Undergraduate Courses - Fall 2013

Course Number: COMM 2100

Title: Communication Inquiry

Instructor: Lori Stallings

Days/Time: TR 9:40-11:05

Course Description: This course will focus on the history and development of the discipline of communication, with an emphasis on the three major traditions that shape our department: rhetoric, social science, and media studies.  We will examine definitions and models of the communication process as well as major theories in each tradition.

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Course Number: COMM 2101

Title: Media/Info Literacy

Instructor: Nicholas Simpson

Days/Time: MW 11:30 – 12:55

Course Description: This course will teach students to critically examine and analyze the media and information products they encounter in everyday life, and to acquire the basic research skills necessary to complete academic projects successfully. The course will examine how various media are used to construct meaning and/or to persuade, how to recognize bias and stereotypes in media and information products, and how to assess credibility online and in the traditional mass media.

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Course Number: COMM 2381

Title: Oral Communication

Instructor: TBA

Days/Time: TBA

Course Description: In this course, you will explore the art of public speaking by using a broad range of technique to craft compelling, ethical oral presentations that address contemporary issues.  Through the practice of creating and delivering effective presentations, you will gain confidence in your ability to address an audience with clarity and persuasive impact.  You will practice ethical and active listening as you play the role of participatory audience member.  You will also examine the critical role that public discourse plays in creating and maintaining healthy civic relationships.

Proposed text: The Osborne text. 9th edition.

Course Number: COMM 3001

Title: Rhetoric and Civic Controversy

Instructor: Antonio de Velasco

Days/Time: TR 1:00-2:25

Course Description: This course introduces you to rhetoric study. We dedicate each session to learning key terms in rhetoric. Then, drawing from different cases in civic controversy, we explore how to use these terms to think through the complexities and ambiguities of real world argument. Taking various paths, we strive to answer a single question: In the midst of controversy, how do people use rhetoric to invent ways for audiences to think, feel, and act about the choices before them? The course aims to sharpen and balance your existing rhetorical skills, and thus to empower you for civic judgment in a world of conflicting claims and provisional resolutions.

Proposed Texts: All texts on electronic reserve.

Particulars: Weekly quizzes and three essay exams.

Course Number:COMM 3003

Title: Television and Culture

Instructor: Allison Graham

Days/Time: TR 2:40 – 4:05

Course Description: Social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of television in contemporary culture.

Proposed Text:

Mittell, Television and American Culture (2010).

Particulars:  Students will be required to rent several films or television programs (DVDs or streaming) during the semester.

Course Number: COMM 3330

Title: Communication Research Methods

Instructor: Craig Stewart

Days/Time: TR 2:40-4:05 p.m.

Course Description: This course will introduce you to the major approaches and methods used in the field to study human communication. We will explore both qualitative and quantitative approaches to researching communication in a variety of contexts. You will learn to locate, read, and critique communication research, and you will develop a proposal for your own research investigation. The assignments and activities in this course are designed to help you achieve the following learning goals:

• You will be able to describe and distinguish between qualitative and

quantitative research and become familiar with specific methods of each type.

• You will become familiar with the different paradigms and

philosophical assumptions of qualitative and quantitative research.

• You will be able to read and critically evaluate research reports

and critical essays.

• You will be able to develop communication research questions and/or

hypotheses, identify appropriate methods for addressing these questions/hypotheses, and develop a formal research proposal.

Course Number: COMM 3360

Title: Rhetoric/Pop Culture

Instructor: Marina Levina

Days/Time: MW 2:20-3:45

Course Description: This course focuses on the role popular culture plays in shaping ideology and meaning.   We will learn about various rhetorical and critical theories and then apply them to popular texts, such as television shows, films, magazines, comic books, etc.  Specifically, we will take a critical media studies perspective in this course and examine popular culture texts to uncover how we all use them, and are used by them, to communicate and to construct our understanding of gender, ethnicity, race, technology, class, the American Dream, and other cultural markers in 21st century America.

