Communication Department Course Information

Interest Areas

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Communication Major

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Media Industries & Communication

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A note regarding remote / hybrid / asynchronous instruction:
Unless a course is designated as remote (RCLAS) in the Schedule of Classes, you should expect to attend the class in-person.
As a general rule, COMM instructors are not able to accommodate individual requests to complete courses asynchronously or remotely.

Academic Year 2025-26 Planned Courses

2025-26 Communication Course Schedule

Planned, subject to change

Undergraduate Courses

Type	Number	Name	Fall 2025	Winter 2026	Spring 2026
Intro Course	10	Intro to Communication	Whitworth-Smith	Domínguez Rubio	Fattal
Intro Course	20	Analysis of Media Forms and Cultures	Hill	McKenna
Intro Course	30	Digital Media Literacy: Analyzing Forms, Practices, and Infrastructures of Mediated Public Life		Hallin	Staff
Intro Course	40	Promotional Communication: Cultural Studies of Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations	Jack		Whitworth-Smith
Intro Course	50	Presenting & Public Speaking	Armenta	Armenta	Armenta
Intro Course	65 (New)	Intro to Environmental Justice			Ybarra
Intro Course	80	Speech and Debate	Edwards	Edwards	Edwards
Intro Course	87	First Year Seminar: Listening Critically to Popular Music		Serlin
Intro Course	100A	Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life	Harb
Intro Course	100B	Communication, Culture, and Representation			Serlin
Intro Course	100C	Communication, Institutions, and Power		deWaard
Production Course Elective	101	Intro to Audiovisual Media Practices	Martinico	Ahn	Halm
Production Course Elective	101A	Media & Activism			Ahn
Production Course Elective	101K	Documentary Sketchbook			Ahn
Production Course Elective	101N	Sound Production and Manipulation	Martinico
Production Course Elective	101T	Topics in Producation: 16 mm Film Production & Hand Processing	Davis
Production Course Elective	101T (A00)	Topics in Production: 3D Animation and Visual Effects Using Houdini		Halm
Production Course Elective	101T (B00)	Topics in Production: Studio Podcasting		Dewey
Production Course Elective	101M	Communication and Computers	Halm
Production Course Elective	102C	Practicum in New Media and Community Life	Campion	Campion	Campion
Production Course Elective	102M	Studio TV			Davis
Elective	103D	Documentary History and Theory			Gates
Elective	105P	Photographic Technologies		Gates
MIC Intro Course / COMM Elective	106	Introduction to Media Industries	Kidman	Halm
Elective	106D	Data and AI Industries			Geiger
Elective	106F	The Film Industry	Hill	McKenna
Elective	106G	Tourism: Global Industry and Cultural Form			Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	106I	Internet Industry		Irani
Elective	106M	Advertising & Society			Jack
Elective	106N	Journalism and the News Industry	Hallin
Elective	106V	TV Industry			Dewey
Elective	107	Visual Culture		Serlin
Elective	108D	Disability & Communication	Goldfarb
Elective	108G	Gender and Biomedicine			Walkover
Elective	109P	Propaganda and Persuasion			Jack
Elective	110G	Communication in Organizations		Whitworth-Smith
Elective	110M	Communication and Community		Abuelhiga
Elective	111A	Communication and Cultural Production		Pavón Aramburú
Elective	113T	Int Topics in Communication: Art as Communication	Domínguez Rubio
Elective	114A	Human Rights & Global Justice			Zilberg
Elective	114E	Gender & the Global Economy	Pavón Aramburú
Elective	114F	Law, Communication, and Freedom of Expression		Rojo Solis
Elective	114I	Media Technologies and Social Movements	Rojo Solis
Elective	114J	Food Justice		Goldfarb
Elective	114P	Public History and Museum Studies			Abuelhiga
Elective	114T	Science Communication		Walkover
Elective	115	Communication and the Senses	Alač
Elective	115J	Journalistic Writing, Reporting, and Research		Schmidt
Elective	118A	Action Cinema			McKenna
Elective	119	Advanced Persuasion	Edwards	Edwards	Edwards
Elective	120M	Media Stereotypes	Abuelhiga
Elective	127	Problem of Voice	Abuelhiga
Elective	132	Advanced Topics: So Cal Cinema			McKenna
Elective	133	Television and Citizenship	Dewey
Elective	134	Media Audiences	Kidman		Abuelhiga
Elective	135	Minority Media Makers and the Festival Experience	Davis
Elective	137	Black Women Filmmakers		Davis
Elective	138	Black Women, Feminism, and Media		Boateng
Elective	140	Latin American Cinema		Fattal
Elective	142	Film Authorship	McKenna
Elective	143	Science Fiction			Rojo Solis
Elective	145	History, Memory, and Popular Culture		Rojo Solis
Elective	146 (A00)	Adv Topics in Cultural Production: CGI, Special Effects, and Contemporary Media	Halm
Elective	146 (B00)	Adv Topics in Cultural Production: Race \| Nature \| Power	Ybarra
Elective	149 (New)	Southern California Cinema			McKenna
Elective	155	Representing Latinx Space and Place			Pavón Aramburú
Elective	159	Tourism and Imperialism		Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	160	International Communication		Whitworth-Smith
Elective	164	Behind the Internet: Invisible Geographies of Power and Inequality	Domínguez Rubio
Elective	168	Bilingual Communication			Harb
Elective	171	Environmental Communication		Zilberg
Elective	173	Interaction with Technology	Alač
Elective	174	Communication and Social Machines			Alač
Elective	177	Culture, Domination, and Resistance	Rojo Solis
Elective	180	Advanced Studies in Communication Theory: Pop Culture Theory		Kidman
Elective	180	Advanced Studies in Communication Theory: Topic TBA			Alač
Elective	181	Citizen Consumers			Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	182	Education and Global Citizenship		Goldfarb
Elective	185	Communication for Indigenous Justice	Boateng
Junior Seminar	190 (B00)	Media Aesthetics	Staff
Junior Seminar	190 (C00)	Unsettle UCSD: Critically Studying Our University	Staff
Junior Seminar	190 (D00)	Cinema and Revolution: Film as a Catalyst for Social Change	Staff
Junior Seminar	190 (A00)	How to Disagree Without Losing Your Soul		Anderson
Junior Seminar	190 (B00)	Queer Media Studies		Serlin
Junior Seminar	190 (C00)	Design(ing) the Pacific		Staff
Junior Seminar	190 (A00)	Communicating Nations			Boateng
Junior Seminar	190 (B00)	Refugee Cinema			Fattal
Junior Seminar	190 (C00)	Working in the Media and Tech Industries			Gates
Honors	196A	Honors Seminar in Communication I: Methods	deWaard
Honors	196B	Honors Seminar in Communication II: Research		deWaard
Honors	199H	Honors Project Completion			Enroll via EASy request

