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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 instruction:  All COMM courses during the academic year are held in person. 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 (001-000-SE) Education Technology, Human Development, and Hierarchies of Difference Requena-Robison
Junior Seminar 190 (002-000-SE) Science & Technology Bratton
Junior Seminar 190 (003-000-SE) 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

 

Fall 2026 Course Information

The COMM Department is in the process of removing prereqs from most courses numbered COMM 103–159. These changes take time to be programmed into the enrollment system. Until the changes are finalized, we will waive prereqs via a TEA request


Exceptions:
  • Unless otherwise stated, production courses (COMM-101*) have an enforced prereq of COMM-101 that will not be waived. 
  • Courses numbered 160+ have enforced prereqs (COMM-010 + 1 of COMM-100A, B, or C) that will not be waived. 

 

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 (001-000-SE)
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 (002-000-SE)
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 (003-000-SE)
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.