Undergraduate Course Descriptions

Stories are a powerful communication tool that can be used to entertain, connect, inform, and inspire. Stories also play varied and vital roles in communication research. This course explores the relationship between storytelling, inquiry, and knowledge production. Engaging with interdisciplinary and multi-modal scholarship, students will learn how stories can be used to formulate and answer research questions, shape and share knowledge, and create meaningful change. Students will develop foundational knowledge in a variety of qualitative methods (e.g., interviewing, observation, textual analysis), and foster their skills producing accessible, ethical, critical, and creative research.

What is the “Black” in Black journalism? How do questions about “Blackness” complicate how we think about and study journalism globally, locally, and especially in the city in which we live? This course provides: 1) an overview of theories about journalism’s relationship to race; 2) varied perspectives on how Black journalists have thought about and practiced journalism in their specific social and political contexts; 3) an opportunity to consider what this all means for Black journalists and for journalism in Philadelphia. The course is ideal for students who want to be more critical news consumers and/or media makers and provides opportunities to learn about diverse approaches to journalistic practice that center Black media makers and audiences. In addition to weekly analysis of relevant scholarship, news, and popular materials, we will engage with local journalists and news media institutions throughout the semester. For their final assignment, students will be able to choose between submitting a paper or a multimedia project.

This course begins with the question: what do images do in the world? Images can be interpreted, read, and decoded. Their meanings also shift, as images are mobile, fluid, and plastic objects, taking on a life of their own as they circulate. Images operate in diverse media ecologies, as photographs and advertisements, in films and videos. They are reproduced on multiple media technologies including TV, cinema, and the internet. Images can further ideologies including but not limited to colonialism, nationalism, imperialism, producing racialized, sexualized, classed, and gendered differences. At the same time, images are mutable forces and can be bent for purposes of self-fashioning as well as disrupting, subverting, and exposing structures of power. Through close readings, assignments and in-class activities, students in this class will learn to critically evaluate and contextualize images both historically and in contemporary forms of circulation. Students will develop a nuanced understanding of images as potent objects of communication with powerful political and social effects, and of the ways in which people incorporate them in daily practices.

How does the environment factor into the production, design, and use of media technologies and infrastructures? How does media shape the way we think about the natural environment? How do we make our media sustainable in an era of climate change? This interdisciplinary course explores the relationship between humans, media technologies, and the environment. Students will learn how the more-than-human world shapes communication technologies, from beacon fires and carrier pigeons to telegraph cables, radio, fiber optics, and satellites. We will begin the course by highlighting the role of media infrastructures in today’s global ecological crisis. We will then trace our steps backward, from the endpoint of e-waste, through the applications and impacts of media on and in the environment, to the elements and minerals that are the foundation of media technologies. Classes will combine short lectures, student-led discussions of the readings, local field trips, and demonstrations of multimodal scholarship, critical art practice, and activism that interrogate the concerns of each week’s theme. These alternative ways of thinking, organizing, and doing will enable students to consider the role of media in the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch defined by human impact.

When we move through urban spaces, we are always both “reading” and “writing" the city. We read the built environment and the social uses of space within it, decoding messages about where and how to move, about who or what is (un)welcome and (un)valued, about historical trajectories and future possibilities, and about identity and power. A multitude of actors co-write the city and its messages, from powerful players like municipal governments, corporations, and cultural institutions to grassroots organizations, residents, and visitors, and onward to platforms, algorithms, and global flows of capital, goods, and ideas. This course invites students to 1) explore the practices and organizations that communicate about and through cities (e.g. city diplomacy and city branding, urban planning and place-making, sports and mega-events, local journalism, community organizing); 2) interrogate how the urban built environment itself communicates (e.g. through architecture, (in)accessible design, signage and murals, the aesthetics of gentrification); and 3) examine how communication networks shape city life (e.g. platform urbanism, smart city tech, policing and surveillance). Power, inequality, and the opportunities for challenging them will be core themes throughout. We will study key theories for thinking critically about cities and for imagining more just urban futures. And we will learn from the practical, timely insights and experiences of guest speakers from Philadelphia and beyond.