Graduate Courses

Type	Number	Name	Fall 2025	Winter 2026	Spring 2026
Core Course	200A	Communication as Social Force	deWaard
Core Course	200B	Communication and Culture		Córdoba Azcárate
Core Course	200C	Communication and the Person	Irani
Core Course	294	History of Communication Research		Gates
Core Course	296	Intro to Research as an Interdisciplinary Activity			Davis
Theory Elective	262	Geographies of Difference, Exclusion and Conflict			Ybarra
Theory Elective	264	Feminisms in Critical Dialogue		Boateng
Theory Elective	275 (A00)	Promotional Culture	Jack
Theory Elective	275	Ecological Thinking		Domínguez Rubio
Theory Elective	275	Language, Immigration, and Education in the US			Harb
Research Methods	201D	Historical Methods for Communication Research			Serlin
Research Methods	275	Theory & Practice of CBPR	Goldfarb
Research Methods	275	Creative Ethnographic Methods		Fattal
Research Methods	280	Advanced Workshop in Communication Media		Ahn
Science Studies Course	225A	Introduction to Science Studies: Part 1	McKenzie
Science Studies Course	225B	Seminar in Science Studies			Staff
Science Studies Course	225C	Colloquium in Science Studies	McKenzie	Staff	Staff
Science Studies Course	225D	Introduction to Science Studies: Part II		Staff

