Department of Communication (GRAD)

Ph.D in Communication 

The Ph.D. at UNC is an inquiry-based degree, offering students the opportunity to build unique programs of study around their respective research interests. The program requires the student to define a program of study organized by an evolving research question or research problem. The program ensures foundational study in subdisciplines of communication studies, including rhetoric, performance studies, media and technology studies, interpersonal and organizational communication, and cultural studies. The program encourages interdisciplinary work across these areas and across disciplines to enhance one's ability to address the research question or problem, while at the same time helping to professionalize students for various employment opportunities. The research question or problem and subordinate lines of inquiry that help to define it serve as the basis for selecting coursework, for developing integrative reading lists for the doctoral comprehensive exam, and for completing a major, original research project in the form of a doctoral dissertation. All students — whether admitted with a baccalaureate degree or a master’s degree — are admitted to the doctoral program; the department does not offer a terminal M.A. degree.

Professors

Renee Alexander Craft, Critical/Performance Ethnography, Performance of Literature, Critical Studies in Race and Gender
Cori Dauber, Rhetoric and Public Address, Military Rhetoric
Torin Monahan, Technology Studies, Surveillance Studies
Patricia S. Parker, Organizational Communication and Culture, Critical Studies in Gender, Race, Organizational Leadership
Tony Perucci, Performance, Performance and Media, Performance Activism, Cultural Studies
Joyce Rudinsky, Media Studies, Electronic and Interactive Media
Avi Santo, Media and Technology Studies, Consumer Culture, Materials Culture, Children's Media and Play, Fan Studies

Associate Professors

William Brown, Media Production
Sarah Dempsey, Organizational Communication, Organizing in Global Contexts
Julia Haslett, Media and Production, Documentary Filmmaking
Christian O. Lundberg, Rhetoric and Public Culture, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Religion
Alice Marwick, Media and Technology Studies
Steven K. May, Organizational Communication, Cultural Studies
Michael Palm, Media Studies, History of Technologies
Patricia S. Parker, Organizational Communication and Culture, Critical Studies in Gender, Race, Organizational Leadership
Kumi Silva, Gender, Race and Identity, Transnational and Postcolonial Studies
Michael S. Waltman, Interpersonal Communication, Social Cognition, Hate Studies

Assistant Professors

Lisa Calvente, Performance Studies, Cultural Studies
E. Chebrolu, Rhetoric of Race, Rhetoric and Social Media
Aaron Shapiro, Media and Technology Studies
Katie Striley, Interpersonal Communication

Professors Emeriti

V. William Balthrop
Carole Blair

Robbie Cox
Paul Ferguson

Lawrence Grossberg
Ken Hillis

Gorham Kindem
Beverly Long
Dennis Mumby
Della Pollock
Lawrence B. Rosenfeld
David Sontag
Francesca Talenti
Julia T. Wood

NOTE: Courses are offered on demand except as otherwise noted.

COMM

Advanced Undergraduate and Graduate-level Courses

IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 412.  Critical Theory.  3 Credits.  

An introduction to European modern and contemporary philosophy, from the enlightenment to contemporary postmodernism.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING.
Making Connections Gen Ed: PH, NA.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 422.  Family Communication.  3 Credits.  

Growth in technologies, more frequent travel, and movements of products and people across the borders of nation states change concepts of family and community. Foregrounded by these realities, this course combines theories of family and communication with documentation of lived experience to interrogate family communication patterns in contemporary culture. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING.
Making Connections Gen Ed: GL, US.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 120.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 423.  Critical Perspectives on Work, Labor, and Professional Life.  3 Credits.  

This upper level seminar develops a critical perspective on work, labor, and professional life within the global context. Throughout, we will engage in moral and philosophical debates about the status of labor and the meanings of work in our daily lives.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 430.  History of American Screenwriting.  3 Credits.  

This viewing and research-intensive course examines the history of American narrative film through the screenwriter's experience, using a decade-by-decade approach to examine the political, social, global, psychological, religious, and cultural influences on the art, process, and careers of screenwriters.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH or FC-PAST.
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 431.  Advanced Audio Production.  3 Credits.  

Advanced analysis and application of the principles and methods of audio production.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 130 or 150; Grade of C or better in COMM 130; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 432.  Visual Culture.  3 Credits.  

Course provides an overview of theories of visual culture. We apply these theories to better understand contemporary visual media and technologies, along with the everyday media practices they support.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: CI.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 433.  Intermediate Screenwriting.  3 Credits.  

