Communication Department Course Information
Interest Areas
Checkout elective areas for COMM & MIC!
A note regarding remote 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 remotely.
Academic Year 2026-27 Planned Courses
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 | Political Economy and 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 | The Self and the "Other" In Science Fiction | Hill |
| Junior Seminar | 190 | Global Health Communication: Refugee and Immigrant Health | 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 | Mediated Ability: Media, Technology, and Dis/Ability | 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
Please visit the Schedule of Classes for course days/times. All COMM summer courses are planned to be offered via synchronous remote instruction. The times/days listed in the Schedule of Classes is when class will convene; asynchronous participation in class is not available.
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 |
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 |
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 | |
| 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 |
106M |
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. | Abdalla | |
| 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 |
Fall 2026 Course Descriptions
| Type | Course | Instructor | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intro Course | 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. |
| Intro Course | 20 Analysis of Media Forms and Cultures |
McKenna | 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. |
| Intro Course | 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. |
| Intro Course | 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. |
| Intro Course | 80 UCSD 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. |
| Intro Course | 100A Comm, the Person, and Everyday Life |
Sims | 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. |
| Production Elective | 101 Intro Audio-Vis Media Practice |
Ahn | This course introduces students to the language and practice of media production by analyzing film within the context of history, theory, genre and practical technique. Through readings, screenings, and lectures, students will explore and critically examine the art and practice of video production, film aesthetics, sound design, and editing – which will serve as inspiration for their own media-making practice. In lab sections, students will engage in hands on techniques of production, including digital cinematography, sound recording, and nonlinear digital editing. The lab provides students the opportunity to apply concepts from lecture and readings, as well as other Communication courses, to the production of single channel video and sound work. |
| Production Elective | 101D Non-Linear Digital Editing |
Martinico | This hands-on post-production seminar introduces students to the art and practice of editing. Approaches to montage will be analyzed, discussed, and critically applied. This course is project-intensive, and will prepare students to edit using Adobe Premiere. |
| Production Elective | 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.” |
| Production Elective | 101N Sound Production and Manipulation |
Martinico | This hands-on production course serves 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. |
| Production Elective | 101T Topics in Prod: 3D Design |
Halm | TBA |
| Production Elective | 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! |
| Elective | 103D Documentary History & Theory |
Gates | 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 course offers students an opportunity to dive deeply into documentary film as a media form, building deeper knowledge of the conventions of documentary in order to be more enlightened viewers, and to explore the possibility of being involved in documentary filmmaking. |
| Elective | 106 Intro to Media Industries |
Halm | This course is an introduction to the Media Industries & Communication major. We'll examine various industries, including film, TV, music, gaming, publishing, news, and advertising, and discuss issues that impact all of them like globalization, consolidation, copyright, creative labor, and AI. Students will read recent coverage in the trade press, discuss and write about current events, work with data, and learn to analyze contemporary media companies and systems. |
| Elective | 106G Tourism: Global Industry and Cultural Form |
Cordoba Azcarate | 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. |
| Elective | 106I Internet Industry |
Irani | Amazing possibilities, big bumps. Data leaks. TikTok rabbit holes. Fake news. Automation and deep fakes. Tech companies — Apple, Google, and Amazon, for example — transform how we get products, how we get the news, and how we relate to one another. This class examines how the internet and its data, as technology and as industry practices, transform work, politics, and everyday social life. We will understand this by looking at data, interfaces, and services, as well as the interactions between companies, users, and workers. In this class you’ll learn to sift through the hope, the hype, and the dystopia of the internet, making the connections between business models and user experience. Learn about different pathways to change the future of technology: design, policy and law, ethics work, and community and labor organizing. Non-STEM and STEM students with a curiosity about tech, ethics, democracy, and the future are welcome and have succeeded in this course. |
