8939 Southwestern University: Communication Studies: Curriculum

Southwestern

Engaging Minds, Transforming Lives

Communication Studies

Curriculum

The departmental curriculum is organized around two cognate areas that represent the two distinct, yet interrelated, areas of focus in the major: Rhetorical Studies and Critical Media Studies.

Each of these two areas is represented by one of the two COM Core Courses (75-204 and 604) as well as a group of courses that represent further interventions into the cognate areas. Rhetorical Studies Courses are located in the 75-200s and 75-300s (with the exception of 75-304, the general COM Special Topics course number). Critical Media Studies Courses are located in the 75-600s and 75-700s. Many students take an Academic Internship as one of their upper-level Communication Studies elective courses. Special Topics courses (75-004 and 75-304) and Independent Studies (75-95x) are also available.

Below you will find a list of our current or recent offerings.  See the course catalog for descriptions and updated information.

  • 75-001 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-002 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-003 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-004 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-134 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION STUDIES
    This course introduces theoretical and critical perspectives central to the three cognate areas of the major: Rhetorical Traditions, Performing Culture, and Media and Culture. A special focus on qualitative critical/interpretive research methods and theoretical frameworks enhances students’ unders...
  • 75-154 PUBLIC SPEAKING
    Through a wide variety of speaking formats, students will become more comfortable with the inherently uncomfortable situation of speaking to persuade before a critical audience. This introductory course approaches the speech of advocacy as a means of social analysis. COM Foundation course.
  • 75-204 RHETORICAL TRADITIONS
    Rhetoric is often thought of as the purview of scheming marketers and manipulative politicians, but it is in fact a rich and contested field that constitutes one of the oldest and most-studied arts in the Western tradition. This course moves from Plato to “culture jamming” and far beyond in its ...
  • 75-214 RHETORICAL CRITICISM
    This course critically engages diverse texts from a variety of theoretical orientations, analyzing speeches, pictures and various mass mediated representations in order to produce critiques that employ a range of perspectives including feminist, critical race, psychoanalytic and poststructuralist th...
  • 75-234 RHETORICS OF RESISTANCE
    This course examines the ways in which rhetoric is used for social protest. It emphasizes historical and cultural contexts as it looks at how social movements use diverse rhetorical strategies to promote social justice. Prerequisites: Communication Studies 75-134 and 75-154, or consent of instructor...
  • 75-274 RHETORICS OF HEALTH
    This class examines the intersections of communication and health by exploring topics such as mass media representations of health issues, communication patterns in health contexts, and the construction of identity through discourses of health and illness. Prerequisites: Communication Studies 75-134...
  • 75-294 AMERICAN INDIAN RHETORICS
    This course analyzes American Indian rhetorical practices of making meaning as moves toward decolonizing discourses involving Native Peoples and toward understanding how “talking Ind'n,” with its multifaceted ways of speech, shapes understandings of Native identities and rhetorical sovereignty. ...
  • 75-301 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-302 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-303 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-304 SELECTED TOPICS
    May be repeated with change in content.
  • 75-354 PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION AND ETHICS
    Effective communication is a cornerstone of professional life. This course is designed to provide students with some of the essential communication skills they will need to excel in professional settings, including advanced presentation skills, conflict management skills, communication ethics and in...
  • 75-404 PERFORMING CULTURE
    This seminar is designed to explore the relationship between performance and culture, particularly the mutually formative role of human action and embodiment in creating culture and reality. Through an analysis of such symbolic activities such as speaking and getting dressed to participating in ritu...
  • 75-414 WRITING CULTURE
    Writing represents reality and creates knowledge about people and the world. This course is designed to engage, analyze and critique the representational practices of writing as a communicative form, including genres such as autoethnography, ethnography and personal narrative. COM Methods/Writing In...
  • 75-424 PERFORMANCE STUDIES: EVERYDAY LIFE AND LITERATURE
    See Theatre 73-284. (FAP) (WA)
  • 75-434 COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
    This course introduces the foundational, historical and theoretical issues for the critical study of communication as social justice, examining critical race theories, feminist theories, queer theories and postcolonial theories in order to establish a foundation for understanding the ways difference...
  • 75-454 RACE, ETHNICITY, AND COMMUNICATION
    This course introduces critical race theory as it applies to the study of communication. In particular, it explores the intersection of race/ethnicity, communication and media as it relates to issues of social justice and identity in America. These explorations shed light on the historical formation...