Open only to students in the writing for the screen and stage minor. Conceiving and outlining a feature-length screenplay.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 131.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 435.  Memory Acts.  3 Credits.  

Advanced introduction to foundational work in memory and performance studies, emphasizing theory and practice of various forms of remembering. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 437.  United States Black Culture and Performance.  3 Credits.  

Examines how the United States Black experience is constituted in and through performance across a range of cultural contexts including the antebellum South, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Aesthetic, and contemporary urban life.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP, US.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 450.  Media and Popular Culture.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Examination of communication processes and cultural significance of film, television, and other electronic media.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING.
Making Connections Gen Ed: PH.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 453.  The History of New Media Technology in Everyday Life.  3 Credits.  

The starting point for this course, chronologically and conceptually, is the emergence of popular media technology. Our purview includes transformative innovations in mediated communication, such as telephony and e-mail, alongside familiar media technologies such as televisions and computers.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 454.  Media and Activism.  3 Credits.  

A study of the electronic media as a feedback mechanism for community organization and social change. A variety of broadcast and nonbroadcast uses of the media are studied.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 455.  Sound Studies.  3 Credits.  

This course is about sound and the auditory dimension. In a society dominated by images and spectacle, sound and listening have been remarkably under-appreciated. Sound is physical-the vibration of molecules according to frequencies, pitches, and intensities-and biological-our ability to hear is an evolutionary trait. But sound is also cultural (what qualifies as signal or noise?), technological (how is sound recorded and reproduced?), and historical (how has the soundscape changed and how have we listened differently).

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 463.  Creating the Solo Performance.  3 Credits.  

This course examines processes of creating and performing solo work. Students engage a variety of performances: autobiographical, representation of the lives of other/s, and exploration of cultural or political ideas.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160, DRAM 120, or ENGL 206, 207, or 208; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 464.  Collaborative Performance.  3 Credits.  

Theory and practice of collaborative performance, emphasizing image, intertextual adaptation, site-specific and installation work, avant-garde traditions, and the play of time and space. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 466.  Advanced Study in Performing Literature.  3 Credits.  

This course engages the theory and embodiment of prose fiction, poetry, and other kinds of literary texts, including nonfiction. Students practice adaptation and script preparation, solo/group performance, and performance critique.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE or FC-KNOWING, HI-PERFORM.
Making Connections Gen Ed: LA, EE- Performing Arts.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 470.  Political Communication and the Public Sphere.  3 Credits.  

A course covering the relationship between communication and political processes and institutions. Topics include media coverage and portrayal of political institutions, elections, actors, and media influence on political beliefs.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: PH, NA.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 471.  Rhetorics of Public Memory.  3 Credits.  

Takes up the fundamental assumptions of contemporary memory studies and the centrality of rhetoric to memory. Research focus on how constructions of the past respond to the present and future.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 472.  Rhetorical Criticism.  3 Credits.  

Approaches to the analysis and assessment of rhetorical practice with a focus on how rhetoric reflects and shapes public culture.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: CI, EE- Mentored Research.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 490.  Special Topics in Communication Studies.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. A special topics course on a selected aspect of communication studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 6 total credits. 2 total completions.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 499.  The Dark Side of Interpersonal Communication.  3 Credits.  

The "dark side" of communication is a metaphor describing the study of disruptive, dysfunctional, distorted, distressing, and destructive aspects of communication. This course explores humanity's darker side that allows us to reject, exclude, stigmatize, exploit, objectify, misguide, lie, and cheat. The course examines various theoretical perspectives and applies them to everyday problems in interpersonal encounters. A sample of topics discussed include: prejudice, stigma, marginalization, bullying, ostracism, resistance, manipulation, conformity, deceit, gossip, rumors, infidelity, and revenge.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING, RESEARCH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: SS, CI, EE- Mentored Research.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 500.  Visual and Material Rhetoric.  3 Credits.  

This course explores the use of rhetorical criticism as a way to understand how the visual and material are used for symbolic and political purposes. Examples ranging from news images to public art will be studied.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 521.  Communication and Social Memory.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. An investigation of psychological aspects of communication, particularly the perceptual and interpretive processes underlying the sending and receiving of messages.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 523.  Communication and Leadership.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Critical examination of alternative theories of leadership and trends in the study of leadership; focuses on the communicative dimensions of leadership.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 120.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 524.  Gender, Communication, and Culture.  3 Credits.  

