Course Catalog

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Course Catalog

DIGITAL MEDIA WRITING PRACTICUM (CM5062)

This course will create a “newsroom” setting encouraging critical thinking about the media. The course will examine how the Internet has revolutionized journalism, story telling, and the media industries more generally. Students will study, analyze and discuss these trends as well as write about particular issues – thus developing their own voices and “brands” as writers and media professionals. Students will maintain blogs and their work will be published and curated on the student media website where they will appear as blogger/columnists. Another component of the course will emphasize career development: each student will produce a professional-grade online profile and portfolio through blogs and social networks

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PRACTICUM (CM5063)

How does communication work as local government bodies, civil-society actors and NGOs put together sustainable development initiatives? How can communication be made to work better? Cutting across disciplines, this practicum allows students to see individuals, groups and communities in collaboration (and sometimes conflict) in a South Asian context marked by the 2004 tsunami. Based in the international eco-community of Auroville (Tamil Nadu, south-east India), students will explore substantive areas including micro-credit, health care with special reference to HIV/Aids, socially responsible business and environmental management. On-site visits and team-work are central to the course, leading to the production of multi-media reports on the interface between communication, development and sustainability. This course has an extra course fee - to guage an estimated cost, the fee was approximately 1600 euros.

BRANDING PRACTICUM (CM5066)

Brands, their creation, their identity and their management derive from a set of disciplines and principles that have been developed over the past 60 years. These disciplines are the architectural underpinnings for successful branding and they apply equally across categories of products and services and geographically across countries. The Branding Practicum will instruct students in these disciplines and principles and ask students to apply them to the creation of a new international brand in a category of their choice. Students will analyze a chosen category, create a new brand proposition for it, develop the branding identity for the new brand including name, logo, selling proposition and more. They will also create a global marketing strategy for the brand.

ADVERTISING PRACTICUM (CM5067)

The development of effective advertising is an intellectual and creative process that has evolved over the past century and includes the disciplines of research, targeting, strategy, strategy derived creative execution and evaluation. Today, the form and content of advertising is changing as the digital age opens new channels and types of messages. The Advertising Practicum will instruct students in the real world creation of effective advertising. Students will learn “the creation process” from start to finish, develop strategies and create advertising campaigns. Finally, they will compete to win an international brand’s advertising account by solving a strategic and creative challenge facing that brand just as it is done in the advertiser/ advertising agency industry worldwide. At the course’s end, students should have completed an advertising exercise that they can present to future employers as an aid to securing a job of their choice.

NGO PRACTICUM (CM5068)

The NGO practicum is a course that prepares students to engage with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the field. It will introduce students to several important tools necessary to be reflective and responsible agents of social change. The course includes a series of preparatory sessions, which may include lectures, workshops, visits, and individual research assignments, followed by a period of overseas fieldwork in which students will collaborate with local NGOs to help create various project management tools or media projects.

INTERNAT'L PUBLIC RELATIONS PRACTICUM (CM5069)

Public relations (PR) is now an integral part of everyday life. From politicians to playgroups, it is an important tool that can mean the difference between success and failure of a project or product. Effective PR is a key requirement of most companies and organisations and this course is designed to provide students with the necessary background knowledge to allow them to begin a career in this area and/or to improve their general business communication skills. The course outlines different types, practices, and principles of public relations. It looks at key frameworks and developments in PR theory and practice, offering a straightforward combination of theory and case studies. In an increasingly global context, it is also imperative to take into account the international and intercultural perspectives of PR.

MEDIA, GENDER & GLOBALIZATION (CM5070)

This class studies in detail the relations between media, gender and sexuality in a complex global environment. We will build on a theoretical foundation of gender in terms of embodiment, representation, consumption and institutions, and apply various methods of analysis to a range of global media. We will examine how gender enters debates around globalization, including anti-globalization movements, and how constructions of gender influence the mediation of global issues such as nationality, war and terrorism, and transnational flows of people, culture and capital.

MEDIA, CULTURES AND SOCIETY IN THE ARAB WORLD (CM5073)

This course examines the role of Media in the Middle East and North Africa (primarily Arab countries). It analyzes the different ways in which Media and politics intersect.
It covers the evolution of the Middle Eastern Mediascape, its relation to ideologies, to political and intellectual circles, to the emerging ruling elites, to entertainment and to financial sponsors.
The course discusses as well the emergence of Pan Arab Media outlets (from newspapers to Satellite channels), their impact on the regional media scene, and then the beginning of the digital era or the "democratization" of media with internet, social networks, smart phones, and their roles in revolutions.
Islam, its perceptions, its political impact, and the way some Islamist movements deal with or use the Media are topics to explore.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. To provide students with an understanding of important media trends in the Middle East.
2. To help students reflect on the role of Media in Middle Eastern culture and politics.
3. To assist students think through the roles that traditional and new/digital Media have played in revolutions in the region

FOOD, CULTURE & COMMUNICATION (CM5076)

This course introduces you to cultural and communication perspectives of food. A focus on food allows us to explore the construction and maintenance of social boundaries between inside and outside, private and public, individual and collective. The topic also offers an excellent window into questions of power, and the expression and maintenance of social hierarchies and inequalities. Among our goals: to compare and understand what food and drink mean, in a variety of contexts, both historical and contemporary; to consider how such meanings are entwined with questions of identity, both individual and collective; to critically explore how food and drink are bounded and shaped by relations of power; to look for answers to our time’s pressing concerns such as the sustainability of our food systems and the alienation of the modern consumer.
We approach the study of food in a holistic manner, with the intent of learning concepts that will enable us to think critically about modern processes and contemporary identities using a range of theoretical approaches. Our approach is also dialogical and collaborative in that we constantly try to understand different points of view. Third, we focus on ethnographic perspectives and methodologies in particular and examine meaning, power and change as they are expressed and negotiated in everyday contexts.

COMMUNICATION & THE GLOBAL CITY (CM5077)

This course looks at the interface between communications and urban space. With the rapid spread of neo-liberalism and the internet, urban theorists see the city as increasingly ‘capsularized’. Across the planet, new forms of human-created environment—the theme park, the free-trade zone, the gated community—are constructed. While urban space has often been carefully designed, well crafted public-relations strategies now situate cities at local and global levels. Thus, within a framework of contemporary urban theory underpinned by case studies, students will reflect on the affective politics of the city, thinking critically about the interplay between mediated communication and urban policy, public space and built form.