Fall 2025 Course Descriptions

Title	Description
10 Introduction to Communication	This course provides an introduction to the main areas of focus in this department and to several major areas in the field of communication including: the relation between communication, the self and society; the operation of language as a mechanism of power; the emergence and significance of new communication technologies in different historical periods; the role of the news media in democratic societies; debates about the social and political influence of culture industries like film and music; the relationship between communication and globalization. In examining these areas, the course also introduces students to a wide range of theories reflecting the department’s interdisciplinary diversity including: political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical race studies and globalization. In the process, the course provides students with the tools for beginning to answer five key questions: What is communication? Where does it occur? How does it occur? Why does it matter? How do we study it?the emergence and significance of new communication technologies in different historical periods; the role of the news media in democratic societies; debates about the social and political influence of culture industries like film and music; the relationship between communication and globalization. In examining these areas, the course also introduces students to a wide range of theories reflecting the department’s interdisciplinary diversity including: political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical race studies and globalization. In the process, the course provides students with the tools for beginning to answer five key questions: What is communication? Where does it occur? How does it occur? Why does it matter? How do we study it?
20 Analysis of Media Forms and Cultures	This course builds the critical skills to understand, analyze, and interpret audiovisual media (films, television series, short-form social media, video games) by introducing students to the basic “form” or vocabulary and grammar of moving image texts—how they create meaning through compositional visual and narrative style—and key methods for interpreting media and its cultural contexts. Understanding form as an extension of content, we will look at the conventions of narrative, the employment of formal techniques like production design, composition, cinematography, editing and the use of sound as they function within particular media texts Alongside these tools for describing films we will explore how movies and other media affect us personally, convey theme, ideology and message, and represent people and events. NOTE: This class includes a weekly screening as part of its runtime. Registration and attendance are required for both lecture and section periods for this reason. Though screenings are a little different each quarter, Some of the films/series screened in past versions of the course have included: Run Lola Run, Shaun of the Dead, Shadow of a Doubt, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Do The Right Thing, Fargo, The Player, Sorry to Bother You, Yojimbo, Bicycle Thieves, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Inglorious Basterds, The Wizard of Oz, M, The Celebration, Rushmore, Pariah, Persepolis, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, The Graduate, Exit Through the Giftshop, The Thin Blue Line, Harlan County, USA, The Osbournes, The Larry Sanders Show, Parks and Recreation, Community, American Vandal, I Think You Should Leave and What We Do in the Shadows.
40 Promotional Communication: Cultural Studies of Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations	This course introduces a critical-cultural communication approach to fields of practice that aim to publicize, promote, or increase awareness of ideas, products, and causes. The course will critically survey major promotional industries and contexts, including advertising, public relations, marketing, and social media. Students will learn to recognize and examine public communication industries and practices, the pressures that shape these industries and practices, and their implications for culture and society.
50 Presenting and Public Speaking	This course covers the basics of communication in public and professional settings. Students will cultivate their own speaking style while developing skills in delivery, performance, and persuasion. They will learn how to create a slide deck as well as prepare for speeches, interviews, and Q&As.
80 UCSD Speech & Debate	Throughout history, important advances in a democratic society have emerged most often from civil, rigorous discussion, debate, and persuasion. Students develop research, critical thinking, presentation, public speaking, and argumentation skills through in-class practice speeches and debates, along with participation in intercollegiate speech and debate tournaments.
106F The Film Industry	This course examines the contemporary Hollywood film industry, focusing not on the films that are its primary products, but on the economic imperatives, technological developments, labor conditions, business practices, and organizational structures that shape them. Early weeks of the course will review the historical conditions that gave rise to the industry’s current state, in which media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, and artistic values have been (further) displaced by commercial ones, resulting in a marketing and merchandising-driven business highly focused on blockbusters. The course also considers the ripple effect of this focus on big budget, franchiseable films for broad audiences across various media and beyond, and the cooptation of the “indie” art film and the festival and indie marketplaces where it was once sold. Finally, through an examination of films produced through and in the shadow of this new Hollywood “system,” the course considers whether and how it is still possible to succeed outside of that system.
106N Journalism and the News Industry	This class gives an overview of the history of the American News Media and American journalism and their role in contemporary culture and politics We look at the nature of the news production processes, questions about who has power to influence the news and how structures of power in society affect journalism, and debates about media "bias" and the nature of objectivity. We look at the effect of new digital technology on journalism, and the new problems created for journalism by the shift to partisan polarization. Written work for the class includes a news analysis paper in which students analyze news coverage of some event or issue, and a key goal of the class is to learn how to research news coverage and write media criticism.
100A Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life	This course is about communication as an everyday social practice that shapes how our lives are organized. The focus on this class will be how people, both individually and collectively, construct, sustain, or dismantle social structures. We will think about using language to define our identities; how some media reproduce discourses of marginalization while others challenge them; and how the way we communicate with each other across institutional and social contexts crucially shapes the type of society we can imagine and enact.
106 Introduction to Media Industries	This course is an introduction to the Media Industries & Communication major. We'll examine various industries, including film, TV, music, gaming, publishing, news, and advertising, and discuss issues that impact all of them like globalization, consolidation, copyright, creative labor, and AI. Students will read recent coverage in the trade press, discuss and write about current events, work with data, and learn to analyze contemporary media companies and systems.
101 Intro to Audiovisual Media Practices	This course introduces students to the language and practice of media production by analyzing film within the context of history, theory, genre and practical technique. Through readings, screenings, and lectures, students will explore and critically examine the art and practice of video production, film aesthetics, sound design, and editing – which will serve as inspiration for their own media-making practice. In lab sections students will engage in hands on techniques of production, including digital cinematography, sound recording, and nonlinear digital editing. The lab provides students the opportunity to apply concepts from lecture and readings, as well as other Communication courses, to the production of single channel video and sound work.