Proposed Texts & Equipment: Martha Struken and Lisa Cartwright Practices of Looking; other readings will be posted on ecourseware.

Course Number: COMM 3361

Title: African American Rhetoric

Instructor: David Acey

Days/Time: TR 9:40 – 11:05 a.m. /11:20 – 12:45 p.m.

Course Description: Speeches and rhetoric of African – Americans; emphasis on spokespersons such as Walker, Turner, Douglass, Washington, DuBois, Malcolm X, King, Davis, and Jackson

Proposed Texts:

Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change by Molefi Kete Asante

The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten by Molefi Kente Asante

From the Browder File: 22 Essays on the African American Experience (From the Browder File Series) by Anthony T. BrowderAnthony T. Browder (Author)

Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African – American Writing by

Deirdre Mullane

Course Number:  COMM 3821

Title: Audio Narratives

Instructor: Craig Leake

Days/Time: TR 2:40-4:05pm

Course Description: This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of audio production, providing both hands-on experience with equipment and techniques as well as discussions of the principles and ethics underlying the writing, recording, and editing of creative audio presentations. Students will be required to work outside class time, producing projects on the Macintosh/Pro Tools Digital Audio Workstations in the Department of Communication audio labs.

Required Text: None

Recommended Texts: Audio Basics by Stanley R. Alten; Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, 2012, and Pro Tools 101 Official Courseware (Pro Tools 9) ISBN13: 9781435458802.

Particulars: Students will write, record, and edit productions, such as a Commercial/Public Service Announcement; a Music Program with DJ; an Interview Program ("My Favorite Song"); and a Documentary Profile.

Course Number:  COMM 4012

Title: Health Communication

Instructor: Patrick Dillon

Days/Time: MW 5:30-6:55 pm

Course Description: This course is designed to introduce you to a wide range of scholarship in health communication. The course begins with a basic introduction to the field of health communication, ethical concerns in the healthcare environment, and the models that frame theory and research in this area. Then we will address such issues as the creation of health meanings, health care socialization, health campaigns, mass media theories of health, and social support at the dyadic, group, and community levels. This course is will also orient you to the knowledge, skills, and tools needed for a career in health communication--in academics and in the industry. At the end of this course, you should have a fair sense of theoretical underpinnings that frame our experiences as health care consumers. At the same time, you will acquire skills that can benefit you in a range of health-related careers (for instance, skills to negotiate doctor-patient communication, skills to work as health communication specialists in agencies like CDC, NIH, skills in crisis communication etc.).

Proposed Text: du Pre, A. Communicating about health: Current issues and perspectives (3rd ed.)

Particulars: Weekly quizzes, course portfolio, and two 4-5 page papers.

Course Number: COMM 4223/6223

Title: Special Topics in Film: Monster Films

Instructor: Marina Levina

Days/Time: M 5:30-8:30pm

Course Description: In her famous book, Our Vampires, Ourselves (1997), Nina Auerbach writes that each age embraces the vampire it needs. This statement speaks to the essential role that monster narratives play in culture.  They offer a space where society can safely represent and address anxieties of its time. This course will survey classic and contemporary monster films. As a whole, it argues that monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically because they represent social collective anxieties over resisting and embracing change. They can be read as a response to a rapidly changing cultural, social, political, economic, and moral landscape.  And while monsters always tapped into anxieties over a changing world, they have never been as popular, or as needed, as in the past decade. This course explores monstrosity as a social and cultural category for organizing, classifying, and managing change.   Based in the field of media studies and critical theory, it will provide film case studies that explore monstrous discourse and representation in film.

Proposed Texts: Marina Levina and Diem-my Bui (Eds.), Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader, Continuum Press 2013; David J. Skal, The Monster Show: Cultural History of Horror, Revised Edition, 200;  other readings will be posted on Ecourseware

Particulars: Graduate students will be expected to complete a longer research paper and longer exams

Course Number: COMM 4340/6340

Title: Listening

Instructor: Gray Matthews

Days/Time: MW 12:40-2:05 p.m.