  • 75-474 NATIONS AND COMMUNICATION
    This course offers a critical understanding of the roles communication and media have played in the constitution and dissolution of national identities. Special emphasis is placed on examining how the dynamic relationships among nations, resulting from increasing economic and technological ties, hav...
  • 75-514 TOPICS IN PERFORMANCE STUDIES
    Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. See Theatre 73-714 and Feminist Studies 04-714. (FAP) (WA)
  • 75-524 FEMINISM AND PERFORMANCE
    See Theatre 73-724 and Feminist Studies 04-724. (FAP) (WA)
  • 75-554 DOCUMENTING THE SELF, OTHER AND COMMUNITY
    This course examines some of the ways in which individuals and communities in the United States document their experiences, lives and world visions. The documenting techniques studied include literary autobiography, comic strips, graffiti, film documentary, and photography, among others. As varied a...
  • 75-564 THEORIES OF GENDER
    An introduction and survey of contemporary gender theories, with emphases on identity performances and intersections. The specific focus of the course is on the ways gender, sex and sexuality have been constructed as categories of identity across various cultures, academic disciplines and historical...
  • 75-604 MEDIA AND CULTURE
    This course provides an introduction to the critical cultural study of mass media, exploring media production, distribution, and consumption contexts as well as media texts to systematically examine how and why oral, manuscript, print, electric, electronic and digital media have been introduced, art...
  • 75-624 JOURNALISM
    This writing-intensive course considers the character, purposes and subject matter of documentary nonfiction narrative, with a special emphasis on the processes of writing, critiquing and revising student-produced feature articles for newspapers and magazines. (H) (WA)
  • 75-634 MEDIA AND ETHICS
    See Philosophy 18-234. (H)
  • 75-644 MUSIC AND IDENTITY
    This course explores the relationship between music, culture and identity, including the role of musical forms in shaping reality and identity formation. Assuming that music is inherently political in its form, content, performance and consumption, the course examines how identity is constructed t...
  • 75-654 NEW LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA
    This course provides a historical and critical perspective on the social conditions, philosophical-aesthetic positions, narrative strategies and particular national histories of New Latin American Cinema (NLAC), a form of filmmaking that originated in Latin America in the 1950s in reaction to Hollyw...
  • 75-664 AMERICAN INDIANS IN MEDIA
    This course takes a decolonial approach to studying representations of American Indians in media such as film and television. Teaching critical analytical skills for interpreting the cultural, social and ideological functions of media representations, the course involves deconstructing both the imag...
  • 75-674 FILM STUDIES
    This course introduces students to critical, analytical and theoretical approaches to the study of film. To explore the complex role that cinema has played in American mass society since the early 20th century, special emphasis is placed on the study of institutional practices at all levels of the p...
  • 75-684 ROAD MOVIES
    This course explores the road movie as a contemporary film genre but also a site of cultural work where representations, histories, futures, identities, bodies and ideas converge and collide. The course unfolds chronologically, situating case study films within their historically specific cultural d...
  • 75-784 VISUAL COMMUNICATION
    This course explores approaches to the production and analysis of visual media texts that have emerged in the fields of visual communication, media studies, visual culture and cultural studies. Critical attention is directed to the major products of mass media industries—especially advertisements,...
  • 75-901 TUTORIAL
  • 75-902 TUTORIAL
  • 75-903 TUTORIAL
  • 75-904 TUTORIAL
  • 75-941 ACADEMIC INTERNSHIP
    Must be taken Pass/D/F. May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Internship credit will count toward the major.
  • 75-942 ACADEMIC INTERNSHIP
    Must be taken Pass/D/F. May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Internship credit will count toward the major.
  • 75-943 ACADEMIC INTERNSHIP
    Must be taken Pass/D/F. May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Internship credit will count toward the major.
  • 75-944 ACADEMIC INTERNSHIP
    Must be taken Pass/D/F. May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Internship credit will count toward the major.
  • 75-951 INDEPENDENT STUDY
    May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Independent Study will count toward the major.
  • 75-952 INDEPENDENT STUDY
    May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Independent Study will count toward the major.
  • 75-953 INDEPENDENT STUDY
    May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Independent Study will count toward the major.
  • 75-954 INDEPENDENT STUDY
    May be repeated with change in content, but no more than eight credits of Independent Study will count toward the major.
  • 75-964 CAPSTONE RESEARCH SEMINAR
    This course requires students to integrate and extend work done throughout the Communication Studies major by producing a significant research project that is situated both within Communication Studies as a discipline and within one of the three cognate areas of the major: Rhetorical Traditions, Per...
  • 75-984 HONORS
    By invitation only. Satisfies the capstone experience for the major.
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