101K Documentary Sketchbook	This class functions as both a production workshop and a critical examination of the documentary form. Through screenings, readings, lectures, and discussions, we will examine various creative and technical approaches to documentary filmmaking that will serve to inform your own documentary practices throughout the quarter. Students will work to complete a series of hands-on exercises and a final project, all intended to help develop their unique voices as documentary media makers.
101N Sound Production and Manipulation	This is a hands-on production course designed to serve as an introduction to basic audio production and post-production, with a focus on sound as a tool for creative storytelling in both fiction and documentary contexts. Through listening, readings, screenings, lecture and discussion we will examine various approaches to working with sound that will serve to inform your own practice throughout the quarter. This course is project-intensive, and will prepare students to work with the Media Center’s Adobe Audition audio software.
101T Topics in Producation: 16 mm Film Production & Hand Processing	We will briefly explore the history and evolution of 16 mm film production, but the course is a hands-on experience with 16mm motion picture film and photography. We will explore in depth the techniques and aesthetics of film production, including 16 mm camera operation, which includes focusing, exposure, and motion control. We will also be hand-processing 16 mm film in the lab on campus. Each student will produce a short individual 2-3-minute 16mm film or contribute to a group project film. These films will be non-sync and may or may not include audio design.
101M Communication and Computers	In this course, we will investigate the intersection/interaction of communication and computers from the per spective of media makers in the contemporary age; from “fake news” meme generation in Photoshop, to personal vlogging and sequential-narrative Instagram posts, we will use software such as Photoshop (digital image+text), InDesign (print image+text), and Premiere/AfterEffects (video) to explore how computers and software can be used to tell stories, both “real” and “fake”, and sometimes blur the lines separating the two.
102C Practicum in New Media and Community Life	Practicum in New Media & Community Life offers a hands-on experience where you’ll collaborate with the Town & Country Learning Center (TCLC) to create meaningful media projects. Explore human development, community engagement, and participatory research while working and playing alongside youth and adults. Through storytelling, design, and real-world interactions, you’ll gain critical social science research skills and a deeper connection to the local community. Join us to make an impact and see how communities—both near and far—are truly interdependent!
108D Disability & Communication	This course considers the ways in which ability and disability are mediated by discourses, technologies, and institutions. We will look at how these terms are conceived and negotiated by examining representations of dis/ability across mainstream media, alternative film/video, educational and internet-based media, and by considering how ideas about ability are embedded in our material culture, build environment, and everyday practices. This course is designed to foster awareness of how we can resist and intervene in ableism to achieve a more inclusive and supportive orientations towards bodily and cognitive difference/diversity. In doing so we will consider language and social etiquette, assistive technologies, universal/inclusive design, and public policy/legislative frameworks. Our learning will be grounded in Critical Disability Studies and will draw on the works of disabled artists and activists.
113T Int Topics in Communication: Art as Communication	In this course we will explore how art and communication interact with each other. This will entail two tasks. First exploring art as communication. Second exploring communication as art. Studying art as communication will involve exploring how art has been historically deployed to communicate and propagate political, religious, or philosophical ideas. In communication as art, we will explore how different modes of communication, like advertising, propaganda, or social media, have adopted art for its purposes.
114E Gender & the Global Economy	This interdisciplinary course will explore the gendered nature of cultural notions around labor in our contemporary digital era and neoliberal economy. Students will learn to apply feminist, queer and neo-marxist intersectional frameworks. By centering concepts such as land dispossession, gore capitalism, dissent and decoloniality we’ll approach cultural production related, but not limited to: witch-hunting, sex work, sexual harrassment, and indigenous feminisms in Europe, the US and Latin America. Throughout the quarter, students will engage in both individual and collective creative research projects.
114I Media Technologies and Social Movements	This course explores the roles of media technologies in activist campaigns, social movements. Blending theory, historical case studies, and project-based group work, students will investigate possibilities and limitations of attempts to enroll new and old media technologies in collective efforts to make social change.
115 Communication and the Senses	While we often assume that communication is something that happens only with our eyes and/or ears, every act of communication is multisensory, often involving sight and sound but also smell, touch, and taste. In this course, students will learn how to pay attention to and engage with the “other” senses beyond the visual and auditory. Interdisciplinary scholarship and empirical activities help students build a vocabulary for understanding the complexities of multisensory communication.
119 Advanced Persuasion	This course instructs advanced strategies, tactics, and presentation skills necessary for superior performance in intercollegiate speech and debate competitions.
120M Media Stereotypes	An examination of how the media present society’s members and activities in stereotypical formats. Reasons for and consequences of this presentation are examined. Student responsibilities will be (a) participation in measurement and analysis of stereotype presentations. (b) investigating techniques for assessing both cognitive and behavioral effects of such scripted presentations on the users of media.
127 The Problem of Voice	This course will explore the problem of self-expression for members of various ethnic and cultural groups. Of special interest is how writers find ways of describing themselves in the face of others’ sometimes overwhelming predilection to describe them.
133 Television and Citizenship	Television is a central site for negotiating the rationales of inclusion and exclusion associated with citizenship and national belonging. In its many forms, television is a contested space for promoting particular values and authorized behavior in the name of national heritage, collective belonging, an informed citizenry, a stable society, decency, local identities, and democratic participation. Following an introduction to concepts of cultural citizenship, the course considers how the institutions and reception practices of commercial, public, cable, and streaming TV invoke particular forms of citizenship within their respective historical contexts. Throughout the course, specific consideration is given to how citizenship is constituted through articulations of class, race, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Student presentations will offer contemporary evidence of how television shapes and contests modern forms of liberal citizenship.
