Communication Department Course Information

Interest Areas

Checkout elective areas for COMM & MIC!

Communication Major

View COMM electives by interest area

View COMM

Media Industries & Communication

View course sequencing by industry area

View Media Industires

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 2026-27 Planned Courses

2026-27 Communication Course Schedule

Planned, subject to change

Undergraduate Courses

FALL 2026

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Intro Course	10	Intro to Communication	Fattal
Intro Course	20	Analysis of Audio/Visual Media	McKenna
Intro Course	40	Promotional Communication	Whitworth-Smith
Intro Course	50	Presenting & Public Speaking	Armenta
Intro Course	80	Speech & Debate	Edwards
Intro Course	100A	Comm, Person, Everyday Life	Sims
Production Elective	101	Intro to Audiovisual Media Practices	Ahn
Production Elective	101D	Nonlinear/Digital Editing	Martinico
Production Elective	101K	Documentary Sketchbook	Ahn
Production Elective	101N	Sound Production & Manipulation	Martinico
Production Elective	101T	Topics in Production: 3D Design	Halm
Production Elective	102C	Practicum in Media & Community	Campion
Elective	103D	Documentary History	Gates
Elective	106	Intro to Media Industries	Halm
Elective	106G	Tourism: Global Industry and Cultural Form	Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	106I	Internet Industry	Irani
Elective	110M	Comm & Community	Abuelhiga
Elective	110X	Texting & Talking	Harb
Elective	111G	Popular Culture	Reed
Elective	114I	Media Tech & Social Movements	Sims
Elective	114J	Food Justice	Goldfarb
Elective	118A	Action Cinema	McKenna
Elective	119	Advanced Persuasion	Edwards
Elective	127	Problem of Voice	Abuelhiga
Elective	142	Film Authorship	deWaard
Elective	160	International Communication	Chen
Elective	176	Communication and Religion	Zehra
Elective	181	Citizen Consumers	Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	182	Education & Global Citizenship	Harb
Junior Seminar	190	Science & Technology	Bratton
Junior Seminar	190	Education Technology, Human Development, and Hierarchies of Difference	Requena-Robison
Junior Seminar	190	From Palestine to Mexico: The (World) Making of Solidarities	Vargas
Honors	196A	Honors Seminar: Methods	Gates

WINTER 2027

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Intro Course	10	Intro to Communication	Whitworth-Smith
Intro Course	20	Analysis of Audio/Visual Media	Hill
Intro Course	30	Global Digital Media Literacy	Geiger
Intro Course	50	Presenting & Public Speaking	Armenta
Intro Course	80	Speech & Debate	Edwards
Intro Course	100C	Comm, Institutions, Power	deWaard
Production Elective	101	Intro to Audiovisual Media Practices	Martinico
Production Elective	101A	Activist Media Production	Ahn
Production Elective	101K	Documentary Sketchbook	Davis
Production Elective	101M	Comm & Computers	Halm
Production Elective	101N	Sound Production & Manipulation	Martinico
Production Elective	102C	Practicum in Media & Community	Campion
Elective	105P	Photographic Technologies	Gates
Elective	106	Intro to Media Industries	McKenna
Elective	106F	The Film Industry	Hill
Elective	106M	Advertising & Society	Halm
Elective	107	Visual Culture	Serlin
Elective	108D	Disability & Comm	Goldfarb
Elective	113T	Int Topics in Comm: Title TBA	Domínguez Rubio
Elective	115	Communication and the Senses	Alač
Elective	119	Advanced Persuasion	Edwards
Elective	124A	Critical Design/Adv Studio	Sims
Elective	134	Media Audiences	Abuelhiga
Elective	137	Black Women Filmmakers	Davis
Elective	138	Black Women, Feminism, Media	Boateng
Elective	153	Architecture as Communication	Serlin
Elective	159	Tourism and Imperialism	Córdoba Azcárate
Elective	164	Behind the Internet	Domínguez Rubio
Elective	168	Multilingual Communication	Harb
Elective	171	Adv Environmental Communication	Zilberg
Elective	182	Education & Global Citizenship	Goldfarb
Junior Seminar	190	How to Disagree	Anderson
Junior Seminar	190	Music Industry	deWaard
Junior Seminar	190	Media Tech & Built Environment	Sims
Honors	196B	Honors Seminar: Research	Gates

