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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.

Summer 2025 Course Descriptions

All Summer 2025 COMM courses will be held via remote instruction. 

 

Session Course Title and Description
Session I COMM 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?

Session I COMM 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 screenings as part of its runtime. Registration and attendance are required for both lecture and section periods for this reason.

Session I COMM 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 start by looking at history (e.g. the history of media, of state regulation, of capitalism) and pursuing more technical inquiries (e.g. what economic factors make media different from other goods? what are the rules of copyright? what does the FCC do?). Then we’ll move toward more complex or theoretical questions (e.g. what values do communication institutions promote? What makes internet platforms so appealing and so powerful?). Along the way, we’ll consider the impact of media concentration, the role of democratic ideals online, the nature of media and communication work, and the relationship between consumers and producers.

Session I COMM 106

Introduction to Media Industries

This course is an introduction to the Media Industries & Communication major. We'll examine various industries, including film, TV, social media, music, gaming, and publishing, and discuss issues that impact all of them like globalization, copyright, creative labor, consolidation, and financialization. Students will read recent coverage in the trade press, discuss and write about current events, and learn to analyze contemporary media companies and systems.

Session I COMM 106M

Advertising and Society

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.

Session I COMM 109P

Propaganda and Persuasion

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.

Session I COMM 110M

Communication and Community

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.

Session I COMM 137

Black Women Filmmakers

Students examine film and video media made by Black women with an emphasis on global film movements. This course emphasizes contextualization of films through reading about the history, politics, and social conditions in which films were made as well as the lives of the filmmakers themselves. Students can expect to watch between 2-4 films per week, complete regular personal reflections, present on a filmmaker of their choice, and be open to peer collaboration. The course final will be an oral examination on a filmmaker from the syllabus. This course will be taught asynchronously.

Session I COMM 143

Science Fiction

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.

All of this plus spaceships, aliens, space and time travel, weapons of mass destruction, drugs, cyborgs, quantum realities, schizodiagnosis, non- and post-humans.

Session I COMM 171

Environmental Communication

Environmental information, disinformation, and multiple instances of contestation appear in a variety of media and have changed over time. This course will begin with a brief glimpse at the period that preceded the modern environmental movement (that is, before 1968), and then examine the framing of environmental problems through prose, photography, audio recording, film, and video by a cross section of actors: environmental advocates, artists, scientists, journalists, government, and industry groups. We will examine rationalized argumentation, informed by the sciences, as well as the deployment of efforts to persuade through emotional content.

The summer 2025 offering of Comm 171 will be taught by Dr. Mark L. Hineline, author of Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Communation.

Session I COMM 190 (A00)

Junior Seminar: Design(ing) the Pacific

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.

Session I COMM 190 (B00)

Junior Seminar: Film, Television & New Media Criticism

This course explores the profound influence of visual storytelling and the power wielded by those who create the images we consume. Moving beyond entertainment, we examine how film, television, and new media are deeply intertwined with ideological, social, and economic forces that shape and sustain our way of life. Through critical analysis, participants will learn to dissect the layers of influence embedded in media, unraveling the societal narratives reflected in each image. From the early days of cinema to contemporary digital media, this course traces the evolution of film theory and criticism, examining how creators and critics alike grapple with the complexities of representation, style, and production. Engaging with a range of texts—from accessible works about life’s intricacies to challenging interdisciplinary studies—we will uncover the ways media communicates, reinforces, or disrupts societal norms. By investigating cinematic style, image production, and genre, participants will develop the tools to critically analyze the media they consume and, in turn, reflect on their own place within these narratives. The goal of this course is to foster a space for thoughtful critique and self-reflection, empowering students to navigate the intersection of media and society with a discerning eye. Whether the films challenge or entertain, they serve as mirrors to our collective consciousness—and by understanding them, we gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Session I COMM 190 (C00)

Junior Seminar: Gender Aesthetics in the Media

This course examines several controversial, high-profile cases of gender-based violence that have served as historical turning points in the U.S., Latin America, and the world. Students will engage with and evaluate these case studies through print newspaper archives, social media, and other relevant sources. This course engages feminist theory and media aesthetics to analyze the complex interplay between gender, media, technology, and power, and how these issues impact contemporary cultural and political discourse. In addition, there is a strong emphasis on cultural analysis, which means that students will have the opportunity to closely read texts, films, and artworks through storytelling, class assignments, and group projects.

Session II COMM 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?

Session II COMM 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 screenings as part of its runtime. Registration and attendance are required for both lecture and section periods for this reason.

Session II COMM 100A

Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life

Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life is part of the three-course COMM 100 series, which 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 the ways in which 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.

Session II COMM 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).

