CMNS 205 | COMMUNICATION, CULTURE AND COMMUNITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Examines the relationships among culture, communication, institutions, and public and private life. Students explore the possibilities and problems of contemporary forms of community through service in community organizations or through extensive individual or group research projects. The course also fulfills the junior year experiential learning requirement through community based service learning.
CMNS 230 | PERFORMANCE: COMMUNICATION, CREATIVITY AND THE BODY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Introduction to performance studies, examining the persuasive, cultural, and artistic dimensions of embodied communication. Through "on our feet" engagement, students will study the role of identity, aesthetics, space, genre, and literary form in their experience with cultural texts, including poetry, prose, and narratives. Involves critical and creative analyses of texts in preparation and reflection of live performance. The course explores the how the body, voice, and movement are central to artistry and meaning. (Formerly INTC 230)
CMNS 281 | CONTENT STRATEGY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is an introduction to sharing photographic and audiovisual content on digital platforms. Students will learn both the conceptual and the technical skills required to navigate a career as a content creator or social media professional, such as tailoring content for specific platforms and audiences, interpreting backend analytics, and moderating user communities. Sample topics include audience research, message framing, content calendars, SEO, accessibility, and ethical/legal considerations. By the end of the course, students will build a platform-specific content plan tailored to a preselected communication objective.
(CMN 150 or CMN 292 or CMN 295 or CMN 296 or CMN 297 or CMNS 280) and junior standing
CMNS 282 | STATISTICS IN HUMAN COMMUNICATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The study of human communication involves observing patterns in human interaction and message behavior. This course introduces students to the statistics most relevant to the field of human communication. Course activities emphasize quantitative reasoning; the measurement of communication variables; performing statistical analyses (e.g., correlation, regression, t-test, ANOVA); interpreting and communicating statistical results; and ethical considerations in data collection, analysis, and research conclusions.
BLANK RG FOR BUILDING
CMNS 305 | PERFORMANCE STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The course traces the shift from the field of Oral Interpretation to the emergence of Performance Studies as a discipline, with particular attention to the primary theorists and practitioners who have set the foundation and scope of the field of Performance. Taking an historical approach to the development of the field, the course will explore performance epistemologies, performative methodologies, and performative theories, offering students the opportunity to study and engage contemporary approaches to performance research.
CMNS 306 | TOPICS IN PRESENTATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Courses offer advanced analysis of presentational forms. Students will enact presentational theories in relational, small group, or public communication contexts.
CMNS 315 | HEALTH COMMUNICATION | 4-6 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This survey course examines communication as the principle means by which health care is delivered, understood, and experienced. The course surveys the theory and practice of communication as it relates to health in a range of contexts (e.g. interpersonal, small group, organizational, public and/or mediated contexts) with a particular emphasis on critical thinking.
CMNS 334 | URBAN COMMUNICATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Examines relationships between material features of the city and symbolic representations of urban life (e.g., photography, film, songs, public discourse) with the goal of understanding the city as a site of communication. Special attention is paid to expressions of hope for and fear of the city. (Formerly INTC 334)
CMNS 335 | LATINX COMMUNICATION, ADVOCACY AND COMMUNITY BUILDING | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Students will examine the relationships between Latino cultures, communication, institutions, and public and private life. Message crafting and relationship building for strategic objectives will be examined through the lens of multiculturalism. This course will teach students how to manage diversity issues for Latino community organizations, management, and policy advocacy.
CMNS 339 | PERFORMANCE OF GENDER & SEXUALITY | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
This course is designed to give students an opportunity to experiment, explore, and reflect upon the performative dimensions of gender and sexuality. Using aesthetic performance as a point of entry, students will view, analyze, and generate performance work that interrogates the communicative, political, and transformative potentials of embodied actions. With an emphasis on the intersections of gender and sexuality, the course will move through three units of reading, discussion, viewing, and performance creation. (Formerly INTC 329)
CMNS 361 | GENDER AND COMMUNICATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Students will discover the intricate relationship between gender, communication, and culture. The course focuses on how gender influences communication, how gender gets communicated, and how communication reflects, refracts, shapes, and revises our understandings of gender and what it means to be gendered beings. Further, the course asks what role culture plays in the communication of our gendered identities. Students work toward recognizing societal expectations of gender while discovering how we may use communication, as gendered beings, in order to improve our lives, both individually and collectively.