SPRING 2027

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Intro Course	10	Intro to Communication	Domínguez Rubio
Intro Course	30	Global Digital Media Literacy	Ekhtiar
Intro Course	40	Promotional Communication	Whitworth-Smith
Intro Course	50	Presenting & Public Speaking	Armenta
Intro Course	65	Intro to Environmental Justice	Ybarra
Intro Course	80	Speech & Debate	Edwards
Intro Course	100B	Comm, Culture, Representation	Serlin
Production Elective	101	Intro to Audiovisual Media Practices	Halm
Production Elective	101D	Nonlinear/Digital Editing	Martinico
Production Elective	101K	Documentary Sketchbook	Ahn
Production Elective	101T	Topics in Production: Title TBA	Davis
Production Elective	101T	Topics in Production: Title TBA	Martinico
Production Elective	102C	Practicum in Media & Community	Campion
Elective	106D	Data and AI industries	Geiger
Elective	106M	Advertising & Society	Whitworth-Smith
Elective	114A	Human Rights & Global Justice	Zilberg
Elective	114P	Public History & Museum Studies	Abuelhiga
Elective	118F	Fashion and Film	McKenna
Elective	119	Advanced Persuasion	Edwards
Elective	120M	Media Stereotypes	Abuelhiga
Elective	124B	Critical Design/Topic Studio	Ybarra
Elective	139	Examining Marvel's Black Panther	Davis
Elective	148	Global Cultures of K-Pop	Ahn
Elective	149	Southern California Cinema	McKenna
Elective	166	Surveillance, Media, Risk	Nickerson
Elective	173	Interaction with Technology	Alač
Elective	174	Comm & Social Machines	Alač
Elective	177	Culture Domination, Resistance	Ybarra
Junior Seminar	190	Communicating Nations	Boateng
Junior Seminar	190	Title TBA	Hill
Junior Seminar	190	Title TBA	Walkover
Honors	199H	Honors Project Completion	Faculty Mentor

Graduate Courses

FALL 2026

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Core Course	200A	Comm as Social Force	deWaard
Core Course	200C	Comm & The Individual	Alač
Theory Elective	275	Topics in Communication	Goldfarb
Theory Elective	262	Geographies of Difference, Exclusion Conflict	Zilberg
Research Methods	201B	Ethnographic Methods	Fattal
Science Studies Course	225C	SSP Colloquium	McKenzie

WINTER 2027

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Core Course	200B	Comm & Culture	Córdoba Azcárate
Core Course	294	History of Comm Research	Boateng
Research Methods	280	Adv Workshop in Comm Media	Ahn
Research Methods	201L	Qualitative Analysis/Info Systems	Ybarra
Theory Elective	275	Topics in Communication	Harb
Theory Elective	245	Science, Tech Studies and Comm	Irani
Science Studies Course	225C	SSP Colloquium	McKenzie

SPRING 2027

Type	Number	Title	Instructor
Core Course	296	Comm Research as Interdisciplinary Activity	Hill
Research Methods	201D	Historical Methods	Serlin
Theory Elective	275	Topics in Communication	Domínguez Rubio
Science Studies Course	225B	Seminar in Science Studies	Serlin
Science Studies Course	225C	SSP Colloquium	McKenzie

Summer 2026 Planned Courses & Descriptions

Summer 2026 Communication Course Schedule

All courses are planned to be offered via remote instruction; all details subject to change.

The Summer Schedule of Classes will go live in March 2026. Registration is via the Summer Session website.