Course examines the speeches and other texts that announced and embodied the goals and political strategies of multiple branches of three waves of feminist activism in the United States.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-POWER.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 224; permission of the instructor for non-majors.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: WGST 524.  
COMM 525.  Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Provides a critical exploration of organizational communication theory, research, and application, examining the factors involved in the functioning and analysis of complex organizations.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisites, COMM 120 and 325.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 526.  Critical-Cultural Approaches to Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

The study of organizational culture operates on a set of assumptions distinct from traditional management perspectives. This course explores the cultural perspective as an alternative approach to understanding organizational communication processes.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-KNOWING or FC-POWER.
Making Connections Gen Ed: SS.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 325; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 527.  Organizational Ethics.  3 Credits.  

A critical examination of the theory, research, and practice of organizational ethics.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-VALUES.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 325.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 532.  Performing the Screenplay.  3 Credits.  

Introduces students to approaches for creating performance from screenplays and other texts for electronic media forms, focusing on scripts as literature and the tensions between live and electronically delivered performances.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 534.  Aesthetic and Technical Considerations in Making Short Videos.  3 Credits.  

The course examines the aesthetic and technical elements at work and play in cinematic storytelling. The student is required to complete three projects and will gain hands-on experience in narrative filmmaking.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH or FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 230.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 535.  Introduction to Screen Adaptation.  3 Credits.  

Students practice the craft of screen adaptation by conceptualizing, outlining, and writing scenes based on material from another medium (both fiction and nonfiction). Work is presented, discussed, and performed in a workshop environment.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: CI.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 131, 330, ENGL 130, or 132H.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 537.  Master Screenwriting.  3 Credits.  

Open only to students in the writing for the screen and stage minor. Students will write and workshop a full-length feature film screenplay. Students will learn about the film and television business through a combination of research, in-class discussions, and interactive interviews with industry insiders.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 433.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 549.  Sexuality and Visual Culture.  3 Credits.  

Examines questions about sexuality and how it has changed over time, through various media of visual communication.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 561.  Performance of Women of Color.  3 Credits.  

Explores through performance contemporary poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and feminist thought by women of color in the United States. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: WGST 561.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 562.  Oral History and Performance.  3 Credits.  

This course combines readings and field work in oral history with the study of performance as a means of interpreting and conveying oral history texts. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: HI-PERFORM.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Performing Arts.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: FOLK 562, HIST 562, WGST 562.  
COMM 564.  Performance and Popular Culture.  3 Credits.  

Critical examination of the operation of performance as a cultural phenomenon, with an emphasis on meaning, power, and resistance in cultural events, social practices, and media spectacles.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 568.  Adapting and Directing for the Stage.  3 Credits.  

This course introduces students to practices in adapting and directing literary texts for live ensemble performance. Students will create original performance work, engage in collaborative critique, and discuss the development of aesthetic value.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 571.  Rhetorical Theory and Practice.  3 Credits.  

Investigates the theoretical definitions and uses of rhetorical interpretation and action in spoken, written, visual, material practices, discourses, and events.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 572.  Public Policy Argument.  3 Credits.  

Analyzes argument in a variety of contexts with an emphasis on public policy and exploring tensions involved in addressing both expert and public audience in the political sphere. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 573.  The American Experience in Rhetoric.  3 Credits.  

Examines public discourse from the colonial period to the present. Discourses, critical perspectives, and historical periods studied will vary.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 574.  War and Culture.  3 Credits.  

Examines American cultural myths about war generally and specifically about the causes of war, enemies, weapons, and warriors, and the way these myths constrain foreign and defense policy, military strategy, and procurement.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: PWAD 574.  
COMM 575.  Presidential Rhetoric.  3 Credits.  

The power of the presidency depends in part upon the president's ability to rally public opinion, which depends upon the president's ability to use the "bully pulpit." This course examines the hurdles presidents face and the steps presidents take to shape opinion.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 170.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: PWAD 575.  
COMM 576.  Making and Manipulating "Race" in the United States.  3 Credits.  

This course will examine how tropes of "race" are symbolically invented and experienced psychologically and emotionally. This course assesses how "race" reflects and shapes cultural politics.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: HS, US.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 577.  Rhetoric and Black Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course will explore the complex ways in which Black aesthetic forms and creative expression function as public discourse.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: SS, US.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 596.  Advanced Independent Study/Directed Reading.  1-3 Credits.  