| Elective | 110M Comm & Community |
Abuelhiga | This course examines how different forms of communication affect people's everyday lives. More specifically, we will focus on how members of different communities acquire information from and interact with a variety of institutions through forms of communication, such as linguistic practices, (community) media, and other audiovisual and artistic modes of communication. We will use these cases to better understand how people use communicative resources to position themselves as individuals, as part of a community, and within society more broadly. |
| Elective | 110X Texting & Talking |
Harb | People use language to communicate meanings, but also to enact social differences and similarities, and to do various types of social acts: to make friends, argue, lie, apologize, and complain. Social life, in other words, happens in large part through language. This class investigates how social life is enacted through language use across a variety of modalities, including face-to-face and mediated interactions. We will investigate similarities and differences between types of mediated interaction (like texting) and face-to-face interaction, (like talking) in order to consider contemporary social life and socializing. How is mediated communication changing the way we relate to and socialize with one another? How do we evaluate the information we encounter in mediated and face-to-face spheres of interaction? We will investigate some answers to these questions through reading about race and politics, gender, romance, gossip, and identity. |
| Elective | 111G Popular Culture |
Reed | Popular culture was a source of ridicule and disdain throughout much of the twentieth century. Likewise, popular culture texts (movies, radio shows, TV series, etc.) were often rejected by official cultural institutions, and dismissed by universities as unworthy of study. Most intellectuals understood neither the pleasure nor the power inherent in pop culture. Times have changed—popular culture is now an established object of serious study and courses about it are offered all over the country. But popular culture today is as confusing and misunderstood as it was seventy years ago. What even qualifies as pop culture? Who is pop culture for? If something isn’t widely popular, can it still be considered a part of pop culture? Who gets to define these boundaries? Is pop culture good or bad for us? Does it impact who people are and how they live their lives? Does it impact politics or social issues? Does it have the ability or potential to improve society? Or will it lead to social decline? How has pop culture changed over the last century? Does popular culture even exist anymore? Does popular culture matter? There are no easy or clear responses to these questions. This course nonetheless seeks answers to all of them, by embarking on a 120 year survey of all things pop. Although we will not construct a complete chronological history, we cover the development and/or impact of many of the major media forms associated with pop culture: film, radio, television, paperback fiction, and fashion. We will also cover the history of cultural studies, addressing the different theories and methodologies academics and intellectuals have used in trying to understand how and if pop culture matters. |
| Elective | 114I Media Technologies and Social Movements |
Sims | This course investigates the relationship between media technologies and social movements as a form of political activity. The course combines political theory, media theory, historical analyses, and more contemporary case studies. Students will learn to identify and analyze different historical configurations of social movements and the roles that media technologies have played in different social and historical contexts." |
| Elective | 114J Food Justice |
Goldfarb | This course introduces students to food justice and advocacy as a set of interlocking struggles over land, labor, ecology, health, and governance—and as a field of public argument about whose knowledge counts, whose lives are made vulnerable, and whose futures are prioritized. We examine how food systems are shaped by histories of settler colonialism, capitalism, migration and workplace regimes that render food workers “essential” yet precarious; and by environmental inequities that distribute pollution, pesticide exposure, and climate risks unevenly across communities. Alongside scholarly and policy texts, we will look to San Diego as a living laboratory, using local sites to connect course concepts to policy debates, organizing strategies, and everyday infrastructures of feeding. The course frames food justice with a communication-inflected approach. The engaged-learning component is a group podcast project involving working with local advocates and organizations to produce a short, carefully researched audio story on a food justice issue. |
| Elective | 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 physical commitment stunt workers and actors who perform at an extraordinarily physical level for the sake of 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; genre and the action film as hybrid; the aesthetics of action; the 1980s and the blockbuster; action cinema and gender; the rise of the franchise and transnational cinema. |
