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For Media and Culture Majors
Students enrolled in this major will find many additional course offerings on the English Department website that fulfill the MC-related elective requirements. These include any course with a CIN, COM or LIT designation.
For Liberal Studies Majors in Media Arts and Society
This PDF includes courses offered by departments in business or other arts and sciences disciplines that fulfill course work for this concentration.
MC 200 Principles of Media Culture (3 credits)
The course emphasizes the continuity between principles and practice, and the connections among the core courses in the major. Focusing on the essential conceptual frameworks for analyzing the media, students learn how to become sophisticated analysts of media culture in multiple contexts (from structures of television broadcasting to alternative web-casting, for example). This course provides a basic theoretical foundation for understanding how media industries, texts, and audiences interact. Because it seeks to emphasize media culture, the course also explores the relationships between and among producers, funders, distributors and consumers, particularly with respect to issues of class, race, gender, and ethnicity.
MC 220 Principles of Media Production (3 credits)
Serving as a foundation to media practice, this course offers students a broad introduction to media production through hands-on exercises involving digital photography, video, and audio production, as well as graphic and sound design. Students will have the opportunity to explore various media formats and methods of distribution through the course’s emphasis on the fundamentals of visual language and the creative process. The overarching framework for a study of media is provided in the course: analysis and synthesis are emphasized as projects evolve throughout the process of conceptualization, visualization, production, and reception.
MC 222 Digital Photography (3 credits)
This course examines the art of photography, digital image manipulation, and applications for digital images. Students shoot and edit their own digital photographs and create a Web-based portfolio of their work.
MC 224 Introduction to Video Production (3 credits)
This course highlights the creative process and serves as a foundation for students to learn the technical and artistic aspects of digital video production. The fundamentals of screenwriting, visual conceptualization, cameras, lighting techniques, sound recording, and nonlinear editing are covered.
MC 250 Principles of Globalization and the Media (3 credits)
This course looks at international media industries, products and audiences to provide an introduction to a multinational and multiethnic culture. In addition to providing a strong general grasp of how international media are structured, the course focuses on how cultural and media products impact democracy internationally. Students consider the elements, interaction, and impact of media culture and mass communication in national and international arenas, with special attention to questions of ideology, political economy and global democracy.
MC 300 Film, Television, and New Media Theory (3 credits)
This course examines issues in media and culture, looking particularly at media history, media formats, media theory, and media analysis. Each section of the course will focus on a specific area of inquiry, but the course as a whole will help students gain a deep and comprehensive understanding of the social, historical, cultural, and political impact of media forms and strategies. By looking in more depth at essential conceptual frameworks for analyzing media, the course will facilitate a comprehensive, integrative, and critical understanding of how meaning is made in particular contexts and through specific media formats and strategies. Moreover, the course emphasizes the continuity between media principles and practices.
MC 320 Advanced Production (3 credits)
Develops the basic techniques covered in Introduction to Video Production, concentrating on more conceptual and advanced approaches to image and sound creation. Emphasizes specialization in a particular area of professional production. Allows repetition for credit.
MC 321 Sound Design for New Media (3 credits)
The fundamentals of microphones, digital recording techniques, sound effects, and post-production audio mixing will be covered through hands-on demonstrations and individual audio projects. Content designed for cinema, television, the Web, video games and other types of analyzed from an audio perspective.
MC 322 Social Issue Documentary (3 credits)
This course provides students with cameras, and sends them into communities to make documentaries. Social issue documentary provides advanced experience with video production and practical and theoretical approaches to the documentary. The video camera becomes a tool for meeting and becoming involved with local community members, and a way for students to pro-actively address social issues that they already care about or about which they have always been curious. The class will teach students to document interesting people, communities and social issues while providing the tools to tell stories about these new experiences in the exciting and important genre of documentary.