Permission of the department. Majors only. 3.0 cumulative grade point average and 3.5 communication studies grade point average required. For the communication studies major who wishes to pursue an advanced independent research project under the supervision of a selected instructor. Intensive individual research on a problem designed by instructor and student in conference.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit. 6 total credits. 2 total completions.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 620.  Theories of Interpersonal Communication.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Course focuses on how communication is used to build and sustain interpersonal relationships. Forms and functions of communication are examined as a means of testing and defining relationships.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 120.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 622.  Environmental Filmmaking: Creative Production and Social Impact.  3 Credits.  

A workshop to study and create non-fiction films about the environment. The course examines aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies with an eye to how these films can contribute to critical conversations about our species' impact on the natural world. Special attention will be paid to questions of environmental justice and the disproportionate effects of environmental hazards on communities of color and low-income communities.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH or FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 130 or Permission of the Instructor.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 624.  Hate Speech.  3 Credits.  

The primary focus of hate speech is on the ways that interactants manipulate hatred to accomplish a variety of social and personal goals. The pursuit of this focus will allow the student to appreciate the operation of hatred in a variety of contexts. Often taught as a service-learning course.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-POWER.
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 625.  Communication and Nonprofits in the Global Context.  3 Credits.  

Introduces students to the opportunities, challenges, and rewards of participation within the nonprofit/NGO sector. The course also equips students with the skills needed to design and conduct engaged scholarship.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: HI-SERVICE.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Service Learning, EE- Mentored Research, GL.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 635.  Documentary Production.  3 Credits.  

A workshop in the production of video and/or film nonfiction or documentary projects. The course will focus on narrative, representational, and aesthetic strategies of documentary production.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE, RESEARCH.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 230.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 636.  Interactive Media.  3 Credits.  

Explores interactive media through creative projects that include sound, video, and graphic elements. Technical information will serve the broader goal of understanding the aesthetics and critical issues of interactive media.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 638.  Game Design.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Studio course that explores gaming critically and aesthetically. Practice in game design and production including 3-D worlds and scripting.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 150.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 640.  Game Studio.  3 Credits.  

Game Studio is a project-based course in the new media track. This course is designed to provide a structured environment, instructor and peer feedback, along with technical and conceptual resources in which to complete a new media project. Students may work individually or on collaborative teams. The class focuses on idea development, design, and experimentation.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 638; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 642.  Special Topics in Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. This course will explore various specific topics, theories, and methodologies in cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 350.  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 6 total credits. 2 total completions.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 644.  Documentary Production: First Person Filmmaking.  3 Credits.  

Students create documentaries emphasizing the filmmaker's personal perspective and experience: essay, diary, and autobiographical films, and pieces in which the filmmaker performs a role for expressive or political ends. Significant class time is devoted to work-shopping student films.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: HI-PERFORM.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Performing Arts.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 230; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 645.  The Documentary Idea.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. Historical and theoretical examination of expressions of the documentary idea in different eras and various modes including film, television, and radio.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 646.  Introduction to the Art and Mechanics of Two-Dimensional Digital Animation.  3 Credits.  

Students use Adobe After-Effects and Adobe Photoshop as their primary image software to create several original animations. Assignments are given weekly, and a substantial final project is expected.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 130 or 150; Grade of C or better required in COMM 130.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 647.  Advanced Projects in Media Production.  3 Credits.  

Recommended preparation, several production courses above COMM 230. Course provides a structured environment, instructor and peer feedback, along with production and postproduction resources for completing advanced near-to-graduation media projects. Projects can be narrative, documentary, experimental, or interactive.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Requisites: Prerequisites, COMM 230 and one of COMM 534, 635, 646, 653, or 654.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 650.  Cultural Politics of Global Media Economies.  3 Credits.  

Primary subjects will be popular culture and media technology, and guiding questions will be organized around the relationships of each to commerce and/as social change.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: CI, GL.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 652.  Media and Difference.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. This course examines critical and theoretical issues concerning the representation and study of various modes of difference, such as sexuality, race, and gender, in specific media texts.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 653.  Experimental Video.  3 Credits.  

This course allows students to create video productions that play with forms that lie outside of mainstream media.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH or FC-CREATE.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 230; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 654.  Motion Graphics, Special Effects, and Compositing.  3 Credits.  

In this course students learn a wide range of video post production techniques working mostly with the application After Effects.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 130 or 150; Grade of C or better in COMM 130; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 655.  Television Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course introduces students to critical television studies. The course emphasizes not television or culture as separate entities but instead "Television Culture." The focus of the class is on the interrelationship between television and contemporary culture.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 140.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 656.  Sound for Film and Video: Theory and Practice for Motion Picture Sound Design.  3 Credits.  