134 Media Audiences	This course considers the complex relationship between mass media and the users, viewers, and listeners it targets. What does our relationship with media and culture say about us, our backgrounds, and our values? What do we know about the ways in which media effects people, as individuals and as a society? Does media manipulate us, and if so, under what circumstances? How do media industries measure, value, and monetize audiences? And who has the most power: audiences, media-makers, or the communication systems that connect them?
135 Minority Media Makers and the Festival Experience	Contemporary Minority Media Makers is a course for upper level undergraduate students to engage in an intensified viewing and theory course that examines the work of film, video and media directors from various ethnic groups that exist in the United States. More specifically, this course will examine, analyze and discuss media works by Asian American, Native American, African American and Latina/o American filmmakers. Although there are some mainstream images of minorities that exist in Hollywood movies, the cinema that emanates from media makers of color is rarely seen in the multiplex movie theaters. The course will discuss some of the ramifications and realities of filmmaking by making use of readings by various film critics and theorists as well as biographies and articles by the makers themselves. This course will enable students to understand the aesthetic and practical choices that go into creating independent film productions. Students will be expected to attend screenings at least one or more film festivals during the class. At the end of the course students will have a greater command of cinematic language and a broader sense of American independent cinema. The course will not offer a historical survey of films by minority makers but rather will operate on themes such as cultural identity, urbanization, personal relationships, gender relations, cultural retentions and music.
142 Film Authorship	This course examines film authorship by focusing on two filmmakers and exploring the many ways that films are authored and produce meaning. Students learn how to analyze a film’s production, collaboration, representation, reception, and industrial context, in order to explore broader themes and social issues such as race, class, gender, violence, and authorial responsibility. Film authors may include Kathryn Bigelow, Guillermo del Torro, Spike Lee, Jane Campion, and Wes Anderson.
146 (A00) Advanced Topics in Cultural Production: CGI, Special Effects, and Contemporary Media	From the spectacular visual effects in blockbuster films and video games, to the filters we use everyday on Instagram and TikTok, to the future of Augmented Reality overlays and Virtual Reality avatars, we will explore the history and communicative styles of various "special effects" to trace the common formal and intellectual threads shared between classical special effects, and those available through newer media platforms.
146 (B00) Advanced Topics in Cultural Production: Race \| Nature \| Power	This class explores the role that racial formations and unequal power relations play in the cultural, political and spatial production of nature across three themes: land, body politics, and repair. To do so, each week we will focus in on readings that lay out the ‘theories’ people have about how to understand the problem, and then students will facilitate discussions based on a case study on ‘practice’ days.
164 Behind the Internet	When we think about the Internet, we tend to imagine an unbounded virtual space of wireless networks and immaterial flows of data and information. However, there is very little that is wireless or immaterial about the Internet. Behind its surface, the Internet hides a vast and largely hidden world of massive infrastructures that silently shape how digital communication take place. The aim of this course is to unveil the hidden infrastructures of the Internet and to explore the kind of visible and invisible geographies they are helping to create.
173 Interaction with Technology	In this class we will look closely at the everyday ways in which we interact with technology to discuss sociocultural character of objects, built environments; situated, distributed, and embodied character of knowledges; use of multimodal semiotic resources, talk, gesture, body orientation, and gaze in interaction with technology.
177 Culture, Domination, and Resistance	This course we will be exploring a set of very simple questions that will probably have very complex answers. “What is resistance?”, “What is resisted?”, and “How is it resisted?” will be the guiding queries through which we’ll be investigating global and contemporary movements, ideologies, styles and strategies of resistance on a worldwide scale during the last 70 years, after WWII, where the term resistance, as “organized covert opposition to an occupying or ruling power” (OED, 1939), described European resistance to the Nazi regime and occupation. We will use cinema as a way into the different guises, ideologies, strategies and tactics resistance has adopted during this timeframe and complement this approach with investigation to provide us with context, consequences, genealogies, and the realities of the historical particularities of each of the moments we will be researching, as well as how these different modalities of resistance still survive today.
185 Communication for Indigenous Justice	The course examines issues of Indigenous justice including environmental stewardship, cultural appropriation, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) and media representations. It provides students the opportunity to explore ways of using communication to promote Indigenous justice around these and other issues.
190 (B00) Media Aesthetics	Aesthetics, often associated with beauty, is a central element of the mediated experiences in our everyday lives. But how do we decide what is beautiful and why? In this junior seminar, students will learn how to analyze aesthetics across different media through key themes like art, form, value, creativity, experience, and the production of sense. This seminar provides a theoretical supplement to students engaged in a creative practice such as film, music, or design. Using aesthetic theory and methods, students will write a research paper and develop an artist portfolio.
190 (C00) Unsettle UCSD: Critically Studying Our University	This course examines the role of american settler universities in shaping the learning and living of our lives. In understanding settler universities as colonial orientation projects that position us towards particular worldviews, this class will ask students to read UCSD’s campus, landscape, and histories as media objects. Each class will involve moving through campus and critically examining a different campus site - the ocean, the library, the lawns, etc - where we will think together about what it means to study here on this land, with this space and in this time. What might we learn through collective reading, walking, roaming, pointing, looking, and/or attending to UCSD’s campus and the land it occupies? What histories do we inherit in being a part of this institution, and what can we do with these histories? And ultimately, how might we then (re)position ourselves in relation to this institution?
190 (D00) Cinema and Revolution: Film as a Catalyst for Social Change	This course explores the dynamic relationship between cinema and revolutionary movements, examining how film both reflects and shapes social and political transformations across different historical and cultural contexts. Moving beyond conventional distinctions between documentary and fiction, the course investigates how cinematic narratives—whether scripted or unscripted—serve as powerful tools for resistance, propaganda, and collective memory.
196A Honors Seminar: Methods	This seminar is designed to enable Communication students admitted to the Senior Honors Program to conceptualize, research, and ultimately write and/or produce a full-length Honors Thesis. Working in conjunction with a faculty advisor, each student will produce a substantial research essay (which may or may not incorporate a multimedia/web-based project) of no less than 40-50 pages exclusive of endnotes and bibliography. Along the way, Honors students will learn about how to ask research questions, how to think about different research methodologies, and how to use resources that will enable you to master a complex research agenda over a nine-month period.

