COMM

This course examines the historical development of "the rhetorical presidency," the genres of presidential and judicial discourse, the argumentative dynamics of legal interpretation (how people argue about the meaning of texts), and the process of policy deliberation in the legislative branch. The course also explores the idea that political communication constructs or constitutes our culture's "social reality" (our shared values, traditions, behavioral norms, etc.). The course prepares students to become more sophisticated and literate consumers of political communication.

For most of recorded history, the study of law and the study of rhetoric were linked. The professionalization and specialization of legal education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries severed a connection that had persisted for two thousand years.

An advanced course that examines the evolution of rhetorical theory during the past twenty-five hundred years and the cultural forces that have given rise to variations in the classical paradigm. Students of the language arts, classics, philosophy, as well as communication, should find the course a useful cognate in their academic programs.

This course examines theories of argumentation to explore how communities arrive at decisions. To that end, this course develops the skills of reason-giving and critical evaluation that are central to competent participation in a democratic society. In this course, students actively engage the formal structure of arguments. Students learn to evaluate the rhetorical claims of others while constructing their own claims with reasoning adapted to the constraints of the situation.

This course introduces students to the ideology, designs, implementation, and analytic techniques of qualitative research that enable them to describe and explain social phenomena related to social and personal relationships and health. Students will learn experientially throughout the semester and, upon successful completion of this course, will be able to draw on the appropriate qualitative methodological tools to best answer original research questions.

The main goal of this course is to introduce students to the social scientific tradition of communication research. Over the course of the semester, students will be responsible for developing an interesting and novel research question and/or hypotheses based on scientific literature and theory. Students will learn how to critically evaluate empirical research and employ the scientific method to investigate issues and questions that arise within the study of human communication. Students will become familiar with survey research, experimentation, and techniques for data analysis.

This advanced course addresses the cultural influences of American television from 1946 to present day. In particular, the course examines the intersections of the television medium with politics and government, social movements, cultural conflicts, film aesthetics, advertising and consumerism. Some of the topics covered in the course include the changing character of broadcast news (from Edward R. Murrow to Jon Stewart), women and feminisms in television, television genres, and television and race.

This is a critical writing course which focuses on how popular film narratives (independent and mainstream) function in American culture. Students study visual and narrative composition of film, the politics of film aesthetics and production, and the competing rhetorics of American film directors and genres. The discussion of each film is contextualized through attention to visual and narrative construction of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and social class. Course materials include readings and videostreamed films.

This course offers a focused review of organizational communication in terms of historical roots, metatheoretical commitments, conceptual and theoretical approaches, and contemporary research. The first half of the course is devoted to a consideration of the organizational communication discipline in terms of history, metatheory and methodology, and important conceptual and theoretical approaches to understanding organizing and organizations.

This course provides research experience in either social science or the critical/interpretative research tradition for advanced sophomores and juniors. Students assist a department faculty member in various aspects of the research process (e.g. reviewing literature, gathering and analyzing data, etc.). Students must prepare and submit a written summary of their research work for a final grade. Interested students should contact the department chair to see what research opportunities are available in a given semester.