Communication Studies Course Offerings

CS340P Public Advocacy Campaigns (Winter 2021)

Public advocacy campaigns over various political, socio-economic and environmental issues are integral to the health of contemporary democracies and they are a vital part of grassroots movements and civil society organisations seeking to influence public opinion and government policy. This course will begin with the historical development of propaganda and public relations, and the rise of think tanks, before focusing on social movements, civil society organisations and their public advocacy techniques and strategies. The course’s emphasis will be on studying particular campaigns (e.g. aims, messages, tactics) while assessing their influence via news coverage, media frames, public debate and policy changes.

The course integrates communication concepts from the humanities, social sciences and media components of the communication studies specialization. Special attention is given to contemporary issues as they affect individuals and society.

CS400B Communication as Remix (Fall 2020)

This course explores remix in the context of communication studies. We will examine the political, economic, social and cultural implications of remix culture, looking at remix practices in various forms of cultural production including popular music, visual arts and fan culture. Although many of the creative and cultural practices now associated with remix culture have been around for a long time, remix culture is often thought to be a contemporary phenomenon, rooted in new media and digital technologies. While we will look at remix in its digital contexts, we will also explore the historicity of remix practice and will work towards a critical definition of remix, grounding this definition in the theoretical frameworks of communication studies.

CS400D Political Economy of Art and Architecture (Fall 2020)

Art and architecture are usually perceived as purely cultural activities with little connection to economic, political, or social issues.  This course will challenge this apolitical construction of cultural production through a discussion of critical art history, spatial politics, the political role of museums, globalization, gentrification, sustainable architecture and urban planning, and cultural resistance.  Course requirements include a group field project focussing on a specific museum, artist, architect, cultural group, or architectural development.

CS400G Gender, Migration and Mobilities (Winter 2021)

This course provides students with an interdisciplinary perspective on the ways in which gender intersects with the experiences, discourses and governance of migration and mobility, with an emphasis on the impacts on women on the move. Students will examine current issues, theories and scholarship pertaining to range of themes such as:  human rights and human security, transnationalism, mobile commons, care economy, mobile technologies and ICTs, borders and bordering practices, social protection, human development and global migration governance. 

CS400K Governing the Student: Linking Pedagogy & Precarity (Winter 2021)

This seminar will invite students to critically reflect upon their own experiences as learning subjects in higher education. Since the 1990s, participation in post-secondary education has dramatically expanded globally but particularly so in the OECD countries. With the rapid growth in enrolments has come an increased sense that education should be more student-centred. However, such professions of student-centrism are frequently formulated within a framework that increasingly understands tertiary education to be an individual responsibility and governed by market logics. Accordingly, this interest in student-centred pedagogy needs to be contextualized within a broader program of instilling new norms of conduct that incite students to know themselves as entrepreneurs. As such, this seminar will invite critical self-reflection upon the ways in which our experiences of ‘student empowerment’ might actually normalize and habituate us to lives characterized by increasing employment and economic insecurity.

CS400M Cultural Industries in Canada (Fall 2020) - Note:  There will be two sections of CS400M, both in the Fall term

Canada's cultural industries encompass book, periodical, newspaper and online publishing; radio and television broadcasting; film, television and video production; telecommunications; video game production; the music industry and various work under the umbrella of "new media."  These industries represent a major sector of the Canadian economy and exert profound influence on many aspects of Canadian life and on cultures around the world.  This course examines these cultural industries in Canada.

CS400N Sport, Technology and the Body (Fall 2020)

The history of sport is also a history of technological innovation. From bike frames and basketballs to prosthetic limbs and photo-finish cameras, sport is filled with technological developments designed to enhance the performance and measurement of the sporting body. Such innovations lead to record-breaking performances but also to concerns of fairness, cheating and even the humanness of sport. In this course we will study the nexus of sport, technology, and the body through a series of recurring questions. How are bodies and technologies defined and redefined in the sporting world? How and why is a given technology accepted or rejected by sport regulating bodies? What constitutes a fair or unfair advantage in the use of technology in sport? How accurate or objective are sport technologies in measuring athlete performance? And what are the impacts on the sporting body – individually and as a collective – of continued technological innovation?

CS400P Dark Web (Winter 2021)

The Dark Web exists in popular culture as a nefarious pit of ill-intentioned activities. This class investigates the reality of the dark web, which has both negative and positive aspects. It will introduce the basic technologies of the dark web, discuss its histories; reveal its technical problems/challenges and experiment with its possible uses for social good.