Summer Session I: June 29 – August 1
Summer Session II: August 3 – September 5

Type	Number	Description	SSI	SSII
Intro Course	10 Intro to Communication	COMM 10 is the introductory course for the major and minor in Communication at UC San Diego. Its primary purpose is to introduce students to the department and to investigate: What is Communication? Where does it occur? How does it occur? Why does it matter? And how do we study it? Throughout COMM 10, students will be engaged with a range of scholarly and artistic work in Communication, will hone their analytical writing skills and identify their own interests in the field.	Evans	Ruskiewicz
Core MIC Course	20 Analysis of Media Forms and Cultures	Why do some films circulate globally while others remain tied to local audiences? How can cinema reveal the cultural, political, and economic forces that shape life across borders? This course invites students to explore world cinema as a dynamic global practice, moving beyond a Hollywood-centered view of film to examine diverse cinematic traditions, industries, and movements from around the world. Students will gain the essential tools of film and media analysis, learning how sound, image, narrative, and style create meaning while considering how cinema is shaped by financing, policy, distribution, exhibition, festivals, and streaming. This course helps students analyze films across cultural, political, and national contexts and understand cinema as both an art form and a response to global power imbalances rather than merely entertainment. By studying how films travel, how they are funded and received, and how they can challenge dominant centers of power, students will build a strong foundation in transnational film analysis. Whether students are new to film studies or looking to deepen their understanding of global media, this course offers a strong foundation for future work in media studies, critical analysis, and creative practice.		Hassanpour
Core MIC Course	40 Promotional Communication: Cultural Studies of Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations	In Comm 40: Promotional Culture, we will examine how advertising, public relations, marketing, and social media shape our daily lives. We will take a critical-communication approach to analyzing promotional strategies, understanding the economic and cultural forces that drive promotional industries and practices, and evaluating their impact on culture society.		Abdalla
Intro Course	100A Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life	This course offers an overview of fundamental theories and practices within the interdisciplinary field of communication. While the other COMM 100 courses teach you to analyze representations and media institutions, this course introduces students to perspectives that locate communication as a feature of people’s everyday lived experiences and their participation in social activities with particular histories. We will explore how our daily social practices depend on representations and interpretations, which shape how we (re)produce, sustain, and transform social institutions and structures. We will approach these themes from theoretical, empirical, and creative perspectives. In the assignments, we will ask you to relate the ideas introduced in the readings, lectures, and section discussions to your own knowledge of everyday life as you experience it.	Vargas
Intro Course	100B Communication, Culture, and Representation	This course is a critical introduction to the history of representation, surveying a range of theories and methods that have been used to understand and shape representational practices. The course will focus on relationships between form and content across various representational genres in shifting cultural contexts. Course work may integrate scholarly study with production (e.g., image-making or video/media production).		Ortega
Intro Course	100C Communication, Institutions, and Power	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.	Gabinelli
MIC Intro Course / COMM Elective	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.		Halm
Industry Elective	106N Journalism and the News Industry	What is wrong with the news? According to whom? How do we make sense of an industry that capitalizes on crisis reporting, yet is in perpetual crisis? How have social, political, and economic challenges changed what journalism is, how it’s funded, and who it’s for? This course surveys critical approaches to the news industry through the lens of ideology, political economy (ownership, funding models), professional practices and labor (objectivity, branding, production), technology (AI, distribution platforms), and audiences. We will meditate on the structural tension between representation (race, gender, sexuality, class, citizenship, etc.) and scale. We will also pay special attention to how institutional and counterpublic forms of truthtelling have historically reshaped democratic accountability through anticolonial, anti-imperial, and antiracist critique. To help navigate these tensions, this course will equip students with the theoretical tools to situate themselves in relation to unsteady media terrains, and think beyond the limits of conventional media paradigms. Together, the class will workshop ways to reimagine what journalism and other modes of truthtelling could look like.	Chen
Elective	110G Communication in Organizations	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.		Whitworth-Smith
Elective	110M Communication and Community	This course explores how diverse forms of communication shape everyday life. We focus on how communities interact with institutions through linguistic practices, community media, artistic expression, and everyday practices. Through case studies, critical media analysis, and creative digital assignments, students will examine how communication resources are used to construct identities, participate in communities, and engage with broader societal systems.	Campion
Elective	113T (A00) Topics: Storytelling for Social Change	Stories shape how we see ourselves and the collective imagination of what is possible. This course explores storytelling as a powerful tool for social change. From oral traditions to digital media, we will examine how narratives influence the transformation of society. The course blends theory with practice: you’ll learn and apply research-based storytelling methods through photography, podcasting, and in-depth interviews. By the end of the course, students will have designed original narrative projects that contribute to social issues. This course gives you creative tools that are powerful, practical, and applicable for students looking to build skills that contribute to the betterment of the world around them.	Farzaneh