MC 323 Design and Time-Based Media (3 credits)
Graphic elements operate as powerful forms of communication in various media systems. This course provides a focused study in design and visual effects for time-based media narratives, specifically in the areas of video and animation. The fundamental aspects of graphic design and visual effects are examined in a range of electronic and digital media through theoretical readings, demonstrations, screenings, hands-on production assignments, and an individual culminating project. Examples of time-based media approaches to be explored include animation, interactive comics, narrative film and video, videogames, and some forms of video art. Elements of design, such as color, light, typography, 2D/3D space, time, and motion, will be analyzed through class discussions and critiques of student work produced throughout the semester.
MC 420 Media and Culture Capstone Project
Prerequisite(s): Junior- or senior-level standing
Pre- or corequisite(s): Capstone director’s permission
A final project undertaken in the last year of coursework in Media and Culture in which the student analyzes some aspect of the media industry. The project, which can be analytical or an analysis combined with a creative project, should reflect the impact of the study of Media and Culture on the student’s understanding of the issues analyzed and presented in the project.
MC 421 Media and Culture Internship
Prerequisite(s): Junior- or senior-level standing
Pre- or corequisite(s): Internship coordinator’s permission
Introduces the student to some aspect of the media industry; emphasizes the particular operations of a media company by assigning a student to a professional in the field under whose supervision the intern undertakes tasks and participates in analyzing the practical applications of media theories. The intern’s progress is monitored and evaluated jointly by the field supervisor and the faculty coordinator during the semester internship.
COM 321 Mass Communication (3 credits)
Through printed texts and film, radio and television broadcasting, and electronic information networks, mass communication plays a central and worldwide role in distributing both information and ideas. Focusing primarily on electronic and print media, surveys the major theoretical perspectives on three aspects of mass communication: the means of production, the form and content of mass media messages, and the reception and use of those messages by audiences.
COM 324 Design as Communication (3 credits)
Visual elements can communicate persuasively a given message, emotion, or feeling to a targeted audience. Focuses on the cumulative effect of typography, color, photographic images and layout. Students also examine the interaction of the visual image with the written copy and their combined effect on the message. While this course focuses on print media, students are encouraged, where applicable, to generalize from the print medium to visual images in the electronic media
COM 390 Special Topics in Language Studies and Communication (3 credits)
Explores a special topic, theorist, or theme in language studies and communication. Allows repetition for credit. Students taking this course in the LSM in Media Arts and Society must register for an approved section with an appropriate media theme.
CIN 270 Introduction to Cinema Studies (3 credits)
Though it’s barely a century old, the medium of cinema has quickly become one of the most popular and influential of all the arts, and has played a major role in shaping modern civilization. Because it shares many of the main qualities of novels (it tells stories); of painting (it involves framed images); of theater (actions are presented before an audience); and even of dreams (it gives us fantasies while we relax in the dark), it is also perhaps the richest of all art forms. Surveys the first 100 years of movie making with emphasis on four related issues: the characteristics of the cinema medium; cinema history; authorship in literature and film; and implications of cinema as a cultural institution. Films may include foreign and American films of both the silent and the sound eras.
CIN 370 Selected Topics in Cinema Studies (3 credits)
Cinema is often considered the most significant art form of the 20th century. Because of its importance and complexity, there are many ways of approaching films. They may be seen as escapist fantasies with a powerful influence on people’s lives; as expressions of the attitudes of a culture; as works of art shaped by a great director; or as commercial and industrial products. Focuses on one or another of this wide range of subjects. In recent years, topics have included: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock; Feminism and Film; Horror Movies; European Art Cinema; and Romantic Comedy. Allows repetition for credit.
CIN 371 Great Directors (3 credits)
This course will focus on the work of a single director or a group of related directors, investigating their characteristic themes and concerns, and their special ways of using the medium of cinema to tell a story. One recent version of this course was devoted entirely to Hitchcock; a second examined four great directors: Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut, and Altman. Other directors to whom the course might be devoted include: Wilder, Lang, and Lubitsch; Scorsese, Ford & Hawks; and Orson Welles.