| Elective | 119 Advanced Persuasion |
Edwards | This course instructs advanced strategies, tactics, and presentation skills necessary for superior performance in intercollegiate speech and debate competitions. |
| Elective | 127 The Problem of Voice |
Abuelhiga | 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. |
| Elective | 142 Film Authorship |
deWaard | This course examines film authorship by focusing on a series of seven filmmakers and exploring the diverse ways they author films and produce meaning. We begin with the tradition of “auteur theory” -- the idea that the director, not the screenwriter, is the true “artist” and “author” in filmmaking -- before moving to the broader contemporary conception of the filmmaker as a site of encounter for many elements: collaboration, identity, industry, intertext, reception, and context. We learn how to analyze formal elements, such as cinematography, editing, narrative, and sound, as well as interpretive elements, such as recurring themes and motifs. We also look at how authorship intersects with broader social issues of race, class, gender, violence, genre, and authorial responsibility. Our filmmakers will be Spike Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Bong Joon-ho, Alfonso Cuarón, Jordan Peele, Andrea Arnold, and Ryan Coogler. |
| Elective | 160 International Communication |
Chen | This course examines the structures and underlying logics that shape uneven flows of global communications. Students will learn how to historically situate ideas about modernity, and analyze shifting power relations between the state, capital, and social formations. |
| Elective | 176 Communication and Religion |
Zehra | This course takes a critical and intersectional approach to studying communication, media, and religions. Spanning across different mediums such as texts, films, photographs, literature, new media, the internet, and sound, the course examines religious discourse along with the themes of representational politics, gender, (de)colonization, race, citizenship, and global cultures. |
| Elective | 181 Citizen Consumers |
Cordoba Azcarate | 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. |
| Elective | 182 Education and Global Citizenship |
Harb | What does it mean to belong—and act—in a global public? We examine governance, curriculum, and communication to understand how civic identities form, which competencies matter, and how the concept of “global citizenship” has been understood and leveraged in diverse contexts. Students craft practical goals and instructional designs for global education. |
| Junior Seminar | 190 Education Technology, Human Development, and Hierarchies of Difference |
Requena-Robison | Explore perspectives on the role of technology in human development and social reproduction, focusing on debates, core problems, and potentialities in theories and methods of technology use in and beyond formal education spaces. How is education technology and applied learning engaged differently through vocational, critical, socio-cultural, and indigenous frameworks of education, among others? What are the implications of these differences for the relationship between education, the person, the state, and the workplace? |
| Junior Seminar | 190 Science & Technology |
Bratton | What questions do 19th-century atlases and 21st-century algorithms raise about technological objectivity? How can dance performances and video games serve as science communication? What does it mean to say science is socially constructed, and what role might communication play in that process? This course examines these questions and more, offering an introduction to the field of Science Studies/Science & Technology Studies (STS). Together, we'll discuss how communication theory and practices intersect with ideas about scientific and technological knowledge-making, paradigms, standpoints, methods, progress, and consensus. Students will apply what they learn to analyze their own areas of interest in science and technology. |
| Junior Seminar | 190 From Palestine to Mexico: The (World)Making of Solidarities |
Vargas | From ""Palestine to Mexico"" varied actors and community organizations work to link different struggles to one another. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course brings a critical lens to the construction and effects of solidarities and will engage with past and contemporary case studies situated in San Diego and beyond. Our study will be oriented by a set of questions, some being: What experiences and cultural objects/discourses are drawn upon in the creation of solidarities? How do states create notions of solidarity vs grassroots organizations? If not shared experience, what else links struggles together? How do we come to understand solidarity as something not inevitable, but dependent upon situated contexts and organized encounters? And lastly, beyond thinking of solidarity as a matter of convergence, how do these constructions emerge alternative forms of critiques, accountability, analysis of power, and kinship networks? This course will provide students with concepts and methods to critically analyze past and present forms of solidarity -whether they be expressed or enacted through a #hashtag, a song, a protest chant, or physical actions - and further suture their own. |
| Honors | 196A Honors Seminar: Methods |
Gates | 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.