media in globalization processes.
Media and Globalization: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Fall 2020
This course is intended to familiarize students with some of the primary quantitative and qualitative research methods used to study media texts and audiences. In addition to reading and critiquing prior research employing various methodologies, students will gain practical hands-on experience using these methods in sample research projects.
Research Methods in Media Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2022
This course introduces students to Cultural Studies research methodologies (concepts, theories, and methods) to critically examine the global circulation of media that contribute to the production of transnational identities and cultures. It offers an opportunity to research culture to gain a deeper understanding of contemporary structural crises of democracy, health, and economy.

Cultural Studies Research Methodology: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
This course introduces students to approaches in the study of digital media, giving
practical grounding in digital methodologies and tools for social, cultural and media
analysis. Students learn how to develop a conceptual framework; integrate the
framework and the method; and identify digitally-centred topics, objects, or subjects for
study. Through group collaboration and shared knowledge activities, students consider
how knowledge is created within research practice, and in relation to the
interdisciplinary study of technology, social media, and digital worlds. Students will use
methods in context; engage in weekly activities like methods games, active peer review,
and media analysis; and select specific methods they want to learn about.
Researching Digital Media: Methods and Methodologies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024 First 6 Week Session
This course explores the history, theory, and aesthetics of ethnographic and documentary film and related forms of reality based media as they intersect with ethnographic and other forms of qualitative research. In addition to canonical and historically groundbreaking works we will consider recent innovations, across a range of media platforms, that push and pull at the conventions of ethnographic and documentary realism and that make aesthetic exploration central to knowledge production. Students in the course are not expected or required to have any background in film studies, nor is prior exposure to documentary, ethnographic film, or anthropology a prerequisite.

Ethnographic Film and Documentary Form: History, Ethics and Aesthetics of Reality Based Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
This course examines the interactions of media and politics. The dynamics of media (print, broadcast, digital) and political engagement (local, national, international) are studied through one or a combination of the following lenses: campaign messaging, news and political coverage, social movements, protest and resistance, social media platforms, satire and other entertainment forms.
Media and Politics: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Fall 2009
Topics in film employs theory to examine different film genres, historical periods, and topics.
Topics in Film: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019
This course offers an introduction to international communication and globalization theory, examines media industries abroad (focusing on one or more of the following: film, television, music, news, magazines, advertising, and/or new media), and explores content produced within those industries through specific case studies. Possible topics include alternatives to Hollywood film (Bollywood and Nollywood), television format sales and programming, the globalization of popular cultures (e.g., Korean Wave and Swedish music), diasporic communities, and global networks and fandoms.
International Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2023, Spring 2021
This class uses the approaches of media studies and cultural studies to critically consider how historical and emerging new media technologies—as well as the behaviors and forms of cultural production associated with them—influence and are themselves influenced by our everyday practices and lived experiences. It focuses particularly on concerns of identity, community, access, citizenship, industry, and regulation as these relate to social networking, collective endeavor, and public speech.
Internet and Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
How have the realities and representations of digital media affected how we think, feel, and interact? What impulses, events, and personalities gave rise to the relentless digitization of information, choice, and even life itself? In this interdisciplinary course, we will attempt to answers these questions together by reading, discussing, and writing about histories and theories of cybernetics and cybercultures. We will consider competing cybernetic models of the mind, human behavior, ecological environments, and complex immersive virtual worlds. We will also survey the vast range of visionary, skeptical, and delightfully eccentric responses to the promises and perils of a cybernetic future.
Cybernetics and Cybercultures: The Psychosocial Impact of Digital Media: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2021
This course examines the place and impact of advertising in the rise of consumer culture within the United States from the late 19th century to present. The course explores the functions and purposes of advertising and employs rhetorical/visual analysis and semiotic theory to analyze advertising themes and images from different historical periods.

Cultural History of Advertising: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2024, Fall 2022
This course takes a Postcolonial Feminist Cultural Studies approach to examine the changing meanings of gender, race and national identity in popular cultures across the globe. The key question for this course is, “What is the role of the media in establishing and sometimes challenging gendered and racial ideologies in everyday practices of global and local cultural meanings?” We will interrogate racial representations and stereotypes of Black, Latinx and Asian American minority communities by focusing on case studies, such as, Latin American telenovelas, American Hip hop and Korean wave.

Gender, Race and National Identity in Global Popular Culture: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
This course examinines contemporary approaches to the study of television, investigating televison's social, political, commercial, and cultural dimensions. Readings and assignments require students to apply critical perspectives to television programming and to the analysis of individual television texts.
Television Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2019 Second 6 Week Session
This course examines contemporary approaches to the study of television, investigating television's social, political, commercial, and cultural dimensions. Readings and assignments require students to apply critical perspectives to television programming and to the analysis of individual television texts.
Television Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Summer 2025 8 Week Session, Spring 2025
Normally open only to Media Studies majors who have already completed 12 units of upper division work in the major. Advanced study in Media Studies with topics to be announced each semester.
Special Topics in Media Studies: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023
This course is designed to guide you through the preliminary steps and stages of writing a successful honors thesis. The course will assist you in writing appropriate research questions and research proposals as well as developing strategies for taking useful notes and summarizing relevant scholarship. We will review relevant quantitative and qualitative research methods used in Media Studies as a means of helping you identifying the most appropriate research method(s) to answer your research question(s). The course culminates in the completion of the literature review for your honors thesis. Successful completion of Media Studies H194 (or instructor permission) is a prerequisite for Media Studies H195.
Honors Thesis Preparation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023
Under the supervision of the instructor, students will work toward completion of scholarly theses in the field.
Honors Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
This course is the UCDC letter-graded core seminar for 4 units that complements the P/NP credited internship course UGIS C196B. Core seminars are designed to enhance the experience of and provide an intellectual framework for the student's internship. UCDC core seminars are taught in sections that cover various tracks such as the Congress, media, bureaucratic organizations and the Executive Branch, international relations, public policy and general un-themed original research.
UCDC Core Seminar: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2025, Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Fall 2019, Spring 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
This course provides a credited internship for all students enrolled in the UCDC and Cal in the Capital Programs. It must be taken in conjunction with the required academic core course C196A. C196B requires that students work 3-4 days per week as interns in settings selected to provide them with exposure to and experienc in government, public policy, international affairs, media, the arts or other areas or relevance to their major fields of study.
UCDC Internship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2016, Spring 2016, Fall 2015, Spring 2015, Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
Students work in selected internship programs approved in advance by the faculty coordinator and for which written contracts have been established between the sponsoring organization and the student. Students will be expected to produce two progress reports for their faculty coordinator during the course of the internship, as well as a final paper for the course consisting of at least 35 pages. Other restrictions apply; see faculty adviser.
Special Field Research: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Fall 2010
Seminars for the group study of selected topics not covered by regularly scheduled courses. Topics will vary from year to year.
Directed Group Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012, Summer 2012 10 Week Session
Independent study and research by arrangement with faculty.
Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates: Read More [+]