Winter 2026 Course Descriptions

Course	Instructor	Description
10 Introduction to Communication	Domínguez Rubio	This course provides an introduction to the main areas of focus in this department and to several major areas in the field of communication including: the relation between communication, the self and society; the operation of language as a mechanism of power; the emergence and significance of new communication technologies in different historical periods; the role of the news media in democratic societies; debates about the social and political influence of culture industries like film and music; the relationship between communication and globalization. In examining these areas, the course also introduces students to a wide range of theories reflecting the department’s interdisciplinary diversity including: political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical race studies and globalization. In the process, the course provides students with the tools for beginning to answer five key questions: What is communication? Where does it occur? How does it occur? Why does it matter? How do we study it?
20 Analysis of Media Forms and Cultures	McKenna	Media is part of our everyday lives, impacting us in our everything days and shaping how we understand the world around us. By introducing students to the basic vocabulary of image-based media, this course will help students develop the critical skills to understand, analyze, and interpret how media make meaning and how we make meaning out of media. We will examine the formal properties and visual language of film, television, and social media, considering technique and style as it is expressed through cinematography, production design, editing, and narrative conventions. Concepts and methodologies covered will lay the groundwork for continued study in both scholarly communication areas and hands-on sound, film/video and/or social media production.
30 Digital Media Literacy: Analyzing Forms, Practices, and Infrastructures of Mediated Public Life	Schmidt	This course focuses on the analysis of news media and its role in sustaining (or undermining) a democratic life and political culture. Particular attention will be paid to analyzing media practices and their embeddedness in social, economic and political conditions, highlighting how journalism portrays marginalized communities and social issues. More specifically, we’ll explore how racial and ethnic identities are constructed, reified, or subverted by representations in mass media and the digital news environment. In addition, we’ll consider the potential of the web as a democratizing force and the changing nature of what’s considered news and how it provides opportunities for Black agency and activism in response to social injustice and historical biases. By exploring traditional journalistic norms in the context of today’s communication dynamics (including technology, policy, politics, and culture), we will better understand the challenges, benefits, and limitations of mass media in representing, reifying, and transforming social reality, especially with regard to racialized and ethnic identities. As a result, students will have an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which media shape social experience, practices, discourses, and expectations as well as social groups, classes, and relations.
50 Presenting & Public Speaking	Armenta	This course covers the basics of communication in public and professional settings. Students will cultivate their own speaking style while developing skills in delivery, performance, and persuasion. They will learn how to create a slide deck as well as prepare for speeches, interviews, and Q&As.
80 Public Presentation and Persuasion—Speech and Debate	Edwards	Throughout history, important advances in a democratic society have emerged most often from civil, rigorous discussion, debate, and persuasion. Students develop research, critical thinking, presentation, public speaking, and argumentation skills through in-class practice speeches and debates, along with participation in intercollegiate speech and debate tournaments.
87 First-year Student Seminar: Listening Critically to Popular Music	Serlin	In this first-year seminar, we will listen to and discuss the development of popular music since the 1920s in terms of changing ideas about recording, production, distribution, and consumption. By learning to listen critically— from early vinyl formats and radio broadcasts to the latest digital forms and software — we will explore examples drawn from the history of popular music while also exploring the economic, social, and political dimensions of technology as they have evolved over time.
100C Communication, Institutions, and Power	deWaard	Communication media—from the printing press to the Internet—have played a fundamental role in the formation of modern society and culture. This course introduces students to the institutional dimensions of communication and media, and zooms out to analyze large-scale, structural elements. Specifically, we’ll examine how media and communication institutions work, how they organize power, and how they impact social life. We’ll also draw connections between the present moment and the history of media and communication to pinpoint what in our society has changed, and what remains the same. The course begins with ideas about media technology and capitalism, and then explores different institutional forces: workers, government, and business. Digital communication will be a focus of inquiry, as we ask questions about the role of workers/creators, free speech online, the regulation of social media, the impact of media consolidation on society, and the role of privacy in the era of artificial intelligence. Throughout, the course will consider the relationship between institutional structures and individual agents.
101 Introduction to Audiovisual Media Practices	Ahn	This course introduces students to the language and practice of media production by analyzing film within the context of history, theory, genre and practical technique. Through readings, screenings, and lectures, students will explore and critically examine the art and practice of video production, film aesthetics, sound design, and editing – which will serve as inspiration for their own media-making practice. In lab sections, students will engage in hands on techniques of production, including digital cinematography, sound recording, and nonlinear digital editing. The lab provides students the opportunity to apply concepts from lecture and readings, as well as other Communication courses, to the production of single channel video and sound work.
101T (A00) Topics in Production: 3D Animation and Visual Effects Using Houdini	Halm	Would you like to learn how to make 3D models and visual effects using a high-end, entertainment industry software like Houdini? Perhaps you would also like to blow those models up, or have a wave of water blast into them, or have them crash in a pile of smoke and debris? Then this is the class for you! We will start out by using procedural methods to create 3D models, which has particular advantages over making them in the usual way in Maya, Cinema4D or Blender, then study and apply some of the common visual effects we’ve all seen used in blockbuster films and video games. No prior 3D experience is necessary, but if you do have some, then that will be a huge help as this class will not be an ‘easy’ one as the subject matter and methods used can be relatively technical at times. BUT, the rewards are so worth it when you see that beautiful model you just made detonate into a bazillion pieces then engulfed by a huge fireball!
101T (B00) Topics in Production: Studio Podcasting	Dewey	The course provides basic production and developing skills in podcast production, including storytelling styles, interviewing, voice, journalism and ethics, marketing, and critical media literacy. The course will include both individual projects and a partnership with local organizations/nonprofits or campus organizations to develop and produce organization-based podcasting formats and content. This course introduces students to basic podcast studio production practices. The course does not focus on "audio" engineering and instead allows students to understand and engage with studio podcast production's basic technology and workflow. Students will also learn to work with and integrate mobile phones, field recorders (Tascam, Zoom), online conferencing (ZOOM, Skype, Teams), and basic Adobe Audition audio production. Working in production teams, the focus of the podcasts students will produce in this class will be non-fiction, journalistic, and informative, requiring research, evidence, fact-checking, and interviewing. Students will also have the opportunity to get involved themselves in promotional activities such as creating social media posts and outreach newsletters. While much of the course is focused on production, podcast studio space, podcasting kits, and editing bays are limited. This means that students must be able to work outside of the scheduled class time. This includes conducting interviews, recording sound and other audio, editing and mixing, content research, etc.
102C Practicum in Media and Community	Campion	Practicum in New Media & Community Life offers a hands-on experience where you’ll collaborate with the Town & Country Learning Center (TCLC) to create meaningful media projects. Explore human development, community engagement, and participatory research while working and playing alongside youth and adults. Through storytelling, design, and real-world interactions, you’ll gain critical social science research skills and a deeper connection to the local community. Join us to make an impact and see how communities—both near and far—are truly interdependent!