Course Description:   Exploration of communication theory and practice from perspective of listening; philosophical, practical, personal dimensions of listening will be explored as an art of being as well as a mode of doing.

Proposed Text: The Lost Art of Listening, Michael P. Nichols. For Graduate Students: The Other Side of Language, Gemma Corradi Fiumara.

Particulars: Course emphasizes engaged communication. Two exams, four one-page experiential reports, one "readings" journal.

Course Number: COMM 4850/6850

Title: Film History I

Instructor: Steve Ross

Day/time: TR 2:20-4:20 p.m.

Course Description: A survey of world cinema from its pre-history through 1940 Proposed Texts: 'Film History' by David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson.

Course Number: COMM 4373

Title: Interracial Communication

Instructor: David Acey

Days/Time: MWF 11:30 – 12:45 p.m.

Course Description: Special problems encountered in communication among races; readings, discussion, and field study of how prejudice, stereotypes, and self – concepts can affect communication; exploration of methods to minimize these problems.

Course Number: COMM 4375

Title: Intercultural Communication

Instructor: Katherine G. Hendrix

Days/Time: TR 9:40 – 11:05

Course Description: This course provides an opportunity to explore the various means by which we define what constitutes culture and how we acquire our cultural identities. Self-perception and the perception of the "other" will be discussed as factors that serve to problematize the communication that occurs between (and within) groups. This course will focus on communication that occurs among the domestic populations of the United States; however, international relationships will be discussed to a limited degree. My main goal is to provide a practicum for developing the initial stages of effective interpersonal and intercultural communication competence. A second goal is to introduce you to various theories (from within as well as outside of the Communication discipline) that attempt to explain intercultural interaction.

Proposed Text:

Martin, J., & Nakayama, T. (2008). Experiencing intercultural communication: An introduction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

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Course Number: COMM 4858

Title: Contemporary Cinema

Instructor: Nicholas Simpson

Days/Time: R 9:40 – 12:45

Course Description: An examination of modern American filmmaking, from the aftermath of the Vietnam War to the ongoing War on Terror, focusing on the social, cultural and political ideologies expressed in mainstream fiction cinema.

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Course Number: COMM 4380

Title: Communication in Conflict

Instructor: Katherine G. Hendrix

Days/Time: TR 11:20 – 12:45

Course Description:

This course in interpersonal conflict emphasizes both communication theory and the experiential application of the course content. The course content will be explored through exercises and discussion designed to develop and/or enhance skills such as: listening, the effective presentation of ideas and emotions, and conflict resolution.

Practical application within the classroom should increase the likelihood of retention and use of the concepts outside of the classroom as part of a life-long process. This life-long process should include growth and movement

toward quality-based, confirming interaction with others as well as recognizing circumstances where interpersonal behavior is inappropriate.

Proposed Text:

Wilmot, W. W., & Hocker, J. L. (2007). Interpersonal conflict (8th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Additional class readings as assigned.

Course Number: COMM 4381

Title: Senior Seminar in Communication at the End of Life

Instructor: Patrick Dillon

Days/Time: MW 2:20-3:45 pm

Course Description: This course will use the historical landmark cases of Terri Schiavo, Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, Dax Cowart, as well as other current cases, to discuss family communication and conflict at the end-of-life.  We will discuss how relationships, culture, and canonical narrative influence how we decide what is ethical and appropriate regarding end-of-life decisions, and how these values and experiences serve as resources for confronting our own mortality and that of others.By the end of the course, students will gain a basic understanding of bioethical concepts and case analysis techniques. They will also understand how family relationships and roles influence how situations and decisions are perceived and acted upon at the end-of-life.

Proposed Text: No textbook. Course readings will be available from the instructor.

Particulars: Weekly quizzes, reflection papers, and two essay exams.