How can playing games intervene in socioeconomic and cultural systems at a global scale? By engaging with critical scholarly readings and gameplay sessions, students in this course will become familiar with the methods and theories for investigating both gaming cultures and theories of globalization. Class discussions will explore the political stakes of communicating and simulating global issues (such as colonialism, migration, warfare, or climate change) through the medium of games. In addition to weekly assignments, students will pursue a semester-long project that includes choosing a social issue of importance to them, researching it in-depth, and producing a creative intervention that explains how that issue could be addressed through games. No prior experience with gaming is needed, but a willingness to spend several hours of the semester playing games and thinking critically about them is necessary.

This course invites students to explore the performance of identity on social media apps. We begin by tracing the emergence of the idea of an individual self in early modern Europe and examine two competing ideals in particular: authenticity and self-possession. We will then look to the rise of consumer culture, alongside new visual and electronic media, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as crucial context for a “performing” self to emerge. The balance of the course will focus on the online self, from the emergence of the internet to today’s social media era and its multiple forms of managed self-disclosure, from blogs to tweets, from reels to videos. We will explore changing definitions of public and private, algorithmic memory, emotional labor in the workplace, gender and sexuality, and the economics of sharing. A major question the course will pose throughout: How do users balance (or blend) competing demands to be authentic and to promote oneself strategically?

This course examines various images and performances of gender in media focusing on the late 20th century to the present. Using theories from cultural and media studies, film and gender studies, and communication studies, we will explore different processes and practices of gender, specifically in terms of media representations of femininity, masculinity, and other genders. The purpose of the course is to gain insight into the ways in which gender, and its intersections with race, ethnicity, and class, is enacted, represented, and has an impact on cultural formations and communication. We will explore the socio-cultural mechanisms that shape our individual and collective notions of identity and essentially teach us what it means to be gendered masculine or feminine or align with other identifications. The media plays a major role in "constructing" gender, and popular views of what “appropriate” gendering is, in turn, shape how we communicate with each other. In examining cultural myths about gender as well as ongoing debates on gender construction, we will consider how gender is tied in with notions of power, identity, voice, and other defining identity categories (race, socio-economic status, sexuality, etc.) Throughout the course, we will examine a variety of media forms, from film to television to streaming platforms, as well as social media such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

Advertising, it has been observed, is capitalism’s way of saying “I love you” to itself. In this discussion-based course, you will explore what that might mean, for you and for society—to live in a culture that puts buying and selling at its center. Together we will trace how, over a hundred years ago, advertisers began to pair a vision of the good life with a promise to grow the economy. In the century since the advertising industry has co-evolved with, and underwritten, the media we consume—from radio to the internet—helping to drive, even shape, the technologies and businesses that entertain and inform us. In the course, you and your classmates will study advertisers—who they are, what they make, and how their business has changed—alongside the rest of us, in our roles as consumers and (more recently) proprietors of our own self-brands. Along the way we will consider how advertising and consumer culture has spilled over into politics, activism, and the environment. Is there a logic of promotion that connects how we think of ourselves with the lifestyle dreamscapes packaged by the industry? What, if anything, do colorful 1920s magazine ads have to do with the link-in-bio self-selling of our contemporary social media culture? We will consider such questions against the backdrop of recent developments, including data-driven target marketing and the rise of programmatic ads.

This course is an exploration of dialogue across difference through three lenses: theoretical, practical, and representational. Rather than prescribe a particular model of what dialogue should look like and accomplish, the course exposes students to a diverse range of ideas, narratives, and practices related to dialogue. By the end of the course, you’ll have begun to develop and apply your own working theory and model of dialogue that is aligned with your values and meaningful for the kinds of work you are most invested in doing personally, professionally, or academically.