The aim of this course is to provide students who have an interest in film and video production with an understanding of the technical, conceptual, and aesthetic implications of the motion picture soundtrack, with a special emphasis on sound-image relationships. Students who have already developed a basic proficiency in the use of video cameras, audio recorders, and editing software will be asked to cultivate an understanding of and appreciation for the expressive and artistic possibilities.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH or FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 130.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 657.  Movie Making Machines: Learning About Cinema in the Maker Space.  3 Credits.  

This projects-based seminar will introduce students to the fundamental optical and technological principles of motion pictures. By using the Maker Space to design and fabricate pinhole cameras, zoetropes, and 16mm film strips, students will gain a deep understanding of the material and technological foundations of the cinema, and the operating principles that are behind not only the classic films of Hollywood's past, but the high-definition digital imaging technologies of the present.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-CREATE.
Requisites: Prerequisite, ARTS 105, 106, 209, or COMM 130; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: ARTS 657.  
COMM 658.  Surveillance Cultures.  3 Credits.  

We live in surveillance societies. Just about every element of our lives is affected by surveillance: workplaces and schools, social media sites and mobile phone use, police encounters and security screening. Surveillance practices shape how institutions operate and how people see themselves and others. The goal of this course is to develop a critical awareness of surveillance and its implications for society.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 660.  Advanced Projects in Performance Studies.  3 Credits.  

Course provides a workshop setting for the process of creation, dramaturgy, development, analysis, and critique of graduates' and undergraduates' original performance work, focusing on the needs of each project in progress.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 661.  Race and Ethnicity.  3 Credits.  

Examines race and ethnicity in specific geopolitical contexts as discursive formations, performative identities, and lived realities. Studies disciplinary/political boundaries that are produced and maintained through acts of performance.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: GL.  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 662.  Black/African Diaspora Performance.  3 Credits.  

Recommended preparation, COMM 160. Relying on critical race theories, colonial and postcolonial theories, and theories of performance, this course engages comparative discourses of Black/African diaspora citizenship through the literature, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and cultural performances of people of African descent, particularly in Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP, GL.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 665.  Performance, Politics, and Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course is a arts-based inquiry into the ways in which performance and theatricality structure contemporary politics, culture, and everyday life, as well as the ways in which artists utilize performance as mode of political engagement.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: HI-PERFORM.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Performing Arts.  
Requisites: Prerequisites, COMM 61, 62, 63, 160, 260, 262, 263, or 464.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 666.  Media in Performance.  3 Credits.  

Required preparation, one performance studies course above COMM 400. Permission of the instructor for students lacking the required preparation. Project-based class where students acquire skills and critical approaches to create collaborative, professional, multimedia works.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: HI-PERFORM.
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP, EE- Performing Arts.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: DRAM 666.  
COMM 667.  Performance Activism.  3 Credits.  

History and practice of performance in contemporary social movements. Practical exploration of direct action, guerilla theatre, and performance interventions.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 160 or 260.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 676.  Digital Media and Live Performance.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for undergraduates. Intended for students from various majors, this course provides a foundation in the history, theory, and practice of developing live, technologically-intensive, multimedia performance works. The course analyzes new media masterworks, addresses techniques of interdisciplinary collaboration, and offers workshops in specific software/technology applications.

Rules & Requirements  
Making Connections Gen Ed: VP.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: MUSC 676.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 681.  Contemporary Film Theory.  3 Credits.  

Overview of poststructuralist, or "contemporary" film theory. Traces its development, its techniques, fierce critiques lobbed at it since the early 1980s, and its points of continuing importance.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: FC-AESTH.
Requisites: Prerequisite, ARTH 159, COMM 140, or ENGL 142; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 682.  History of the Moving Image: Pasts, Presents, Futures.  3 Credits.  

Theories of moving images and imaging technologies--from the primitive to the not-yet-existing--that focus on their multifaceted relations with various registers of time, memory, flux, and futurity.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, ARTH 159, COMM 140, or ENGL 142; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 690.  Advanced Topics in Communication Studies.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor for nonmajors. A special topics course on a selected aspect of communication studies. May be repeated. Honors version available.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics; 6 total credits. 2 total completions.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 691H.  Honors in Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor. Required of all senior honors candidates in cultural studies. First semester of senior honors thesis.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: RESEARCH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Mentored Research.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 692H.  Honors in Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor. Required of all senior honors candidates in cultural studies. Second semester of senior honors thesis.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: RESEARCH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Mentored Research.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 693H.  Honors.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the department. Majors only. Cumulative grade point average must meet University standard. Individual projects designed by students and supervised by a faculty member.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: RESEARCH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Mentored Research.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
IDEAs in Action General Education logoCOMM 694H.  Honors.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the department. Majors only. Cumulative grade point average must meet University standard. Individual projects designed by students and supervised by a faculty member.