Elective	113T (B00) Topics: Introduction to Argumentation and Debate	This course dives into the science and strategy of effective argumentation, giving you the tools to speak with confidence, think critically under pressure, and hold your own in any debate—academic or otherwise. You’ll learn how to build compelling arguments, analyze evidence like a pro, and recognize the logical traps that derail discussions. Whether you're preparing for law school, aiming for leadership roles, or just want to win more arguments at the dinner table, this course helps you sharpen your voice, strengthen your reasoning, and have fun doing it. Prepare to speak up, challenge ideas, and discover the power of well‑crafted persuasion.	Edwards
Elective	113T (B00) Topics: The Difference Representation Makes	In recent decades, “representation matters” has become a common phrase used to justify the inclusion of minority culture or difference in representation. But how exactly does representation “matter”? While the phrase is often invoked to promote diversity through the inclusion and increased visibility of marginalized voices, the gradual increase in representation over the last few decades begs critical questions: Should we have not achieved more in terms of social change? If representation gives diverse voices a seat at the table to influence decision making in media and culture (and also law and politics), then why does racism, cisheterosexism, ableism, and class inequality persist? Why demand inclusion rather than asking why certain people are perceived as “minor”? Might “minority” or “underrepresented” ways of being and knowing teach us something new? Building on COMM 100B’s focus on culture and representation, this course contends with how group-differentiated distributions of wealth, resources, and life chances persist despite changes in national governance and media representation. Starting from the premise that representation is not simply mimetic portrayal or a means of political advocacy within a republic or representative democracy, this course introduces students to more advanced theories about representation and related terms like culture and aesthetics from scholars in media and cultural studies, critical race studies, transnational feminist theory, queer theory, and literary studies. The course will involve heavy discussion of theoretical readings to track how representation — in the wake of WWII, decolonization, and new social movements in the late 20th century — has become a logic and language that polices how marginalized populations exist rather than a neutral mechanism of emancipation and empowerment, but also how marginalized populations struggle to survive, persist, and flourish despite the precarious conditions in which they live.		Gozum
Elective	142 Film Authorship	This course examines film authorship by focusing on two filmmakers and exploring the many ways that movies are "authored" and how that shapes the way we can understand different directors and their work. For this class, we will be looking at the work of Kathryn Bigelow and Guillermo del Toro, whose films are associated with distinctive approaches to genres such as action/psychological thrillers and fantasy/horror. We will be looking at their films in relation to theories of authorship and genre, and also examining the popular and critical reception of their work across their careers. We will also consider their films in terms of their unique representational strategies and industrial/production contexts in order to explore broader themes and social issues such as gender, race, class, violence, and the role of the director as auteur.	McKenna
Elective	171 Environmental Communication	Survey of the communication practices found in environment controversies. The sociological aspects of environmental issues will provide background for the investigation of environmental disputes in particular contested areas, such as scientific institutions, communities, workplaces, governments, popular culture, and the media.		Cho
Elective	172 Adv Topics: Argumentation in the Real World	This course explores how argumentation actually works in everyday life—far beyond formal debates. Students will examine how persuasion, evidence, and reasoning shape conversations in politics, media, workplaces, relationships, and digital spaces. Through hands‑on activities, real‑world case studies, and interactive discussions, you’ll learn to analyze arguments as they appear “in the wild,” identify biases and fallacies, and communicate your own ideas with clarity and confidence. Whether you’re interpreting social media discourse, navigating workplace disagreements, or engaging in public conversations about current issues, this course gives you practical tools to think critically, speak persuasively, and engage constructively with others. By the end, you’ll understand not just how arguments should work—but how they do work in the real world, and how to use that knowledge to become a more effective communicator and informed citizen.		Edwards
Junior Seminar / Elective	190 Artist in the Archives	The practices of Art and Archiving are often inaccessible and gatekept in exclusionary institutions. However, they both play an important role in determining how and what history is preserved and retold, and ultimately how we construct understandings of ourselves and our shared worlds. In this course, students are invited to be artists in the archives by engaging with historical material – documents, photographs, posters, drawings, ephemera, marginalia – as both subject and medium of study. Through the course, students will engage with local and/or digital archives through a series of creative prompts and exercises designed for students at all levels of familiarity with mixed-media artistic practice. By engaging with art and archives simultaneously, this class invites students to interrogate History as a continuously constructed subject that can be remixed, juxtaposed, collaged, and textured.	Ravi
Junior Seminar / Elective	190 Transnational Media and the Global South	This course explores how media shape the way we see and understand the “global south” and its people. We will look at how news reports, films, social media, advertisements, and NGO campaigns represent issues such as war, gender, poverty, political unrest, and tourism, and how these representations influence the way different regions and people are imagined around the world. Students will be encouraged to ask critical questions about the power of international media – including media produced in the global south – in shaping public opinion, cultural identities, and geopolitics. These representations have implications not only for the way the global south and its diverse populations are imagined and represented, but also for the arena of international and national policy and politics. By reading theoretical texts alongside real-world examples and case studies, the class highlights how media coverage can both reflect and reproduce global inequalities. Students will leave the class with tools to think critically about the media they consume and to understand how media are connected to global politics and everyday life.		Ekhtiar

