Intercollegiate Media Studies

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their adventure fantasies about lost cities of gold and their fears about savage jungles and Indians. From a historical perspective, this course interrogates the creation of Amazonia from the nineteenth-century rubber boom to contemporary environmental campaigns. We analyze visual images, explorers’ accounts, ethnographies, novels, films, advertisements and environmental campaigns. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world. Instructor: S. Sarzynski [Elective]

Analyzes the relationship between the political decision makers and the news media. Topics include: the structure and organization of print and electronic media; forms of political journalism, such as investigative reporting and commentary; ways by which political figures try to influence the news; the impact of news stories on public opinion. Instructor: Pitney [Elective]

This course examines Korean history, politics, culture, and society through analysis of their representation in contemporary Korean cinema. This course will follow the history of Korea chronologically from Yi Dynasty to the present, focusing on topics such as Confucianism, the Colonial period, nationalism, the Korean War, national division, military government, democratic movements, and urbanization. The focus of the class will be equally distributed between the films themselves and the historical time and people captured on these films. Knowledge of Korean is not required. Instructor: M. Kim [Elective]

An intensive hands-on course in feature writing styles and journalistic ethics; a primer for writing in today’s urban America. Essentially, journalism, like all art, tells a story. How that story is told is as critical to the success of a piece as the importance of its theme. A series of writing exercises and reporting “assignments” will give both inexperienced and more advanced writers the tools to explore their writerly “voice.” Special attention will be devoted to discussions of the role of the journalist in society. Instructor: Staff [Elective]

A seminar-workshop on the theory and practice of writing screenplays. We will view films and read scripts in a variety of genres, examine the roles of art, craft, and commerce in writing for film, and discuss in general the enterprise of being a writer. Each student will make substantial progress in the writing of an original screenplay. Instructor: Staff [Elective]

From the time of the conquest, the outside world turned the Amazon into an imagined place to unleash their adventure fantasies about lost cities of gold and their fears about savage jungles and Indians. From a historical perspective, this course interrogates the creation of Amazonia from the nineteenth-century rubber boom to contemporary environmental campaigns. We analyze visual images, explorers’ accounts, ethnographies, novels, films, advertisements and environmental campaigns. The point is to understand how the Amazon and its people have been imagined externally and internally, and why certain narratives hold power in the Western world. Instructor: S. Sarzynski [Elective]

This course will examine works by writers and filmmakers from French-speaking countries of Africa and the Caribbean. Special emphasis will be placed on questions of identity, the impact of colonialism, social and cultural values as well as the nature of aesthetic creation. Prerequisite: French 44 or equivalent. Instructor: M. Shelton [Elective]

This course provides an understanding of the nature and state of contemporary Arabic lanugage news an dopinion reporting. It focuses on the major Arabic language newspapers and selected Arabic satellite new channels and programs. Instructor: B. Frangieh [Prereq: Arabic 44 or higher. Elective]