This course surveys how religious groups interact with media, and how media texts and institutions have played a role in defining religions. The intersections between media and religion are numerous, from the mediated growth of national identities, the rise of online religious extremism, the ingroup/outgroup dynamics within and among religious groups, and the ways in which media is used to legitimize/delegitimize theological positions. We examine how media institutions have played a role in propping up religious norms (both explicitly and implicitly) and the shaping of religious identities. This course looks at media as both enforcer and disruptor, as well as the ways in which religions have been challenged by those with media literacy and access. The evolution of religious practice and social norms can also be linked with technological innovations such as the mass distribution of Bibles in the 15th and 16th century thanks to the printing press, the rise of radio and television messiahs in the 20th century, and the individualization of religious practices through new apps.

This course examines the main sociological theories and concepts in the analysis of revolutions, popular protest, and social movements. Special attention will be given to three theoretical traditions: resource mobilization, political process, and cultural analysis. We will study narratives, symbols, performances, and old and new media forms in the construction of identities and solidarities and the mobilization of publics. Historical and contemporary cases from the U.S. and around the world will be examined. This course fulfills Foundational Approaches Cross Cultural Analysis.

This course covers Chinese media, culture, and society from the 1970s to the present. It examines the causes and consequences of social and institutional transformation, with an emphasis on civic engagement, cultural change, and the impact of digital media. In analyzing these developments, the course pays special attention to historical contexts and draws on concepts and theories from sociology, communication, and related fields. The course helps students develop nuanced and sophisticated approaches to the understanding of contemporary Chinese media, culture and society, and cross-cultural phenomena more broadly. This course fulfills Foundational Approaches Cross Cultural Analysis.

This course examines the science of joy as a psychological, cultural, and communicative phenomenon, with an emphasis on how joy can be intentionally designed and cultivated in personal, professional, and social contexts. We will explore the role of joy in human well-being, its potential as an intervention for trauma and grief, and its application in leadership, policymaking, and digital media. Through an interdisciplinary lens, students will analyze the motivations behind joy-seeking behaviors, including self-care, manifestation, social connection, and cultural identity. The course will also investigate how various forms of media—such as social media, entertainment, advertising, and digital storytelling—shape our perceptions of happiness and influence emotional well-being. By engaging with empirical research, real-world case studies, and hands-on user research methods, students will develop (1) a broad understanding of how joy is constructed, communicated, and experienced across different communities and (2) the conceptual and methodological tools to evaluate and design experiences that foster joy in media, technology, and everyday life.

This course examines the construction of masculinity in American and global media, highlighting how masculinity developed in parallel to social, cultural, economic, and political norms. Using case studies and multiple theoretical approaches, we will seek to understand how constructions of masculinity across the world have served to uphold – or challenge – the status quo. Analysis of individual texts across time periods and different cultural contexts will also help us better come to terms with the idea of masculinity – and its proliferation across media platforms. This course fulfills Foundational Approaches Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

Our worlds are infused with communication—our personal and professional lives, our lives online and offline. We have so many communication outlets and platforms that it is difficult to break through the clutter, to find our own positions and possibilities, to think critically about who and what influences us and why. Yet, it has never been more important to do this kind of work, to listen to varied viewpoints, to take different perspectives, and to be empathetic to those who have differing ideas. This course asks what it means to listen critically, and to think about how communication technologies shape, reshape, and affect fundamental questions about democratic practice and ideals. We will explore what it means to “critically listen” to others, in the context of not only politics, but also friendship, culture, and our social lives.

Since the mid-20th century, the telenovelas, newscasts, and variety shows produced by Televisa in the capital city of Mexico have traveled across the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. In the first half of the course, we analyze this history by considering how technological developments, industry practices, and programming trends resonated across different countries, as well as how audiences created (or resisted) a sense of “Latin American” identity through their television consumption practices. In the second half of the course, we look at the current state of television as it has been shaped by globalization, digital media, and new social movements. In particular, we are concerned with how streaming platforms such as Netflix have (and have not) disrupted longstanding practices while introducing new ideas into the television mediascape. Course content will consist of reading economic, social, and cultural studies of television and analyzing the content of a few historically significant TV shows and some newer Netflix original series. This course is a Penn Global Seminar, which includes a travel component.