Rules & Requirements  
IDEAs in Action General Education logo IDEAs in Action Gen Ed: RESEARCH.
Making Connections Gen Ed: EE- Mentored Research.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 695.  Field Methods.  3 Credits.  

Recommended preparation, COMM 562 or 841. A bridge course designed to offer graduate students and advanced undergraduates a practicum in fieldwork methods and performance ethnography.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  

Graduate-level Courses

NOTE: Courses are offered on demand except as otherwise noted.

COMM 700.  Introduction to Modern Philosophy and Contemporary Theory.  3 Credits.  

Considers the emergence of modern and contemporary social and cultural theory. Surveys major paradigms of modern and contemporary philosophy.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 701.  Introduction to Research and Theory in Communication Studies II.  3 Credits.  

Admission to graduate program or permission of the department. Considers theory and philosophy in the study of communication. Surveys major paradigms of contemporary social/cultural theory (and their roots in modern philosophy) in relation to examples of communication research and practice. Second of two semesters.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 702.  Teaching in Communication Studies.  3 Credits.  

Communication studies graduate students only. An introduction to teaching at the university level for new teaching assistants and graduate students hoping to have teaching-related responsibilities in communication studies. It is designed to encourage us to have intellectually rigorous and personally meaningful conversations about our teaching.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 703.  Communication and the Political.  3 Credits.  

This course is designed for students to start thinking, in a historical and foundational way, about 'the political' as defined by formative thinkers from contrasting philosophical perspectives, as well as from necessarily different social positions within the field of power.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 704.  Communication and Discourse.  3 Credits.  

This course focuses on the various ways that the problem of discourse is rendered inside and outside of Communication Studies. It examines the various modes at our disposal for thinking about discourse as a field of articulation: for example in theories of representation, mediation, and meaning making.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 705.  Communication and the Social.  3 Credits.  

This class theorizes the Social by drawing on resources inside and outside of communication studies, thinking through the implicit and explicit investments that communication scholarship has in the concept of the social.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 711.  Performance as Method.  3 Credits.  

Course introduces graduate students to performance practice as a way of knowing, an aesthetic expression, a form of pedagogy, a method of research, and a means of presenting findings. Students will develop and perform original work that creatively engages various research contexts.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 712.  The Body and Performance.  3 Credits.  

This course will explore through performance the various ways the human body is 'marked' or signified in culture.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 713.  Primary Readings in Performance Studies.  3 Credits.  

Course introduces graduate students to key texts that have informed the emergence of Performance Studies as a mode of inquiry into cultural, social, aesthetic, and political practices.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 723.  Research in Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

Explores theoretical, methodological, and practical issues encountered in ethnographic, case study, and field research on communication phenomena in organizations.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 724.  Feminism, Science, and Communication.  3 Credits.  

Critical examination of key feminist arguments about science and communication scholarship as conventionally defined; exploration of alternative goals, assumptions, and practices for research consistent with feminist theories and methodologies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 725.  Interpretive Studies in Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

Focuses on the theory and practice of interpretive organizational communication research, including organizational phenomena such as culture, metaphor, symbolism, ritual, and narrative.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 525; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 726.  Critical Studies in Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

Focuses on the theory and practice of critical organizational communication research, including organizational phenomena such as power, discourse, and culture.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 525; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 750.  Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Graduate standing required. Introduction for graduate students to the current literature and critical perspectives in the areas of media and cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 752.  Media and Social Change.  3 Credits.  

This seminar inquires into the range of relationships between media and social life, with a particular emphasis on media's role in movements for social, economic, and/or cultural transformation.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 753.  Theories of the Audience/Public.  3 Credits.  

This course offers a sustained analysis of the ways in which the media, audience, and/or public have been variously conceptualized historically, in critical theory.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 754.  Political, Institutional, and Economic Contexts of Media and Culture.  3 Credits.  

A detailed analysis of the relationship between government, policy making, corporate and business interests, and various theoretical approaches to their impact on media and culture. Fall.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 700.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 755.  History of Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

This class introduces cultural studies through its British 'origins,' especially but not only the work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies and the Open University.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 756.  National, International, Transnational, and Global Movie/Media History.  3 Credits.  