105P Photographic Technologies	Gates	This course explores the role of photographic technologies in the ways human beings communicate and make sense of the world. Photographic technologies are everywhere: integrated into our personal devices, in our homes and workplaces, in public spaces, courtrooms, medical examining rooms and scientific laboratories, in newsrooms and artist studios, and many other settings. The uses of photographic media are so pervasive that we take them for granted, hardly noticing their role in our lives. In this course, we will examine photographic media as a wide-ranging set of technologies that modern societies have used to tell stories about themselves, to produce knowledge, to express creative ideas, and to make particular claims about truth and reality.
106 Introduction to Media Industries	Halm	This course is an introduction to the Media Industries & Communication major. We'll examine various industries, including film, TV, music, gaming, publishing, news, and advertising, and discuss issues that impact all of them like globalization, consolidation, copyright, creative labor, and AI. Students will read recent coverage in the trade press, discuss and write about current events, work with data, and learn to analyze contemporary media companies and systems.
106F The Film Industry	McKenna	This course examines the social, political, and cultural organization of the American film industry from the 1890s to the present. The course explores the history of the U.S. film industry but also pays attention to contemporary issues in the American film and media industries. Topics to be covered include: the shifting parameters of film production, distribution and exhibition; the impact of new media technologies (sound, color, television, video, the VCR, and streaming); the cultural politics of representation and identity; stardom and exhibition cultures; censorship and industrial development; and contemporary trends in popular entertainment.
106I Internet Industry	Irani	Amazing possibilities, big bumps. Data leaks. TikTok rabbit holes. Fake news. Automation and deep fakes. Tech companies – Apple, Google, and Amazon, for example – transform how we get products, how we get the news, and how we relate to one another. This class examines how the internet and its data, as technology and as industry practices, transform work, politics, and everyday social life. We will understand this by looking at data, interfaces, and services. In this class, you’ll learn to sift through the hope, the hype, and the dystopia of the internet, making the connections between business models and the user experience. Learn more about different pathways to changw the future of technology, design, policy and law, ethics work, and community and labor organizing. Non-STEM and STEM students with a curiousity about tech, ethics, democracy, and the future are welcome and have succeeded in this course.
107 Visual Culture	Serlin	Although many have called our era of phone cameras, social media platforms, and cloud storage for trillions of images a “revolution” in communication, the invention of photography in the 1830s was no less revolutionary. This course will examine the distinct history of photography as a pivot point between analog media and digital media—what some scholars have called the transition between the pre-photographic era and the post-photographic era. The course will involve regular lectures as well as collaborative media workshops and group presentations, all of which are designed to help you understand how the meanings we make of visual culture are both individual and collective, public and private, and personal and social.
110G Communication in Organizations	Whitworth-Smith	Whether or not you give it much thought, you are surrounded by organizations. Your daily life involves encounters with schools, businesses, churches, social clubs (for instance, sports or debate teams, fraternities & sororities, gaming communities), health care systems and governments. What’s more, these same organizations are created, maintained, transformed and in some cases, destroyed by communication. Whatever your career goals, this course will help you make sense of the importance of communication to the organizational experience. The course is intended to increase your awareness of communication processes central to organizing, and to develop new vocabularies and skills for working within modern organizations. Your participation in the course should help you better understand how organizational communication contributes to the overall quality of work life and the role of communication in creating and working well with the challenges of organizational communication. A focus is placed on evaluating your own organizational experiences and applying organizational communication theories to real-world organizations. Some of the themes covered include: the function of organizations within complex technological, market and sociopolitical environments; the communicative challenges of organizing; social responsibility and responsiveness; conflict mediation between organizational groups and actors; corporate wrongdoing; issues management; corporate political activity; institutional ethics; and whistle blowing.
110M Communication and Community	Abuelhiga	This course examines how different forms of communication affect people's everyday lives. More specifically, we will focus on how members of different communities acquire information from and interact with a variety of institutions through forms of communication, such as linguistic practices, (community) media, and other audiovisual and artistic modes of communication. We will use these cases to better understand how people use communicative resources to position themselves as individuals, as part of a community, and within society more broadly.
111A Communication and Cultural Production	Pavón Aramburú	This course explores the transmodal cultural landscape shaping art, tourism, cinema, journalism, music, and more. Grounded in critical gender and decolonial theories, the course provides students with a deeper understanding of contemporary debates on the aesthetics and politics of communication and cultural expression. Throughout the quarter, students will examine various cultural phenomena and creative works, ranging from museum exhibits to digital fandoms. They will also work on their own research and creative projects, drawing inspiration from the course content and engaging in ethnographic practices.
114F Law, Communication, and Freedom of Expression	Rojo Solis	The issue of freedom of speech seems to be one of the vital issues of the globalized world, and one of the keystones that a modern understanding of the human and the individual relies on. This course will have two major lanes of investigation. On one hand, we will be discussing the theoretical framework on which the idea of free speech is built on, with particular emphasis on media and the idea of the individual and its particular production of subjectivity. On the other, we will be researching the major First Amendment cases in the USA.
114J Food Justice	Goldfarb	This course investigates food systems through lenses of equity, law, business, ecology, culture, [dis]ability and technology. Using texts, stories, and documentary media, we will study strategies that communities deploy to create healthier, more sustainable futures. Close consideration will be given to the intersections of food access and politics with race, class, gender, species, and other forms of difference. This course includes community fieldwork.
114T Science Communication	Walkover	During the COVID-19 pandemic, science communication has become a central part of daily life. This course will examine science communication as a unique form of storytelling, and will identify who does science communication, how, why, and with what impacts. Through an exploration of the social construction of scientific knowledge, the course will highlight science communication's role in democracy, power, justice, public reason, technological trajectories, university-community relations, and health activism.
115J Journalistic Writing, Reporting, and Research	Schmidt	Introduction to the basics of journalistic writing, reporting, and research. Students will consider voice and bias and discuss the major issues facing journalists today. Opportunities to write and report in different modes and across a variety of media, may include podcasting, beat reporting, investigative journalism, multimedia features, and more.
119 Advanced Persuasion	Edwards	This course instructs advanced strategies, tactics, and presentation skills necessary for superior performance in intercollegiate speech and debate competitions.
137 Black Women Filmmakers	Davis	Black Women Filmmakers is a course for students to engage in an intensive viewing and theory course that examines the work of Black women directors from across the globe. Although the majority of the directors whose work we will be viewing are from the United States, films by makers from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and Australia may also be studied. The course will make use of readings by various feminist film critics and theorists as well as biographies and articles by the makers themselves. This course will prepare students to understand the aesthetic and practical choices that may go into creating independent film productions. At the end of the course, students will have a greater command of cinematic language and a broader sense of world cinema. The course will not be limited to a historical survey of films by Black women makers but rather will operate on themes such as cultural identity, the "hair" question, personal relationships, skin color, African cultural retentions, and music.