Summer 2026 Global Seminar in Oaxaca and Mexico City

Study Abroad with UCSD Global Seminars

Communication students are encouraged to participate in Professor Alex Fattal's Summer 2026 UCSD Global Seminar: Visual Culture and Resistance, Oaxaca, Mexico City!

5-week summer session
Two courses totaling 8 quarter units, both can count towards COMM / MIC elective requirement
Students from any college are welcome! Students in Eighth College are particularly encouraged to apply as COMM 140GS is likely to be a GE elective and COMM 117GS dovetails with the CCE curriculum.
Class size of 15-28 students
Taught in English
Financial aid and scholarships available

global seminar

This Global Seminar begins in Oaxaca City, Mexico, a hub of Indigenous political expression and creativity, where colorful markets, street art, and community festivals provide a lively backdrop to study challenges of the contemporary moment, such as political dysfunction, migration, and climate instability. Students will engage with communities and artists producing grassroots media, visual art, film, and textiles that are part of broader struggles for justice. The final week of the program is in Mexico City and expands the view to a national contect, from historic murals to contemporary cinema. Together, these settings offer a chance to study visual culture not only in the classroom but in the streets and with communities that produce it. In the process you will forge meaningful and reciprocal relationships with people in the communities that host us.

Learn More and Apply!

