COMM

Participating in intercollegiate forensics. May be repeated for credit.

Academic communication criticism (or critical inquiry) typically differs from popular forms of criticism in the amount of attention it devotes to descriptive analysis. Rigorous descriptive analysis is the foundation of critical inquiry in communication studies. This course introduces students to some of the basic analytic concepts that communication critics employ to analyze film, prose discourse (essays, speeches), and visual images. Course concepts include media grammars and styles, figurative language and visual tropes, narrative forms, and genre.

This course is designed to introduce students to the role that theory plays in different types of communication research. The course looks at the different motives scholars have for studying communication, and the different types of theory they develop to pursue these motives. In addition, the main areas of communication scholarship are reviewed with respect to the theories that can inform research in those domains.

The purpose of this course is to provide an opportunity for students who are true novices, either by lack of prior experience or due to communication anxiety, to gain skills in public speaking that will be needed for their success at and beyond Puget Sound. Class sessions will include instruction and practice; additional time will be required for rehearsal and feedback with Peer Speech Consultants in the Center for Speech and Effective Advocacy.

This course introduces the Communication Studies discipline through the interpretation and analysis of cinema across historical, geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts. Students will come away with a foundational understanding of the power of visual media in the form of film, as well as a variety of critical approaches used in communication inquiry. The course begins by surveying introductory readings in the study of film. The course then transitions toward explorations of film as a vehicle of visual communication throughout 20th-century globalization.

This course provides an introduction to the fields of human communication and technology, computer-mediated communication, and internet studies as they exist within the discipline of Communication Studies. The course covers a broad range of theories and applies them to the modern use of existing technologies and newer media in an effort to uncover how these technological systems affect today's communication climate.

This course uses critical and cultural studies approaches to introduce students to the discipline of Communication Studies. Students gain foundational understanding in methods and critical approaches to public culture, including media. The course begins with a survey of key concepts, public culture, democracy, identity, and communication, and then moves to a topical study of discourse as part of public culture in the struggle to maintain or advance concepts of democracy within the context of competing identities related to issues of race, class, gender, and political affiliation.

This course uses rhetorical and argumentation theory to introduce students to the discipline of Communication Studies. Students gain foundational understanding of the concepts, theories, and methods related to the study of American civic rhetoric. This course begins with a brief introduction to key concepts in rhetorical studies and then examines key examples of American civic rhetoric that have shaped the political culture of the United States throughout its history.

This course introduces the discipline of Communication Studies through the allied fields of media and cultural studies. Students gain foundational understanding in methods and critical approaches to contemporary media. The course begins with a survey of media structures and institutions (questions of media's role in democracy), media texts and genres (questions of media's form), and media and identity (questions of representation). The course transitions from this overview into specific analysis of media texts.

This course provides students with an introduction to the field of organizational communication as it exists within the discipline of Communication Studies. Through a survey of traditional and contemporary theories used to study the relationship between communication and organization, students are asked to analyze, compare, and apply theory to gain an appreciation for how communication scholars ask questions and study modern organizations in contemporary society.