CIN 372 Genre Studies (3 credits)
This course, focusing on a single genre, will be concerned to identify the characteristic themes and techniques of that genre, to explore the meaning of different genres and the function that these genres play in organizing our social or psychic lives. The specific genre studied will very from year to year and will include such significant genres as mysteries, westerns, musicals, Film Noir, comedy and romantic comedy and horror.
CIN 373 Non-Fiction Film (3 credits)
Emphasis will be on the documentary tradition, although other forms of non-fiction films will be considered as well. The entire range of reality-based films will provide the basis for this course.
CIN 374 Animation (3 credits)
As a type of cinema that does not begin with photographing real objects, animation offers filmmakers special opportunities and raises special sorts of questions. This course will emphasize the comic cartoon tradition developed by Warner Brothers and Disney, but will also examine animated films for adult audiences produced in Europe and Canada.
CIN 375 Women and Film (3 credits)
This course will focus on the major contributions that women have made to cinema, as characters in the stories being told, as actresses playing the parts, as filmmakers directing and producing films, and as critics who have, in the past thirty years, substantially reshaped the way we think about, talk about, and even make films. The specific emphasis will vary from semester to semester, but each version of this course will pay special attention to the issue of gender in cinema.
CIN 376 International Cinema (3 credits)
This course will focus on one of the wide variety of important national cinemas or film movements that have played a major role in the development of film as a virtually universal artistic language. Topics to which the course might be devoted include German Expressionism; Soviet Cinema and Montage Theory; Post war Italian Cinema, Rosellini through Bertolucci and beyond; The French New Wave; Japanese Cinema; and Bollywood and the development of film in India.
CIN 379 Film Theory (3 credits)
Cinema may be the most representative art form of modern times; perhaps for that reason many innovative ways of thinking about modern life have developed in discussions of film. A survey of film criticism and theory thus becomes a very useful way of approaching some of the most important and controversial issues in contemporary life, including questions about the nature of art, the meaning of community, and the social construction of sexuality. Students will read important essays on the film medium with readings illustrated by a wide variety of relevant films. Our purpose will be to get a better understanding of the film medium and to use film to understand some of the most complex issues of our times.
EXP 201 Expository Writing II: Advanced Inquiry in Writing (3 credits)
Designed for students who are native speakers of English. Students taking this course in the LSM in Media Arts and Society must register for an approved section with an appropriate media theme.
LIT 312 Creative Writing: Drama/Screen Writing (3 credits)
Develops students’ ability to recognize, analyze, and design effective structures of imaginative language and dramatic form. Emphasizes writing for the theatre vs. the screen; may vary from semester to semester. Classroom methods include workshops to critique student work, in class exercises, analysis and exposition of the work of noted playwrights and/or screenwriters, and frequent writing assignments. The class is limited in size.
LIT 320 Introduction to Acting (3 credits)
Acting is the art of creating something out of nothing by building a new reality for the audience before its very eyes. Skillfully performing this art demands a strong imagination, incisive intelligence, focus, and discipline. These skills lead not only to success in theatre, but also to a greater understanding of human nature and broad success interacting with people throughout life. In this class we will explore the art of acting, developing a shared vocabulary and reflecting our experience of each other’s work. Students will be expected to show self-discipline, working independently and demonstrating improvement in the class. Students will be given assignments with specific memorization and performance dates. Students will produce a monologue and a scene, which will be shown at a public performance at the end of the semester. In addition, students will attend Boston professional performances and will discuss them in class.
LIT 366 American Icons (3 credits)
Meet three commonly identified American icons-the cowboy, the capitalist, and the feminist-to see what they reveal about themselves and the U.S. culture. Through literature, film, historical documents, and narratives, we will see how these representations of America evolve and change in response to changes in society itself and how they differ from icons in other cultures. The course addresses the ethnic, racial, and other variations in American life embodied in these American icons.