Spring 2026 Course Descriptions

Course	Instructor	Description
10 Introduction to Communication	Fattal	This course seeks 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? In answering these questions, the course provides an introduction to major issues in the field of communication, and also to the main areas of focus in this department.
30 Digital Media Literacy	Donea	From memes and misinformation to AI-generated “slop” and viral hype, our digital world shapes how we think, feel, and connect – but not always for the better. This course invites students to explore how online platforms, algorithms, and media industries influence what we see as truth and who gets to be believed, and how these forces shape the possibilities for a just and inclusive public sphere. We’ll examine how power, privilege, and inequality shape digital visibility, and how emerging technologies and media narratives reinforce or challenge existing social hierarchies. Along the way, students will learn to recognize and resist media manipulation, analyze the emotional and political dynamics of online communication, and imagine alternative ways of connecting and creating knowledge. By the end of the course, you’ll be equipped to engage the digital landscape with critical insight and ethical imagination – attuned to the ways media technologies mediate power, belonging, and the conditions of democratic life.
40 Promotional Communication	Whitworth-Smith	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 & 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 Speech & 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. May be taken for credit up to six times.
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.
100B Communication, Culture, and Representation	Serlin	In this course – one of the four “pillars” of the undergraduate curriculum – we will explore the ways in which culture can be understood as the interplay between what humans create and the structures within which those creations are embedded. Using semiotics – “the science of signs” – as our critical framework, we will examine many forms of representation: from the origins of spoken and written language, to media forms like photographs, advertising campaigns, and music videos, to the contemporary world of emojis and memes. Using semiotics, students will learn how to de-naturalize, or to make strange, the familiar and the taken-for-granted. We will also learn how understandings (and misunderstandings) of culture and communication are sustained through practices through tradition and habit.
101 Intro Audio-Vis Media Practice	Halm	This course introduces you to the language and practice of media production. We read film and television as texts by considering history, theory, genre, and practical technique. Through readings, lectures, and activities, you will acquire extensive knowledge of the art and practice of video production, film aesthetics, pre-production planning, production management, and editing aesthetics and technique. The creative process, issues of representation, and genre are also emphasized. With film criticism and production language acquisition, you will learn to recognize the choices available to a media maker with valuable information for media producers and critics. More generally, knowledge of these choices improves your analytical abilities as a student of communication and as an interpreter of media culture and technology. In lab sections, you will be guided through the practice of hands-on media production, specifically digital videography, sound recording, image and sound editing with digital nonlinear editing equipment, and lighting. The course projects provide you with the opportunity to apply concepts of your other Communication courses to the production of single-channel video and sound work. You are strongly encouraged to apply ideas from other Communication Department courses to production practice. A passing grade in COMM 101 is required to take all other upper-division media production courses.
101A Production of Activist Media	Ahn	Social Movement Storytelling: This course explores various media strategies and concepts that have been used to galvanize social justice movements since the 1960s. In particular, we examine the role of storytelling has played in reshaping the culture of student activism on college campuses across the U.S. and put those strategies into practice ourselves. Long-time community activist and social movement scholar Marshall Ganz argues that stories are the lifeblood of political organizing because they translate our values into the language of emotion. They are what fundamentally move others to action. As we look especially at contemporary and historical struggles waged by students on our own campus, we ask what role narrative has to play in our work as media activists and commitment to shaping the future of UCSD and public education, writ large.
101K Documentary Sketchbook	Ahn	This class functions as both a production workshop and critical study of the documentary form. This quarter, you will examine a variety of creative and historical approaches to the genre, learning about different aesthetic frameworks, critical concepts, political debates, and historical movements that have given life to one of cinema’s most enduring and ill-defined forms of storytelling. As you engage in a series of creative projects and written reflection exercises over the ten-week term, you will be asked to build upon these ideas to develop your own approach and voice as a documentary filmmaker and reflect on what role and ethical responsibilities you wish to uphold as an artist, storyteller, and so-called arbiter of “truth.”
102C Practicum in New Media and Community Life	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!
102M Studio TV	Davis	An advanced media production class that examines the techniques and conventions common in television production with equal emphasis on method and content. The production of news and discussion with be learned and applied with a particular emphasis placed on the choice of camera “point of view” and its influence on program content. Experimentation with documentary & news techniques and styles requires prior knowledge of television or film production. Laboratory sessions apply theory and methods in the documentary or news genre via technological process. Projects allow students to experiment with production elements influencing the interpretation of program content. Concentration will be placed on lighting, camera movement and audio support. This course firmly integrates research, studio, and field experience of various media components.
103D Documentary History & Theory	Gates	The documentary film has emerged as a major media form that modern societies use to make sense of themselves, to record as well as to comment on social, political, economic, environmental, and even deeply personal issues. Through film screenings and a selection of written texts, this course surveys the documentary film genre, considering technological innovations, ethical issues, and formal questions. The aim is to offer students an opportunity to dive deeply into documentary film as a media form, building their knowledge of the conventions of documentary in order to be more enlightened viewers, and to explore the possibility of being involved in documentary filmmaking. We will watch a selection of documentaries on a range of topics. The topics sometimes will be of keen interest to us, so we may want to discuss the content of these films at length. But it will also be our aim to see each film as part of the documentary tradition, to understand how it exhibits the conventions of documentary filmmaking, and, if applicable, how it breaks those conventions and introduces new ones. The goal is to understand the documentary form as much as the content, to see past the story to the structure, aesthetics, and context in which these films get made.
106D Data and Culture	Geiger	Developments in artificial intelligence are being combined with unprecedented levels of personal data collection, which are used to make inferences about who we are, what we are interested in, and where we belong. In response, this course takes a cultural lens to issues around data and AI. What are the practices and politics of quantifying humans and society? How do technologies like personalized microtargeting and machine learning actually work? How are classic and contemporary culture industries (film, TV, journalism, video games, etc.) are using data and AI in their work? What are the implications of giving us the search results that will keep our eyeballs on the screen the longest? The issues that arise in representing culture through analyses of data date back to the first censuses in ancient times, but have taken a turn with new methods and data. What do these approaches capture and what do they miss?