This course will prepare students to design and conduct qualitative research projects that seek to understand the social life of digital technologies and digital media. Students will learn about inductive research design and key qualitative methods such as interviewing, ethnography, and content analysis. We will also explore the ethical challenges of research in digital worlds. This qualitative methods course will equip students to analyze interaction in digital media environments, with apps, and elsewhere in everyday life.

If we were to fashion new laws for speech from scratch in our media-saturated, fake news world, would they be different laws from those we have? The rootedness of free speech in our civic DNA springs from enduring philosophical arguments over what truth and knowledge are, what human nature is like, and what we think society owes to and requires from its members. We explore foundational debates at the core of the First Amendment, the evolving interpretation of the amendment by the Supreme Court, its determined historical challengers, and struggles over its applicability to contemporary controversies. We address strong claims that unfettered speech is central to democratic societies and strong claims that society can be made more democratic by removing discriminatory speech from social media and public discourse more generally. Every society limits speech in significant ways. What are these limits in the United States, why are these the limits, and are they the ones we want? This reading and discussion seminar meets for lively, informed dialogue and debate. This is an SNF Paideia Program course.

The police are one of the most heavily imagined institutions in American popular culture. From Cagney and Lacey to Colors, Law & Order, The Wire and The Watchmen, evolving depictions of law enforcement help us to understand larger socio-cultural shifts that have occurred from the post-1968 riots to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement in the mid-2010s and police abolition in the early 2020s. Using case study and textual analysis approaches, students will examine how specific police procedurals, movies, and other cultural texts showcase police authority in relation to certain communities, and consider how these texts reflect, uphold and/or challenge prevailing views on law and order and criminal justice. Our explorations of how media and cultural industries have framed policing will pay particular attention to questions of power, race, gender, sexuality, class, and geography. These explorations will also include learning about and learning to dialogue, given the diverse – and often contentious – views about policing in America. Students will have an opportunity to interact with speakers representing different positions that relate to mediated perceptions -- as well as lived experiences of -- policing. Class assignments and activities will enhance students' abilities to productively discuss complex issues that are frequently sanitized or homogenized within U.S. popular culture. This is an SNF Paideia Program course. This course fulfills Foundational Approaches Cultural Diversity in the U.S.

Living with surveillance has become a predictable feature of contemporary life. From work to school to online dating, surveillance shapes many facets of our daily behaviors and activities. What can feminist theory bring to questions of surveillance? How have feminist tactics been used to resist surveillance? And can surveillance ever be a form of feminist caregiving? In the first part of this course, we analyze different forms of feminist thinking, including Black feminism, indigenous feminism, crip feminism and more. From there, we turn to legal, political, cultural and activist case studies related to surveillance. Putting them together, we consider how feminist frameworks can help us to analyze practices and technologies of surveillance. This is an interdisciplinary course that brings together internet studies, queer theory, science and technology studies, human computing interaction, surveillance studies and cultural studies in order to understand the social and historical dimensions of feminism and surveillance.

From the earliest message boards and email chains, the internet has given people a way to connect, not just digitally but sexually. Porn, online dating, sex education: digital technology has made it easier for people to find each other and explore sexuality, but these same tools have also been used in relationships that are exploitative and criminal. In this course, we look at the different connections between sex, gender, queerness and the internet: changing policies regulating sex (like FOSTA and SESTA), the platforms that have created controversies around sex (for example, craigslist, tumblr and Grindr) and shifting norms around how sex and sexuality manifest online. This is an interdisciplinary course that brings together internet studies, queer theory, and cultural studies in order to understand the social and historical dimensions of sex, sexuality and digital technologies.

This course aims to provide students with a critical understanding of journalism. It combines theoretical perspectives on the making of news with primary source material produced by and about journalists. Students analyze theoretical material on journalism – about how news is made, shaped, and performed – alongside articles and broadcasts appearing in the media, interviews with journalists in the trade press, and professional reviews. Topics include models of journalistic practice, journalistic values and norms, gatekeeping and sourcing practices, storytelling formats in news, and ethical problems related to misrepresentation, plagiarism, and celebrity.

