Graduate Courses
We offer six courses each year. CS600 and CS601 are required courses. You must also register for CS695 or CS699 while working on your MRP or thesis.
You are allowed to take up to 1.0 credit from other graduate programs with approval from the graduate coordinator. In the past, Communication Studies master's students have taken graduate courses in programs such as Cultural Analysis and Social Theory, English and Film Studies, and Political Science.
2021/22 Course Offerings
Fall 2021
CS600A Graduate Seminar in Communication Studies
This team-taught course introduces students to the core concerns, theoretical concepts and research approaches in communication studies. Particular attention will be paid to the areas of research specialization of faculty. This mandatory course is designed to enable students to do the preparatory work necessary to their research projects.
CS601A Communication Studies Research Methods
This course will provide students with advanced training in the methods of research employed in the field of communication studies. Students study reactive or interactive research methods (participant observation, experimental designs, surveys and interviewing) and unobtrusive or non-reactive methodological designs (discourse analysis, semiotics, content analysis, and rhetorical and historical approaches). Students are encouraged to develop their major research paper or thesis research proposal as the final assignment for this course.
CS640g Social/Media/Theory
This graduate seminar examines social media technologies and practices from the theoretical perspectives of critical political economy and new media materialism. Our emphasis is on the social relations of power and connectivity that are shaped by social media as forms of communication and capital. Specific topics that will be explored include: materialist genealogies of social media; broadcast and social media modes of communication and production; media convergence and digital creativity; the media industries of sharing; Internet memes and remix cultures; social media and "big data", and, last but not least, Internet Cats.
Winter 2022
CS640d Mobilities: On the Move
This course explores the interdisciplinary area of research known as “mobilities studies.” In the “new mobilities paradigm,” which is the founding manifesto of mobilities studies, mobility is defined as the actual or potential flows of information, ideas, images, objects, and bodies. These are familiar flows previously interpreted by scholars in communication studies, cultural studies, geography, transport studies, and migration studies. So, what is “new” about the new mobilities paradigm and about mobilities studies? In particular, how does mobilities studies intersect with communication studies?
CS640i Platform Studies
The study of platforms is on the rise. While platform studies originally emerged from hardware studies as an integrated attempt to study the hardware, software, code, marketing, and use of computational technologies—especially, early on, video game consoles—its use has been broadened to include the study of software platforms, such as social media sites, and the particular affordances they offer for users, including their algorithmic decision making; their terms of service; their background code environments; and their embeddedness in neoliberal capitalism (selling user data, acting as space to display advertisements, etc.). This holistic approach to studying technology encompasses everything from minute details (such as how buttons or LEDs might be configured on a MINITEL console, or XBOX360 game controller; the way that privacy settings are displayed to users on Facebook; the packaging of an Apple product), to the broad and situated socio-political context of corporations (such as the gender make up of development teams at Nintendo; or the political investments of members of the Board of Directors at Twitter). This course will unpack the politics of platforms through an intensive study of key texts in the field, tracking significant debates and discussions, as well as new developments.
CS653 Video Game Studies
This course investigates the fastest-growing yet least understood aspect of mass digital culture: video games. The course surveys the development of video game forms beginning with the creation of the first video game (William Higinbotham's ‘Tennis') in 1958 and ranging through arcade games, simulations, console games, platforming, roleplaying, and adventure games, real-time strategy, first-person shooters, and online gambling to contemporary massive multiplayer online games. Issues including the nature and practice of play, externalities and infrastructure, formal qualities and structure, narrative structure and genre, simulation and realism, spatiality and property, gender and identity, authority and authorship, war and violence are discussed.
Additional Courses
CS690 Directed Studies
A selected research project supervised by an individual faculty member.
CS695 Major Research Paper
A major research project to be undertaken on an approved topic and in accordance with the guidelines of the department.
CS699 Thesis
An independent thesis project to be undertaken on an approved topic based upon research connected with the discipline of communication studies and in accordance with the guidelines of the department.