Explores the economic, social, ideological, technological, and aesthetic development of film and television as international, transnational, transcultural, and global entities, questioning the viability of the concept of national cinema/media in the 21st century.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 758.  Studies in Film and Television.  3 Credits.  

Graduate introduction to the study of film, television, and video. This course traces the theoretical and methodological development of media studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 761.  Adaptation Seminar.  3 Credits.  

This seminar recognizes and applies narrative theory in understanding texts, lives, and cultural practice broadly.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 769.  Topics in Performance Studies.  3 Credits.  

Second-year graduate students and/or permission of the instructor. Special problems in performance studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 770.  History of Rhetoric I.  3 Credits.  

A critical survey of the history of rhetoric, focusing on Classical theories of rhetoric from Greece and Rome through the Medieval period.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 771.  History of Rhetoric II.  3 Credits.  

A critical survey of the history of rhetoric, focusing on theories of rhetoric from the Renaissance through the 19th century.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 772.  Seminar in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory.  3 Credits.  

A critical survey of the history of rhetoric focusing on rhetorical theory from the 20th century to the present.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 774.  Visual and Material Rhetorics.  3 Credits.  

Addresses conceptual and practical issues in the rhetorical analysis and criticism of visual and material objects, practices, and events.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 790.  Seminar in Kenneth Burke.  3 Credits.  

Seminar is an in-depth analysis of the writings of Kenneth Burke, concentrating on primary source materials.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 792.  Philosophy of Communication and Culture.  3 Credits.  

Considers the history of and developments in the philosophy of communication and culture, as well as the role these concepts have played in western philosophy.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 700.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 798.  Topics in Research Methods.  3 Credits.  

Advanced study of selected topics in research methods. Topics vary.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 811.  Rhetorical Criticism.  3 Credits.  

Investigates the function of rhetorical criticism, the critical method, and a variety of approaches to the performance of rhetorical criticism.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 571; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisite.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 812.  Practicum in Rhetorical Criticism.  3 Credits.  

Focuses on practice in writing rhetorical criticism and on mid-range theoretical concepts that inform critical analysis and argument.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 815.  Technology, Culture, & Power.  3 Credits.  

This graduate seminar will serve as an advanced introduction to critical studies of modern technological systems. Drawing upon the fields of communication studies, science and technology studies, cultural studies, geography, anthropology, sociology, and gender studies, seminar participants will investigate the role of technologies in shaping social worlds and producing political orders. Attention will be given to the social construction of technological systems, the politics of mediation and resistance, and the encodings of power relations.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 820.  Critical Ethnic Studies (CES): New Perspectives.  3 Credits.  

This course is devised to provide graduate students interested in theoretical interdisciplinary work with a sense of prevailing questions and critiques important to CES. CES takes on the more difficult questions of intersectional work, as it thinks through sovereignty and emancipation, identity and ontology, place, space and temporality. Each iteration of the course works itself through new perspectives in the field, challenging students to create new methodologies for their own work.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: AMST 820, WGST 820.  
COMM 822.  Seminar in Family Communication.  3 Credits.  

This course is an advanced seminar in which students may study family communication and produce original research.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 824.  Seminar in Feminist Studies in Communication.  3 Credits.  

This course compares and critically evaluates the work of major feminist scholars in the field of communication. Spring.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 722.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 825.  Seminar in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication.  3 Credits.  

A variable topic seminar that permits faculty and graduate students the opportunity to explore significant historical and emerging issues in the field of communication.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 841.  Performance Ethnography.  3 Credits.  

This seminar focuses on methods of ethnography and fieldwork ethics. Performance as theory and practice informs methodological inquiries as well as the analysis of specific ethnographic texts and case studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: FOLK 841.  
COMM 842.  Seminar in Performance and Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

This course focuses on performance-related issues in the emergent field of cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: FOLK 842.  
COMM 843.  Seminar in Contemporary Performance Theory.  3 Credits.  

An advanced graduate seminar, this course will address recent developments and problems in performance theory. It will consider cross- and multidisciplinary approaches to performance as sites for consideration and debate.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: FOLK 843.  
COMM 844.  Seminar in Performance and History.  3 Credits.  

This course explores diverse relations among performance and history, including the performance of life histories, the use of spectacle in history, everyday performances of historical protocols, and performance itself as an historical construct.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 845.  The Political Economy of Performance.  3 Credits.  