This course explores theories, debates, and frameworks in African American popular culture. Drawing on Africana, Gender and Sexuality, Communications and Performance Studies, it examines histories of Black representation across a number of performance forms. Television, film, dance, theater, music and more will be explored to interrogate the ways blackness has been defined, framed, and disseminated. What are the micro-politics through which racial difference is produced? How have Black people redefined and wrestled with questions of authenticity and "the real"? What are the capacities and the limits of popular culture to both render and shape Black life? In examining blackness through a number of performance mediums, we will consider the creative labor that Black people produce, and the processes of racialization produced through Black bodies.

In this applied media history course, students will work with the HBO Oral History Project, a series of 38 wide-ranging interviews with key figures in the channel’s creation and early development. Working in groups, students will research, script, record, and edit a series of podcast episodes, using audio extracted from the project. Readings and screenings on television history, the emergence of cable in the 1970s, and HBO in particular will be combined with readings, guest lectures, and audio on the development of podcasting as a distinctive medium. The course will rotate between two modes. The television and podcasting history components of the course will be conducted as a discussion-based seminar. In the applied workshop mode, students will be exposed to podcasting best practices, equipment, and software. Over the course of the semester, students will develop and produce standalone podcast episodes, linked by themes established in discussion. No prior podcasting or audio-editing experience is required.

This seminar examines how media represent the lives and journeys of people who migrate from the Global South. We explore how migrant stories are framed and circulated across different media networks and we address how public perceptions of migrants shift based on factors such as gender, race, class, and disability. We also consider the affordances and pitfalls of heightened visibility when migrants turn to new media to represent themselves and advocate for rights and recognition. Course materials will include different types of non-fiction media (documentaries, news reports, online content, social media posts) created by a variety of stakeholders (e.g. corporate newsrooms, governments, NGOs, migration activists).

This course has two aims. First, assuming that communications are central to any society, it situates media systems within larger national and international social relationships and political structures. Second, this course critically examines the structures of the communication systems themselves, including ownership, profit imperatives, support mechanisms such as advertising and public relations, and the ideologies and government policies that sustain these arrangements. Considering case studies ranging from traditional news and entertainment media to new digital and social media, the course provides a comprehensive survey of the major texts in this vibrant sub-field of media studies.

Global media industries have long been fascinated with the idea of the apocalypse, particularly humanity's attempts at survival against (seemingly) mindless hordes. Whether in the form of zombies or infected masses, cultural industries' preoccupation with humankind's collapse - and potential resilience - has led to lucrative film, comic, and television franchise universes. Using texts from around the world, including - but not limited to - The Night of the Living Dead, The Walking Dead, Black Mirror, Reality Z, Dead Set, KL Zombie, The Road, Ravenous, Bird Box, Train to Busan, Kingdom, Adventure Time, and The Girl with all the Gifts, this course invites students to explore the ways in which media and cultural industries seek to define human existence through the Otherness of the undead/infected. Central to the course will be an examination of the ways in which post-apocalyptic portrayals of human survival amidst rampaging hordes include important commentaries and subtexts about race, gender, power, and class, as well as the connections to a political moment or era.

This course invites students to explore the enduring power of ritual in modern life. We will study rituals that unfold at the local level (prayers, proms, parades) as well as those that most of us experience only via the media (Oscars, Super Bowls, Inaugurations). We will examine how rituals forge and strengthen social connections within and across communities and how they create and communicate boundaries between "us" and "them" and between "desirable" and "deviant" behaviors. We will explore how rituals both resist and contribute to social change, consider the role of media and technology in shaping contemporary ritual practices, and examine the creativity of ritual participants. In this interactive course, students will gain hands-on research experience conducting original fieldwork on rituals of their choosing. They will learn how to interpret the language of ritual and how to develop and present compelling research proposals.

This course offers an overview of media, culture, and society in contemporary South Asia and the South Asian diaspora worldwide. Engaging with a diversity of media forms and cultures across the subcontinent – Hindi and regional-language cinemas, television, podcasts, social media platforms, and streaming video – we will explore what the histories of media technologies and the production, circulation, and consumption of media reveal about cultural and political developments in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora worldwide. Readings and assignments are designed to help students situate media technologies, forms, and artifacts in relation to broader political-economic, social, and cultural issues involving nationalism, religion, caste, gender, and sexuality. This course fulfills Foundational Approaches Cross Cultural Analysis.

