How do we talk about “health?” How should important health information be delivered? Can we really create healthy behaviors through targeted communication? In the first half of the semester, students will be introduced to issues in doctor-patient interaction, social and cultural perspectives on health, mass media representations of healthy and risky behaviors, and communication within health organizations. In the second half of the semester, students will develop health communication campaigns designed to address real-world health problems through the application of health communication theory and research.

Introduction to and analysis of literary, sensory, technical, genre-based, and production aspects of film. This will largely be accomplished via film clips and reaction papers. A cohesive study of entire films presented in long papers will culminate the course.

A survey of the historical development and contemporary issues of both print and non-print media with a focus on mass media as it pertains to our digital world today. This course is a deliberate review of basic communication theory and seeks to comprehend the historical contexts of major mass media entities while developing a capacity for strategic thinking when considering media.

This course investigates the relationship of women and media through film, television, magazines, news, politics, advertising, and the internet. Media, collectively, are full of narratives and intents seeking audiences and attention. However, media literacy as it pertains to women is very much about who or what is driving those stories and the cultural impact they leave upon us. The ultimate goal is to determine if there are women in media today who are self-actualized enough to transcend stereotyping and exploitation and what our cultural response is to such women.

This class will investigate the history and evolution of the road movie in American film while simultaneously considering the genre’s reflection on America and its ever-changing social and cultural landscape.

An examination of the role of communication media in the context of changing global realities. The course examines the theoretical underpinnings of understanding multiculturalism and the effect of the processes that constitute difference as we define it. The course explores the multicultural practices, theories, polices, normative models, relationships between media and society, and the production of cultural diversity. (Fulfills the required course for the Global Studies Minor)

The purpose of this course is to expand your understanding of intercultural communication and the practical applications of such knowledge to intercultural relations and cross-cultural communication. To this extent, we will analyze issues connected to the conceptualization of culture and the importance intercultural communication has for your personal life; we will examine verbal and nonverbal messages in intercultural communication; and finally, we will focus on intercultural communication in several contexts, such as organizational, interpersonal, or media. By the end of the course, you should have gained a better understanding of the values, beliefs, and behaviors of people from other cultures, as well as your own. In addition, you will have gained new skills that permit you to analyze quotidian events from an intercultural perspective and to communicate in a culturally effective manner with people from other cultures.

Introduces students to tools, vocabulary, and techniques used to tell a screen story and take an original idea to outline form. Students become familiar with screenwriting terminology as scenes from well-known films are analyzed to reveal structural elements in the writing. By the end of the course, students have developed an original idea into a detailed short-length screenplay.

Students will take the screenplays from COM 232 and learn all of the production attributes of film necessary to bring those screenplays to life in the form of 10-20 minutes films.

An introduction to the contemporary memoir and the related genres of life writing, the autobiographical essay, the personal essay, etc. The course will require a balance of reading well-known contemporary authors as well as working on our own essays, including weekly writing, sharing, editing, and providing feedback to others. Topics covered will include defining memoir, the nature of memory and truth, how to make our life experiences accessible to readers, form, scene, character, voice details, and methods for critique and revision. Students will also document their writing process through memos, drafts, and a final portfolio project.