Session II COMM 106D

Data and AI Industries

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?

Session II COMM 110G

Communication in Organizations

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.

Session II COMM 111B

Global Borders: Communication and Conflict

This course focuses on geopolitical borders as charged sites of cross-cultural communication and conflict. By exploring the border between the U.S. and Mexico within a historical and global perspective, students will become mindful of how borders come into being and serve as much more than just fixed physical demarcations between nation-states. Students will learn to interrogate borders as dynamic multi- dimensional spaces where complex forces --political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, and ecological -- converge and diverge. We will examine how the policies and practices of enforcing borders impinge on those seeking to cross borders, and in the everyday lives of people living on either side of borders. We will then consider the impact of these anthropocentric (human-centered) borders on non- human and more than human ecosystems of land, water, and animal and plant life. While the U.S.-Mexico border will serve as our primary site of consideration, we will expand our geographic and conceptual maps to examine other borders between the “global north” and “global south,” and to consider how borders extend into the territory of the nation-state itself. Students will emerge from the course with a new critical awareness of their own position within the geography of Southern California and of the multiple borders crossed by its diverse residents from across the globe. We will hear directly from community-based groups, activists, artists and scholars working in this and other border regions. NOTE: Students must participate in two field trips including a visit to the Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit at the Museum of Us in Balboa Park and a Trolley Ride from UCSD to the border (on the U.S. side).

Session II COMM 113T (A00)

Intermediate Topics: Drugs in America on Film

Examine drug culture and cultural representations of substance abuse through film and other visual media.

Session II COMM 113T (B00)

Intermediate Topics: Intro to Argumentation

A study of argumentation in several areas of modern society: political, legislative, judicial, commercial, and educational. The focus is on learning the basic principles of argumentation theory and developing skills in advocacy through practical exercises in each speech setting. Students will learn:

- to provide students with an opportunity to develop and improve extemporaneous public speaking effectiveness.
- to assist students in becoming more analytical listeners.
- to encourage students to improve rational thought processes while accessing, analyzing, and utilizing information from a variety of sources.
- to better apply techniques of audience analysis for speaking to diverse groups.
- to encourage ethical communication among students who seek to use public speaking as a means of improving the global society.
- to help students project a positive image.
- to instruct students in the proper use of visual aids.

Session II COMM 145

History, Memory, and Popular Culture

What is the difference between history and memory? What role does popular culture play in shaping and creating societies’ shared memories of the past? This advanced level course examines diverse sources such as school textbooks, monuments, holidays and commemorations, museums, films, music, and tourist attractions in order to explore the complex and often taken-for-granted relationship between history, memory, and popular culture, and the political and sociocultural implications of this relationship.

Session II COMM 146

Advanced Topics: Making Space

Do maps represent spaces? How can we understand the politics of space? Are geographies fixed or fluid? This class will be a foray into these questions by emphasizing the connections between spatial thinking and social relations. We will learn mapping and counter mapping practices by looking to film, poetry, digital media, and more. This course has two primary learning objectives: 1) question space as a given configuration, and identify both dominant and subversive productions of space, and 2) create persuasive counter-cartographic representations of spaces familiar to you. We will utilize spatial thinking to emphasize sites of struggle against systems of power and oppression. The class forefronts that new ways of knowing are germinated from working, crafting, and creating.

Session II COMM 190

Junior Seminar: Performance as Praxis: Examining the Political Potential of Performance

In this course, we will examine various modes of performance as modes of political commentary, intervention and resistance. Drawing from both performance theory, art history and ethnography, students will develop tools to explore social justice activism through the lens of artistic practice. Topics include the ballroom scene, the riot grrrl punk movement, Theater of the Oppressed and performance art made in response to the AIDs epidemic. For the final assignment, students may write a research paper or develop a performance that stages a political intervention.

 

 

 

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 100A Communication, the Person, and Everyday Life Harb
Intro Course 100B Communication, Culture, and Representation Serlin
Intro Course 100C Communication, Institutions, and Power deWaard
Intro Course 106 Introduction to Media Industries Kidman Halm
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 Staff 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 Maya and 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
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 Intm Topics in Communication: Art as Communication Domínguez Rubio
Elective 114B Human Rights Advocacy 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 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: Environmental Justice 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 Kidman
Elective 180 Advanced Studies in Communication Theory 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) Title TBD Anderson
Junior Seminar 190 (B00) Listening Critically to Popular Music Serlin
Junior Seminar 190 (C00) Design(ing) the Pacific Staff
Junior Seminar 190 (A00) Title TBD 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 Staff

 


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 (B00) Borders: Theory and Method Zilberg
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: Environmental Justice
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.

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.