This course is designed to build a critical foundation for understanding the interplay of digital technologies and society and the important role of advocates in this space. Providing an overview of the history, students will investigate and critique contemporary emergent technologies in a social context, and explore their use in advocacy efforts. The course uses interactive lecture, discussion, readings, and guest speakers from technologists in the field.

This course examines the communication strategies of 20th and 21st-century social movements, both U.S. and global. We analyze the communication social movements create (including rhetorical persuasion, art activism, bodily argumentation, protest music, media campaigns, public protest, and grassroots organizing), and the role of communication in the identity formation, circulation, and efficacy of social movements. We also consider the communication created by forces seeking to undermine social change, define the study of social movements from a communication perspective, identify major historical and contemporary movements, and apply theories of communication and social change to “real world” activism. Students are required to research and design their own social movement campaign.

The phenomenal expansion of digital media infrastructures and platforms are transforming the production, promotion, and circulation of films, television programs, music, video games, and other media entertainment and popular cultural forms. Moreover, media artifacts routinely move across national borders with audiences playing an increasingly participatory role. This course focuses on the operations, discourses, and logics that drive contemporary media industries in major media capitals around the world including Mumbai, Seoul, Istanbul, Mexico City, Dubai, and Los Angeles. Taking a historical approach, we will examine the economic, political, and socio-cultural factors that shape developments in the media industries, relationships between powerful centers of media and cultural production, and the ways in which industry professionals respond to the challenges and opportunities of digitalization and new geo-political alignments in the 21st century.

Digital information and communication technologies are intertwined with our everyday lives, from banking, to working, and dating. They’re also increasingly crucial parts of our most powerful institutions, from policing, to the welfare state, and education. This course examines the ways that these technologies combine with traditional axes of inequality like race, gender, and class in ways that may deepen social inequality. We’ll consider major approaches to understanding digital inequalities and apply them to case studies of both problems and solutions. Students will learn to critically analyze policies and programs from a variety of perspectives, and to evaluate the promise of digital technologies against their potential perils.

Media institutions have long played a central role in constructing national identity, particularly in the era of nation-states. As globalization increases, media industries have also helped countries project their national identities – and nationalism – for both domestic and international audiences. With contemporary nationalist movements in the spotlight, this course examines how media institutions and cultural industries help to shape nationalism while framing in-group/out-group dynamics for audiences. This course examines case studies in mediated nationalism, paying particularly close attention to – but not limited to - countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Hungary, Israel, India, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Ukraine. Using Benedict Anderson’s idea of imagined communities as a theoretical basis, this course seeks to investigate how media industries affirm – and occasionally challenge – nationalistic sentiment, and how much of a role state intervention has played in the production of media texts. This course provides students with an understanding of the deep connection between media institutions and state-sponsored/populist nationalist movements, as well as the dynamics that shape nationalism in both wartime and peacetime eras. This course will also help students engage in constructive dialogue on the impact of nationalism domestically and internationally, while interacting with scholarship and speakers representing a wide range of viewpoints. Students will have an opportunity to learn more nuanced understandings about the ways in which nationalism and media intersect, reflecting the ideological, social, geographic diversity of what it means to be a part of community and nation. This is an SNF Paideia Program course.

This course will explore the ways in which media companies, advertisers, and the ratings and/or analytics firms they hire (Nielsen, ComScore, Liveramp, 84.51°, Experian etc.) count, track, estimate, and label the people who make up their audiences. The descriptions they present are industrial constructions in the sense that they are portrayals of population segments and individuals that are based on data; they may or may not reflect the views that the populations or individuals have of themselves. The class will explore how internet giants such as Google, smaller internet firms such as The New York Times, multimedia companies such as NBC-Universal, connected TV manufacturers such as Vizio, and supermarkets such as Kroger construct their audiences. We will discuss the controversies such activities engender, and the possible implications the industrial constructions of audiences have for society as well as media industries.