106G Tourism: Global Industry and Cultural Form	Córdoba Azcárate	The largest industry in the world has far-reaching cultural ramifications. We will explore tourism’s history and contemporary cultural effects, taking the perspective of the tourists and the tourist. Up-to-date ethnographical case studies from around the world will exemplify the major patterns that organize tourism as both an industry and a social practice with deep cultural and spatial implications. Each week, we will introduce and explore a different tourism model- resort tourism, cultural and natural tourism, slum tourism, voluntourism, dark and war tourism, luxury tourism, cruise tourism, over-tourism, pandemic tourism, regenerative and post-capitalist tourism. We will discuss each tourism model along the main political, ecological, and socio-cultural issues raised by the industry, paying special attention to the processes of production, staging, consumption, and performance of places as tourist places; the relationship between tourism and labor; hosts-guests (dis)encounters; the marketing of tourism places and peoples as tourist attractions, and the main implications of using tourism as a state development tool. Students will learn to identify, denounce, and interrogate the extractive practices that still inform tourism. They will learn tools to plan their travels and/ or work for the industry in more sustainable and culturally respectful ways.
106M Advertising & Society	Jack	Advertising aims to convince us to buy stuff, but that’s not all it does. Commercials pay for almost all our media content. Socio-technical advertising systems collect ever-increasing data about our behaviors. And advertising has long been deeply cultural: it reflects and influences our understandings of humor, art, personal expression, aesthetics, and social norms. This course examines advertising as the intersection of the commercial and the social. You will learn different ways of understanding advertising’s presence in--and influences upon--your everyday life, and you will practice critically assessing and communicating about advertising’s history, political economy, cultural meaning(s), and social significance.
106V TV Industry	Dewey	This course will look at the American Television industry as both reflecting and constituting American Society. We will investigate how a variety of social, economic and cultural contexts have impacted and shaped the development of television and how television has shaped culture in the US. We will consider the economics of the television industry, television's role within American society as a democratic institution, the textual form of a variety of television genres, television’s function in the formation and representation of gender and racial identity, television’s role in everyday life, and the medium’s social and technological impacts.
108G Gender and Biomedicine	Walkover	This course will explore how biomedicine has constructed gender – and how conceptions of gender have constructed biomedicine. From challenges to binary conceptions of sex to the intersection of race and pharmaceutical development around the world, we will explore the ways in which embodied experiences of gender, sexuality and race have interacted over time with social processes of bio/medicalization and pharmaceuticalization.
109P Propaganda and Persuasion	Jack	Terms like propaganda and persuasion evoke a variety of concerns about culture, technology, and knowledge. Propaganda is a term that, until recently, mostly summoned images of wartime mass mediated persuasion in 20th-century conflicts. While we will touch upon these issues, they will not be our sole focus; rather, we will build a set of concepts and frameworks to help us consider what persuasion and propaganda mean, and the roles they play, in the everyday lives of people today. The first half of the course focuses on core concepts, and then considers histories of propaganda, persuasion, and attitude change in cultural context. The second half of the course explores how digital media technologies shape (and are shaped by) persuasive information, then survey contemporary approaches to understanding belief in social context. We will approach course topics with a goal of understanding and critiquing commonly held notions about propaganda and persuasion in a media-rich and highly technological society.
114A Human Rights, Communication, and Contemporary Global Justice	Zilberg	This course is a survey of the rise, efficacy and politics of the post-World War II Global Human Rights Regime (GHRR) from the vantage of the United Nations, its member states, non-governmental organizations, and social movements. Through a range of case studies, we will examine the contemporary crisis in the failure of international law and institutions to prevent genocide, torture, enslavement, political persecution, gender violence, poverty, and climate displacement, or to uphold freedom of speech, of the press and academia--that is, the right to communicate and the right to information. The course is open to all upper division students and fulfills a requirement for the Human Rights and Migration Minor. The Human Rights and Migration Minor prepares students for a career in research and teaching, public policy, in NGOs that advocate for and monitor human rights compliance, immigrant service-providing organizations, government agencies, or law. The unique research and writing opportunities offered by this minor also make it an excellent preparation for graduate school. Minors are also encouraged to take advantage of hands-on internships, experiential learning opportunities and thematic seminars at the university, local, regional, national and international levels. If you are interested in learning more about this course or the minor, please contact Prof. Elana Zilberg via ezilberg@ucsd.edu.
114P Public History and Museum Studies	Abuelhiga	This course will explore the role that “public history”—history as created for general audiences—plays in communicating cultural and national identities by examining museum exhibitions, their controversies, and how material objects mediate interpretations of the past.
118A Action Cinema	McKenna	Action films are a dominant force in contemporary Hollywood. They command extraordinary budgets and often represent the cutting edge of technical innovation, both in terms of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and practical effects. Perhaps more important than technological achievements, action films benefit from the commitment of stunt workers and actors who perform at extraordinarily physical levels for the sake of the story and visually compelling spectacle. This course traces the history of the genre with particular attention to its historical contexts, its social meanings, and its longstanding popularity with audiences. Topics to be covered will include: early cinema and serial queens; action films and genre hybridity; the aesthetics of action; the 1980s and the blockbuster; action cinema and gender; the rise of the franchise and transnational action.
134 Media Audiences	Abuelhiga	We have all been part of an audience at some point in our lives, and many of us spend many hours a day as part of various audiences. But being an audience member isn't usually something we think very critically about; when we consume media and culture, we tend to think more about the media itself than our reception of it. Putting audiences front and center this course considers the complex relationship between the media business, media texts, and the consumers/viewers/listeners they target. How can we explain our personal attachments to media? What do audiences' relationship with media and culture say about their personal values, and what can they tell us about society? How do different people consume media and for what purposes? And, perhaps most significantly, how are these audience relationships commodified by the media business?
