Media Studies is an intercollegiate major offered jointly by Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps Colleges, together forming Intercollegiate Media Studies (IMS). Media Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field that emphasizes the cultural and historical importance of media and focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of texts and representations, which are analyzed in terms of aesthetics, meanings, and uses. IMS at the Claremont Colleges is one of the first undergraduate programs in the United States to combine theory, history, and practice, integrating critical studies and media production.
IMS provides rigorous interdisciplinary training, enabling our students to learn how to analyze diverse media forms and the power relations that undergird them, and to ethically express their knowledge through critical scholarship, community-engagement, and creative media practice. The IMS major draws from anthropology, art history, cinema and film studies, communications, cultural studies, English, gender and feminist studies, performance studies, photography, postcolonial and transnational studies, queer studies, sound studies, and the visual arts The major prepares students for graduate work and careers in teaching, art, entertainment, digital media, and the non-profit sector.
Pitzer Advisers: E. Affuso, G. Lamb, J. Lerner, M-Y. Ma, R. Talmor.
Student Learning Outcomes
Successful majors in media studies will realize the following goals:
- Engage with a commitment to community-based, local/global media production
- Comprehend relationship of theory, history & practice
- Engage with a commitment to non-traditional, non-industrial forms
- Develop wide-ranging knowledge of media forms
- Foster meaningful relationships to other disciplines
- Participate in the creation of a media arts community through curatorial and distribution practices, and community involvement. Preparation for a life of media practice.