CMNS 363 | CLIMATE CHANGE COMMUNICATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Individuals make up their minds on climate change, energy development, and other science of pressing public policy importance through a complex set of factors: values, demographics, political ideology, and so on. Journalists, strategic communicators, scientists, and policy analysts need to be able to communicate effectively with diverse public audiences on climate and energy topics. This course is oriented from a science communication perspective and draws on social scientific research on communicating on climate change and energy issues. We will take a human perspective on climate issues and focuses on the social, political and cultural aspects of climate change. The course covers best practices for promoting and facilitating public dialogue on climate change policy and global energy systems. Topics covered include: climate change public opinion and knowledge, media portrayals of climate change and its societal effects, climate skepticism and denial, psychological factors that contribute to values and beliefs on climate science, journalism and covering climate issues, framing and developing narratives on climate impacts, and climate change in popular culture. Students will conduct original research to analyze and evaluate climate change communication. For the final project, students have the option of completing a major journalistic reporting project, designing an advocacy or marketing campaign, or conducting a research project. (Cross-listed with JOUR 311)
CMNS 364 | PERFORMING MY FUTURE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
No one knows their future, yet images, anxieties and narratives of the future are ever-present. We live our lives navigating the known and unknown, the tangible and the imagined. This capacity to conjure visions and representations of the future is a uniquely human process, marking a space for artistic exploration, creative imagination and yet-to-be sketched potential. In this class, we will study a range of artistic forms - including performance art, poetry, prose, music, painting and sculpture - to examine how time and the future are negotiated a gallery of creative expression. Our examination of the art then opens up the opportunity for us to become the art, wherein students will create three live multimedia performance projects. These projects will enlist body, voice, text sound, visual media, movement and audience in a creative examination of differing futures, while reflecting on their process of creation. In these three performances (one solo, one duo and one group), students will investigate, contemplate and creatively express the stories of future from their youth, their current images of future, and the future not-yet imaginable. What lies beyond our most wild of speculations? This course invites us into this creative unknown.
CMNS 366 | DIGITAL DISPUTES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
Survey of a variety of contemporary and historical issues related to the introduction and diffusion of communication technologies in society. Especially examines how new technologies, particularly the Internet, are transforming the communication landscape. Emphasis on issues of intellectual property, surveillance, privacy, regulation, message construction, and access will be central to this course.
CMNS 367 | PERFORMANCE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
There is no greater obstacle facing our culture right now than the intensified divisions that exist in our politics and the inability to speak with and listen to those who do not agree with our positions. As a special topics course focusing on polarization in our society, this class will focus on the role of performance and creative intervention (theater, poetry, aesthetics communication) as a tool to facilitate dialogues across difference. Practical and applied in its design, this course will call for students to examine what it means to seek out and sit with differences in perspective, listen to differences in understanding and work to bridge disparate worldviews. Students will challenge their own communication practices, engage and practice difficult dialogues, script, and stage performance work that works to foster discussion within and across disagreement.
CMNS 381 | COMPASSIONATE COMMUNICATION | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
The Compassionate Communication class invites you to consider the mindset and skills that help people to engage in difficult interpersonal conversations, particularly those that connect to creating a more loving and just world. Topics include mindful self-awareness, emotional vocabulary, dialogue, and navigating differences.
CMNS 382 | APPLIED RESEARCH METHODS IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES | 4 quarter hours
(Undergraduate)
In this course, students apply quantitative research methods to answer questions about human communication. Students pose research questions, select and design quantitative measures, collect quantitative data, conduct descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, and interpret results.
MAT 120 or HON 180 or (MAT 130 or above) or consent of instructor is a prerequisite for this course.