This course examines social relations, particularly power relations, by focusing on resistance as performance and the performance of resistance arising from the dynamics and conflicts within specific locations of a political economy.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 846.  Performance Pedagogy.  3 Credits.  

Draped in the political, economic, and domestic histories of western culture our current pedagogies still point out the world that matters to each new generation. We will study these pedagogies from the perspectives of institutions, economies, and human relationships they simultaneously reflect and work to transform.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 849.  Seminar in Culture and Identity.  3 Credits.  

This course looks at issues of the representation and production of identity, subjectivity, and agency - in various forms - in the practices of media.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 850.  Seminar in Media Studies.  3 Credits.  

Selected problems in media aesthetics. Exact topic to be covered is announced before classes begin.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 851.  Research Methods in Media and Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Graduate standing required. Introduction to the issues, methods, and materials of research in media and cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 852.  Seminar in the History of Media.  3 Credits.  

Application of historical research techniques to problems in the mass media. Exact topic is announced before classes begin. May be repeated.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 853.  Seminar in Popular Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course will look at special topics in the study of popular culture. Designed for advanced graduate studies, it will consider critical responses to existing scholarship with original research.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 854.  Seminar in Media Difference.  3 Credits.  

This seminar explores critical theories of difference and puts them into dialogue with media representations of difference.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 855.  Seminar in Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

This class explores the impact of some developments in postmodernism - as an interpretive, historical, and philosophical discourse on the possible development of cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 755.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 856.  Seminar in Communication Technology.  3 Credits.  

Examines new communication technologies, their spatial and social diffusion, and how these relate to theories of culture, politics, and technology and the real-world contexts in which technologies are received. May be repeated.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 700.  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 857.  Seminar in Cultural Studies and Popular Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course will focus on specific topics, issues, or queries of popular culture as these have been or can be studied within cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Requisites: Prerequisite, COMM 700.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 858.  Seminar in Feminist Studies of Film and Television.  3 Credits.  

Graduate standing required. This graduate seminar explores theoretical and practical points of contact between feminism, film, and television using psychoanalysis, narrative analysis, ideological analysis, and cultural studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
Same as: WGST 858.  
COMM 859.  Seminar in Media and Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

This course, designed for advanced graduate students, will explore specialized topics in interpretive, critical, and cultural research in media studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 860.  Aesthetics and Communication.  3 Credits.  

Explores how theories of aesthetics have struggled with notions of beauty, value, pleasure, and pain in the human communicative experience.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 873.  Rhetoric and Black Culture.  3 Credits.  

This course will examine the manner in which Black aesthetic and intellectual expressions and controversies function as public discourse in cultural politics.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 874.  Rhetorics of Space and Place.  3 Credits.  

Considers place in relation to space and time. Primary concentration on implications of theorizing place as communicative practice rather than communicative context.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 875.  Rhetoric and Public Memory.  3 Credits.  

Addresses the fundamentally rhetorical character of public memory. Analyzes theoretical presuppositions about memory. Openings for rhetorizing memory.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 879.  Topics in Rhetorical and Cultural Studies.  3 Credits.  

Special problems in rhetorical and cultural studies. May be repeated.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 900.  Research Practicum.  1-3 Credits.  

Permission of the internship coordinator. Individualized practical experience supervised by a faculty advisor and by the departmental coordinator of internships. May be repeated.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 901.  Directed Research.  3 Credits.  

Permission of the instructor. Individual research on a problem defined by the graduate student and graduate faculty member in conference. May be repeated.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit; may be repeated in the same term for different topics.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 907.  Research Practicum in Communication Studies.  3 Credits.  

Individualized practical research.

Rules & Requirements  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 909.  Proseminar in Professional Development.  1 Credits.  

This course advances graduate students' exposure to academic resources and common norms, practices, and procedures related to academic professionalism in Communication Studies.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit. 2 total credits. 2 total completions.  
Grading Status: Letter grade.  
COMM 992.  Master's (Non-Thesis).  3 Credits.  

Focuses on the development of a master's project or a major paper other than a thesis.

Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   
COMM 993.  Master's Research and Thesis.  3 Credits.  
Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   
COMM 994.  Doctoral Research and Dissertation.  3 Credits.  
Rules & Requirements  
Repeat Rules: May be repeated for credit.   

Department of Communication

Visit Program Website

Chair

Avi Santo

asanto@unc.edu

Director of Graduate Studies

Tony Perucci

perucci@unc.edu

Director of Graduate Admissions

Michael Palm

mpalm@email.unc.edu