CS400T Risk Communication (Winter 2021)

We live in a world we have come to understand as increasingly “risky,” from the food and water we consume, the viruses and bacteria we encounter, the technologies on which we increasingly depend, and to the global political scene that seems more and more volatile. In the words of Ulrich Beck (1992), we live in what might best be characterized as an emerging “Risk Society.” Whole industries are concerned with the production of knowledges about the risks we confront, while others, primarily the news media, have the task of communicating information concerning risk to the so-called “general public.” In this senior seminar, we will explore the production and dissemination of “knowledges” about risk in what has come to be known as “risk communication.” We will look to the ways that individuals and their behaviours come to be problematized in the production of knowledges around risk as well as the social, political, and cultural implications of such problematization. We will address questions regarding the ways that “information” about risk both feeds out of and informs social and cultural norms, and how we as individuals negotiate and assess risk in our daily lives. Working through case studies that may range from BSE or Mad Cow Disease and HIV/AIDS, the threat of the atomic bomb and the Cold War, the “War on Terrorism,” and to genetically modified foods and the Walkerton water crisis, we will address not only the ways that “information” is produced and communicated but also the strategies we use to respond to or resist information about the risks we face on individual, community, and global level.

CS400V Robotic Intimacies (Winter 2021)

This course will explore the growing societal prominence of robots and the emergent field of human–robot communication. While robots have long been a part of human society, especially in relation to areas such as manufacturing, mining, and sea and space exploration, we are seeing an exponential growth of robots being used for other purposes, such as the military and security use of drones and other robot automatons, the use of care robots in the health industry, and the commercial use of robots in the service industry. Robot companions (both animal, humanoid, and other) are proliferating across markets and for use with children, adults, and the elderly. In addition, AI and cyborg experiments are further blurring the lines between biological and synthetic entities. Finally, as we wake daily to headlines about bionic eyes, campaigns against sex robots, racist AI rants, autonomous Google cars, and weaponized sentry bots, we find ourselves inching closer and closer to the science-fictional figurings of how societies where humans and robots co-exist might function—from practical coexistence to utopian/dystopian destinies. We will consider sources from theory to sci-fi to journalism to explore the current state of robotic intimacies in all of these use-cases, addressing related issues such as labour, agency, sexuality, surveillance, imperialism, war, healthcare, ability, and the Singularity, with a dual focus on present discourses and possible futures.

CS400X Markets, Myths and Media (Winter 2021)

This seminar will explore popular representations of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that began in 2007-08, which includes investigating ‘myths’ about ‘markets’ that circulate and often dominate public discussions of economics in general and the crisis in particular. The different media forms that will be explored include popular journalistic accounts, comics and graphic novels, videos and documentaries. Students do not need any specialist knowledge of economics or markets.

CS400Y Work Culture in Tech Ecologies (Fall 2020) - Cancelled

An examination of the current literature and debates in the subfield of media and communication history. Topics may include media and communication historiography, media archaeology, and periods and thinkers in media and communication history.

CS411F Fake News (Fall 2020)

‘Fake News’ and the talk of fake news appears to be everywhere. It is both a tool disseminating false information and a way of dismissing inconvenient information. Many see fake news as a new and novel phenomenon brought about by social media platforms and the Internet. But, historically, 21stCentury fake news has its precedents in earlier media forms, from the use of woodcuts and print in the English Civil War, to the rise of ‘Yellow Journalism’ in the 19thCentury, to the rise of propaganda and public relations in the 20thCentury, including ‘astroturfing’ campaigns. Accordingly, this course will look at the problem of defining fake news and differentiating it from ‘propaganda’ and other forms of ‘misinformation’, as a recurring problem of civil society, of journalism and its relationship with fake news, and to critically examine how we have responded to this latest ‘crisis’ in the public faith in journalism.

An examination of the current literature and debates in the subfield of media and cultural theory. Topics may include discourse analysis, performative theories, gender and representation, rhetorical analyses, new media technologies, theories of meaning and politics of language.

CS412E Language, Politics and Right-Wing Populism (Fall 2020)

This course introduces students to the critical scholarship on right-wing populist political communication. While right-wing populism is, by necessity, an imprecise term, it will be used to reference a wide range of political actors that build support through the ability to capitalize upon the failed promises of normalized economic politics and offer resolutions in the form of appeals to hyper-conformist identities and the rejection of ‘impracticable’ cosmopolitan ideals. The currency of these political actors has been made possible in part through the increasing mediatization of political discourse and what Ruth Wodak has termed the ‘fictionalization of politics’ characterized by ‘the blurring of boundaries in politics between the real and the fictional, the informative and the entertaining’. Accordingly, we will examine the ways in which traditional and new genres of political communication are articulated so as to represent social, cultural, and intellectual diversity as economically and culturally disastrous.

