COMM

This course is designed as an introductory course on face-to-face communication in our social and personal relationships -- our acquaintances, friendships, romantic partnerships, and relations with other loved ones. The basic premise of the course is to position one to maximize communicative effectiveness in these relationships with knowledge about how communication functions combined with analysis about one's own and others' communication practices and experiences.

This course will survey a number of topics relevant to the institutional settings of medicine (e.g. patient-provider interaction, health care team interactions), intercultural factors that influence health care (e.g., divergent needs, preferences, and access based on culture), the interpersonal ramifications of illness (e.g. coping, social support), and societal concerns regarding health and healthcare delivery (e.g., health insurance system, technological influence in healthcare, crises communication).

This course introduces students to the methodological and theoretical approaches of cultural studies and does so with attention to both the interrelationships of race, gender, and class as well as the contemporary politics of social justice. Although this course is, in general, not canonical in its orientation, the suggested readings do point students toward some key scholarship in cultural studies.

The purpose of this course is to enhance students' understanding of diversity issues as they relate to the study of communication. The course looks at how the media, its images and discourses, shape one's understanding of experiences, shape the experiences of women, and the experiences of people of color. The course also explores the ways in which elements of the media socially reproduce prejudice and foster resistance to prejudice. As a result of engagement in the course, students gain the ability to critically analyze and evaluate media products.

Public Discourse: This course analyzes the creation, reception, and impact of American public discourse over the last five decades. Course material focuses on the process of rhetorical advocacy as it occurs in key political and cultural events and significant public controversies.

Students majoring in communication studies examine the human, social, political, institutional, and mediated dimensions of human communication practices and processes.