143 Science Fiction	Rojo Solis	What does it mean to take a science fiction course under science fiction conditions? How to understand fictional settings that seem to have colonized everyday life as fact? Is science fiction a genre, a mode or a device? How does it work? The specific conditions under which these course will be offered —after a global pandemic, through electronic devices and during racial and social unrest throughout the world— will also offer us a very particular atmosphere through which to question how science fiction works and its relationship to time, space and intersectional realities. Through the exploration and discussion of theoretical, narrative and aesthetic examples of the genre, we will try to understand science fiction as a “mode of awareness” (Csicsery-Ronay Jr.) particularly well-suited for dealing with a mode of life which relies on science and technology to carry on with everyday existence, at the same time it provides tools to question what reality really is, and that firmly believes technology changes us in strange and radical ways.
149 Southern California Cinema	McKenna	Los Angeles has served as the setting and the subject for some of the most intriguing films ever produced – Sunset Boulevard, Blade Runner and Chinatown, to name a few. In this class, we will examine the history and representation of Southern California on film. We will consider the emergence of Hollywood as a defining feature in the history of Los Angeles and how movies are central to the popular imagination of life in Southern California. We will also examine the cinematic representation of different communities and neighborhoods, and discuss topics such as car culture and regional sprawl, the beach as imagined lifestyle, and noir as urban critique.
155 Latinx Space, Place, and Culture	Pavón Aramburú	This advanced elective course explores the intersections of Latinx symbolic geographies shaped by art, media, and activism. Students will engage with cultural narratives and spatial representations through film, journalism, and creative research, focusing on key sites such as the borderlands with Mexico, Cuba or Puerto Rico. We will critically examine the construction of nations, border spaces, cities, and map-making, with attention to Latin American diasporas, gendered latinidades, and the decolonial frameworks of epistemologies from the South. Through a multimedia approach, students will investigate how Latinx imaginaries reshape global bodies of knowledge.
168 Bilingual Communication	Harb	This course examines how bilingual and multilingual speakers and communities navigate their linguistic positionality in different contexts. Throughout the course we will reconsider what it means to “be bilingual” and how these ideas are constructed based on ideas about what a language is or isn’t, and how people’s linguistic practices fit into those categories. We will challenge the idea that monolingualism is the most common linguistic identity in the global world, and reposition multilingualism as the societal norm. We will learn about the cases of minoritized language groups in the US (heritage language speakers of Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Black English Speakers, among others) and elsewhere, focusing in particular on how these communities restructure or reclaim their linguistic position in society.
174 Communication and Social Machines	Alač	An examination of the questions that developments in robotics pose to the scholars of communication: How do we communicate when our interlocutors are nonhumans? How do we study objects that are claimed to be endowed with social and affective character?
177 Abolition Geographies	Ybarra	Since the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, communities across the US openly questioned the liberal claim that police keep us safe. This leads to questions, including: who is protected by police, prisons, and immigration agents; and who is harmed? What does community safety mean in a global pandemic, and what are our responsibilities to each other? These questions are at the heart of abolition geography, which brings together theories and practices that are not (only) about the end of chattel slavery and state violence; but about the promise of liberation. In this class, we will explore abolition geographies – radical place-making to create community well-being that does not rely on harming others. To understand what this means, we’ll engage theories and practices across systems of state-sanctioned violence including prisons, immigration enforcement, family policing and education. In learning how we get free together, we’ll draw on movements for migrant justice, mutual aid and disability justice.
180 Advanced Studies in Communication Theory	Alač	How are messages created, transmitted, and received? What is the relationship between thinking and communicating? How are linguistic processes embedded in sociocultural practices? Course discusses classic texts in the field of communication theory stemming from linguistics, semiotics, philosophy of language, literary theory.
181 Citizen Consumers	Córdoba Azcárate	Consumer Citizens are persons who rely on tools and techniques related to their consumption life to make sense of politics. But how do consumption practices rule political decisions? And where does this happen? This course builds on the consumer citizen idea to show how in our contemporary cities, consumption spaces, such as shopping malls, theme parks, plazas, markets, parks, beaches, and tourist resorts, have become critical spaces to exercise our identities and rights to the city. Students will learn to relate to the city and region where they live, study, and work in a more inclusive light that is attentive to class, race, gender, and age divisions. They will acquire critical tools to question ongoing patterns of uneven development including gentrification, the proliferation of privatized consumer spaces or the naturalization of food deserts. They will learn to identify ways in which mass media guides our consumption practices and how consumption has grown to be intrinsically related to questions of identity, belonging, and politics. Students will learn about citizen movements advocating for labor, housing, and food justice in and around San Diego. They will learn contemporary ways in which consumption has been articulated for more just futures.
190 (A00) Junior Seminar: Communicating Nations	Boateng	What are nations? Why do the nations of Belize and the U.S. describe themselves as “land of the free” while Japan describes itself as “land of the rising sun”? Why are foods and sports linked with nations (e.g. Senegalese thieboudienne and Brazilian soccer)? Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course explores these questions in order to understand nations and the related concept of nationalism, as well as the importance of communication to both.
190 (B00) Junior Seminar: Refugee Cinema	Fattal	Perhaps no medium has treated the plight of refugees in greater detail and with empathy and nuance than documentary film. In this class we will study and analyze documentaries about the refugee experience and read literature from scholars who have studied it. The goal is to improve our understand of the global migration crisis and debate the merits of different filmic approaches to the subject, with special attention to the fraught ethics of documentary filmmaking.
190 (C00) Junior Seminar: Working in the Media and Tech Industries	Gates	What is it like to work in the media and tech industries? What are the different types of work, and what skills and credentials are required to do these jobs? How do people get these jobs? What are the demographics of the people in the different job categories? What are the working conditions? What are some good organizations to work for? What does it take to be successful in these industries? The course approaches these questions from both practical and broader social perspectives. There are two complementary aims: (1) professional career development, and (2) studying labor in the media and tech industries as a social research question. We will focus on a method that cuts across the practical aim of career exploration and the sociological aim of understanding people’s relationship to work: interviewing. The skill of interviewing is invaluable to many professions, including journalists, podcasters, lawyers, business managers, marketing executives, psychologists, sociologists, and more. Through readings, discussions, and interviews, students will (1) build their knowledge of work activities and professions in the media and tech industries; (2) practice methods for conducting research on organizations and professions; (3) work collaboratively; and (4) develop skills communicating (speaking and writing) and providing feedback.

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.