LIT 380 Money, Love, and Death: Colonialism in Literature and Culture (3 credits)
We will explore colonialism as an important frame of reference for understanding contemporary cultures, and the connections among the themes of money, violence, love and colonialism, including cases involving US foreign and domestic policy. Can there be love between people on opposite sides of a political conflict? How are the motives of romantic fantasy and profit connected in campaigns to exert political influence (hegemony) or dominance over another culture or group? To what extent is the legacy of colonialism a story of physical and emotional violence? What can we learn about our own lives from experiences such as European imperialism and Vietnam? Can we speak of an “internal colonialism,” here in the culture we inhabit? We will explore a broad range of cultural materials, both visual and textual, film and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, to understand these and other complex questions about cross-cultural relationships
LIT 381 Sitcom Nation: The American Family in Fiction and Film (3 credits)
Whether they are heroic and hearty pioneers of the Wild West or the nurturing nuclear units of television sitcoms such as Leave it To Beaver, the American families of the past are often idealized by contemporary Americans anxious about and frustrated by contemporary family conflicts. The media converts those anxieties into consumable types—unwed mothers, supermoms, deadbeat dads — and positions them against the sitcom ideal of the self-sacrificing mother and tough, but loving father. In order to explore these family types and ideals, especially anxieties about the nuclear family’s breadwinner and homemaker, the class will analyze texts by authors such as Gilman, Alcott, Olds, Sexton, Updike, Cheever Morrison, Erdrich, Smiley, DeLillo, and Soto, and directors such as Sirk, Ford, Waters, Ang Lee, and Allen, reading these texts alongside the social, political, and historical forces that have affected attitudes toward sex, marriage, divorce, dating, and gender expectations in general.
LIT 391 Selected Topics in Literary Form (3 credits)
In reading books, hearing songs, or watching films we tend to focus on the “content” of the work, on what it seems to be “about.” Still we recognize that the form through which that content is communicated makes a big difference in how we respond to the work, even in what the work means. Two different versions of what seems to be the same story may differ greatly because of different formal characteristics. Similarly, the meaning of a song is likely to be very different than the meaning of the same words without the music. A writer, in choosing to present material in a specific form, is thus making an important decision. Examines one specific form and consider the ways in which it shapes a variety of different works. Possible forms include the short story, the bildungsroman, the sonnet sequence, science-fiction, and the mystery novel. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 391-397 Selected Topics Courses
Students taking these courses in the LSM in Media Arts and Society must register for an approved section with an appropriate media theme.
LIT 392 Selected Topics in Literary Theme (3 credits)
Certain themes and concerns have such a powerful hold on the human imagination that they have appeared over and over again in the literature of very different cultures and in very different periods. Some examples are obvious and include such themes as love and marriage; war, religion and faith. More surprising themes that nevertheless occur repeatedly are horror and the monstrous; the journey; utopias and dystopias; stories of the Holocaust; and the crippled hero. Chooses one such theme, which will vary from semester to semester, and traces it in the creative work of a variety of times and places. Emphasizes the way different cultures share certain preoccupations but differ in the way they treat them. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 393 Selected Topics in World Literature (3 credits)
Explores the literature that speaks of and for a particular nation, ethnic group, or cultural situation. Includes the literature of Italy, Africa, or Latin America; colonial and post-colonial literature; or the literature of East Asia. Emphasizes the way in which the works read reflect the characteristics concerns of the culture. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 394 Selected Topics in African American Literary and Cultural Studies (3 credits)
Explores a specific genre, period, movement, or theme of African American literature and culture such as the oral tradition; slave narratives, theory and criticism; the Harlem Renaissance; Black women and resistance; the Civil Rights Movement. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 395 Selected Topics in American Literature (3 credits)
Explores a specific genre, period, author, or theme in American Literature. Includes Literature of the Vietnam War; Literature and Baseball; American Frontier Fictions. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 396 Selected Topics in British Literature (3 credits)
Explores a specific genre, period, author, or theme in British Literature. Could include: non-Shakespearean renaissance drama; the Gothic tradition; contemporary British working class fiction. Allows repetition for credit.
LIT 397 Selected Topics in Cultural Studies (3 credits)
Explores a specific issue or theme in cultural studies. Could include: diasporic literatures; literary responses to colonialism; third world feminism; the politics of literary canons and traditions. Allows repetition for credit.
