Communication 123
Children and the Media
MWF 9:05-9:55
Center Hall 119
- September 25 -- Introduction to the course. Childhood
Histories
- Seiter TBA
- Screening: Teletubbies
- September 28 -- Week One: Families and Consumer Culture
- Seiter TBA
- Screening: Television Commercials; Washes Whiter
- October 5 -- Week Two: Disney on the playground: Licensed
characters and
tie-ins
- Screening: Disney Blast (on-line); The Little Mermaid
- October 12 -- Week Three: Superheroes, Schools, and Literacy I
- Dyson
- Screening: The Uncanny X-Men; Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
- October 19 -- Week Four: Superheroes, Schools and Literacy II
- Read: Davies
- Screening: HeroTV CD Rom; The Superhero Project
- October 23 -- Take home midterm question distributed in class--
screening.
- October 26 -- Midterms due in class October 26.
- Week 5 -- Distinguishing Fantasy from Reality: Developmental
Perspectives
- Davies; Jenkins
- November 2 -- Children, Fear and Non-Fiction Media:
- Screening: It's Elementary
- Jenkins TBA
- November 9 -- The Picture Book
- Jenkins TBA
- Screening: Arthur's Teacher Trouble
- November 16 -- Communication technologies: VCR, V-chip,
Multimedia
- Take home midterm distributed in class with screening November
20.
- Screening: Sega & Nintendo games
- November 23 -- Take home midterms due.
- Computer Literacy and the Internet
- Screening: Surfing the Web
- Jenkins TBA
- No class on November 27
- November 30 -- Research Methods and Children
- Final Exam Thursday Dec 10: 8-11 AM
Written Work:
Each student will write two take home midterms based on readings and
class screenings. A SEPARATE ASSIGNMENT SHEET FOR THE MIDTERMS WILL
BE DISTRIBUTED IN CLASS on Friday --exams will be due on Monday
morning. The assignments will ask you to consider such questions as
what assumptions about children's cognitive and social development
are implicit in the ways the television program/film/web site speaks
to its audience? What is being said about children in the show? Who
seems to be speaking? How are girls and boys portrayed visually? What
are ethnic and class norms in the representation of children? The
first essay is due Oct. 27. The second essay is due Nov. 24.
The final examination will consist of short answer (25 word
identificaitons) and a final essay exam. A study guide for the final
will be distributed on the final day of class, with sample essay
exams and a list of terms for the short answer section. Final exam
time is Thursday Dec. 10, 8-11AM in Center Hall 119.
Grades will be based on the first essay 33%, the second essay
33%;final exam 33%.
There are four required texts, no packet. Books are available at
Groundworks:
Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer
Culture
by Ellen Seiter
Rutgers University Press
Fake, Fact, and Fantasy : Childrens Interpretations of
Television Reality
(Communication Series)
by Marie Messenger Davies
Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc;
ISBN: 0805820477
The Children's Culture Reader ** to arrive 10/13
by Henry Jenkins (Editor)
500 pages
(October 1998)
New York Univ Press
ISBN: 0814742327
Writing Superheroes : Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture,
and Classroom Literacy
by Anne Haas Dyson
New York: Teachers College Press, 1997
ISBN: 0807736392
Ellen Seiter's office is located in MCC 102. Her office hours for
fall quarter will be Wednesdays 10-12.
email: eseiter@ucsd.edu
TA Mary Gray has office hrs in MCC 246
TA Lisa Tripp has office hrs in Sequoyah 101
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