CS412F Communication and Cultures (Winter 2021)

This course will examine the existing and created connections between communications and communities in contemporary societies. Focusing on various relationships between talking and listening, and the transition to community and institutional building, the course provides an opportunity for students to study communication as a public, community, and institutional resource.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of visual communication. Topics may include semiotic and social semiotic approaches to the visual, scientific imaging, lens-based media, information display and design, art, architecture and cultural production.

CS413F Photobooth (Winter 2021)

Following its invention in 1925, the photobooth quickly became a dominant medium of communication. It was a novel, convenient and inexpensive way to create a self-portrait. Photobooths were installed in train stations, penny arcades and other urban places defined by mobility and crowds. As a space for identity exploration in visual form, the photobooth sparked excitement as well as moral panic. In subsequent decades, the photobooth became a space of performance for artists such as the Surrealists, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon, and Meags Fitzgerald. Today, among our numerous choices of visual media, the photobooth is an old medium. However, photobooths can still be found in some cities. In fact, a retro mania is making the photobooth popular again. We will consider the following questions and key concepts in order to explore the material and symbolic significance of the photobooth over the past century. How does the photobooth mediate public intimacy, or a dialectic of private and public, like the postcard, the confessional, the phone booth or the voting booth? How does the black boxing of automation within the photobooth foreshadow the black boxing principle of contemporary digital media? How does the photobooth initiate a neoliberal optics that is discernable in today’s selfie? How can we use the photobooth to reflect on changing experiences and perceptions of digital privacy now, including in the context of social media practices and video conferencing? Assignments will include your summary of specific content from the archive of photobooth.net (to be shared with its curators), a review of a film, video or song where a photobooth plays a central role, and an original research creation (essay, photography, video, song, blog) to summarize what you have learned in this course. The latter may be created in a photobooth or done virtually using photobooth software. Further guidelines will be provided.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of global communication studies. Topics may include globalization, intercultural communication and cultural citizenship, political economy and policy, identities and media representation, and non-Western media.

CS414C Global Sounds (Fall 2020)

In this course we will examine how sound and music are linked to cultural, ethnic and geographic identities that are, in turn, linked to technological, global, cultural, and economic shifts. Although our exploration will be undergirded by theories of sound, sound production, and the histories of sound technologies, we will focus on the ways in which popular music (as one facet of sound) constitutes notions of authenticity, belonging, and hybridity; how music consumption and production are influenced by politics and practices of global exchange; and the ways in which popular music structures meaning and generates representation in diverse geographies. How popular music and associated sound technologies are implicated in spatial relationships (as, for example, linked to particular geographical sites) as well as the movements of people, products, and cultures across space.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of cultural and creative industries. Themes may include labour, policy, the specificity of the cultural commodity, geography, distribution/production processes and networks.

CS415C Work and Cultural Industries (Winter 2021)

This course critically examines working conditions, employment relationships, socio-economic inequalities, and labour politics in cultural industries and beyond. Guided by recent labour scholarship in political economy and cultural studies, a central theme of the course is precarity, or financial, existential, and social insecurity exacerbated by nonstandard employment arrangements such as short-term contracts, part-time work, internships, freelancing, and self-employment. Topics include the economic significance and political expediency of the creative industries and employment within them; the political-economic context of growth in ‘flexible’ employment; the ambivalence of occupations promising autonomy and self-expression; the politics of internships; the imperative to self-promote in hyper-competitive labour markets; the restructuring of work via networked communication platforms; and collective efforts by media and cultural workers to confront the challenges they face in their jobs, to resist social and economic inequalities in cultural industries, and to improve their livelihoods. A discussion-based class format will provide students with an opportunity to collectively reflect on issues directly relevant to them as they negotiate their own employment futures.

An examination of current literature and debates in the subfield of contemporary digital and social media. Topics for study may include digital networks and communicative power, the internet and the emergence of social media platforms, broadcast vs. social media, media convergence, and “big data.”

CS416A Smartphones and Us (Fall 2020, Winter 2021)

This course examines the emergence of the smartphone and its significance in the age of pervasive computing. It explores how these relatively recent devices have become ubiquitous, and the significant role they now play in the global social order. Areas of focus will include the history, political economy, and geography of smartphone production and consumption as well as the impact of these technologies on their users and society.