138 Black Women, Feminism, and Media	Boateng	This course is aimed at reaching a better understanding of theories of race, gender and sexuality in relation to the lives of Black women in Africa and the United States. It also examines the media and popular culture as arenas of Black feminist struggle. Course readings therefore include scholarly, literary and cultural texts including novels, feature films, and music.
140 Cinema in Latin America	Fattal	Cinema in Latin America is a course that explores landmark films in Latin American and Latinx/Chicanx Cinema, with a focus on films that examine pressing social and political issues. We start with the New Latin American Cinema of the late 1950s and 1960s that saw film as a form of political struggle and move in hopscotch fashion to the present to explore questions of inclusion in an industry that is looking to diversify, an honorable effort hampered by the industry’s commitment to a profit-driven mode of production. Our concern with the film industry is not only theoretical but also experiential. Part of the class, and the final assignment, includes students’ participation in the San Diego Latino Film Festival that will take place at the end of the quarter.
145 History, Memory, and Popular Culture	Rojo Solis	Either on a collective or individual level, memory is a fundamental piece not only of what we think we are, our identity, but also of how we understand the present we are living in and the future ahead of us. This course will take a global approach to memory-making and memory-preserving and its particular relationship to materiality, the way in which memory has (and makes) bodies and places and moments. We will research cases from all over the world to understand how memory is procured or dismissed, and how different people, using different media, resist, erase or enhance the persistence of certain events or experiences, and how these strategies inform who we are, and how we act upon the world we share.
159 Tourism and Imperialism	Córdoba Azcárate	Traveling for pleasure is a privilege. For some to be able to travel, others need to stay still, working to accommodate tourists’ desires and consumption fantasies. This course studies tourism as a form of imperialism. It explores the industry’s role in reproducing race, gender, labor, ecological, and geographical inequalities by looking at real case scenarios from around the world. The course offers critical tools to help us think about the future of tourism in the face of contemporary crisis.
160 Political Economy and International Communication	Whitworth-Smith	This course takes a historic as well as global view of the question, “Who controls communication?” It introduces a set of theories about communication technologies and mass media by considering the changing relationship of the state and the market across different societies. Particular attention will be paid to the differential impact of “free flows” of information and the unequal roles and needs of developed and developing countries.
171 Environmental Communication	Zilberg	This course provides students with the opportunity to pursue in-depth inquiry into the role of communication in ecological controversies, particularly with respect to climate change. A significant portion of the course is dedicated to a hands-on project in which students investigate and analyze the role of communication in a specific ecological controversy.
180 Advanced Studies in Communication Theory: Pop Culture Theory	Kidman	Pop culture today has changed a lot over the last 100 years, but it remains as complex, controversial, and misunderstood as ever. What even qualifies as pop culture? If something isn’t widely popular, can it still be considered a part of pop culture? Who gets to define these boundaries? Is pop culture good or bad for us? Does it impact politics or have the ability to improve society? Could it lead to social decline? Is there even such a thing as pop culture anymore? Spanning 120 years of pop culture history in music, film, TV, books, and fashion, this course focuses on the different theories and methodologies academics have used in trying to understand how and if pop culture matters. (Students who have already taken COMM 111G with Prof. Kidman may not enroll)
182 Education and Global Citizenship	Goldfarb	What does it mean to belong—and act—in a global public? We examine governance, curriculum, and communication to understand how civic identities form, which competencies matter, and how the concept of “global citizenship” has been understood and leveraged in diverse contexts. Students craft practical goals and instructional designs for global education.
190 (A00) How to Disagree Without Losing Your Soul	Anderson	In a world now described as “polarized,” disagreement can sometimes feel risky, alienating, or even dangerous — but it doesn’t have to. This course explores how to listen with empathy, learn from difference, argue with purpose, and explore strong convictions without dehumanizing others or shutting them down. As a class, we’ll identify a range of conflicting opinions – from everyday preferences to larger-scale belief structures, from campus debates to global conflicts – and practice strategies for learning-oriented dialogue, accountability, and repair, using difference as a register through which we can practice care for ourselves and each other.
190 (B00) Queer Media Studies	Serlin	Gay cowboys in silent films. Lesbian blues singers on vinyl records. Trans characters on network television. In this seminar course, we will read, watch, listen to, and examine media artifacts drawn from the last 130 years to explore the development of queer representation: from photography, film, television, and popular music to contemporary digital media and social apps. We will also examine different theoretical approaches to sexuality and gender over the last century or so to think about queerness not just as an orientation or identity but as an interpretive lens, a way of reading and making sense of popular media. Students will take part in weekly discussions, fulfill weekly in-class writing assignments and group presentations, and work collaboratively to organize the last two weeks of the quarter when they direct the seminar themselves.
190 (C00) Design(ing) the Pacific	Cho	What does it mean for us to live in and by the Pacific? And what meanings does ‘The Pacific’ hold for those who reside and think about its geopolitics, ecology, and cultural histories? Geopolitically, the Pacific conjures up many meanings at once serving as a crucial trade route, and a militarized zone. Ecologically, it serves as the place where half of the world’s ocean is with a wide range of unique ecosystems that sustain the planet. For many it is also a place where multiple cultures, histories and worlds are entangled by colonial violence, imperial control, and capitalist extraction. As politicians, artists, scientists produce and work with an array of policies, theories and representations of the Pacific, it is a reminder that imagining the Pacific is always a fractured practice. This course asks how do discourses, imaginaries, and social practices inform and activate the Pacific as a site of interest in the West? We explore different ways of navigating knowledge by encountering the works of artists and designers of/from the Pacific who shed light onto the roles that militarization, indigeneity, diaspora, and environmental crises play in shaping ideas of the Pacific. Through the use of critical design methodologies and by drawing on an interdisciplinary archive of literature, artworks, and other media, students will develop their own ways of navigating that challenge dominant visual and spatial representations of the Pacific while exploring alternative and critical modes of communication. This is a hands-on class design course meaning that you will practice critically engaging with, imagining, proposing, soliciting feedback and presenting your own ways of challenging dominant representations of the Pacific whether it be through zines, illustrations, sculptures, or other forms of interactive media. The course is designed to situate yourself in complex contexts and build a critical analytical framework that can be expressed through different mediums of communication. Our time in class will emphasize discussion, and the presentation of research materials and design.
196B Honors Seminar Research	deWaard	In the Fall seminar, students in the Senior Honors Program conceptualized their research project, culminating with a proposal. This quarter, we will enact our research project, which will be broken into the following phases: 1) Research/Data Collection, 2) Data Analysis, and 3) Writing and Revising. In reality we will be doing all three things simultaneously. Think of these not as separate activities but as shifts in primary emphasis. You must first gather your data before you can analyze it. However, by analyzing data while still conducting research, you may find ways to improve your research design. At the same time, you will continue to jot down ideas and thoughts about how your data and data analysis might contribute to the write up phase of your thesis. Moreover, you will begin integrating the feedback on your proposal that you have already received as you are conducting your research. Finally, as you move into the writing phase, you may realize that you need more data to strengthen your argument. This integrated approach to research, analysis, and writing is characteristic of qualitative research in general, but it is especially true for your projects given the short time frame with which you have to complete the thesis.

Official UCSD Course Catalog

The UCSD Course Catalog is the University's official listing of courses that are approved to be offered at UC San Diego. A selection of these courses are offered by the department each quarter.