Graduate Course Offerings

Spring 2023 Courses

MEDST  703 – Media and Social Justice

Thursday 6:30PM – 8:20PM. Class meets in person in G Building 200.
Roopali Mukherjee (Roopali.Mukherjee@qc.cuny.edu)

Seminar examines political, economic, and sociological approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation within struggles over race, class, and gender. Topics include the digitization of society and how information technology and networks work within digital capitalism, and the significance of contemporary media within abiding struggles over injustice, exploitation, and social change.

MEDST  758.1: Advanced Journalism Seminar

Wednesday 5:30PM – 8:20PM. Class meets in person in G Building 200.
Amy Herzog (Amy.Herzog@qc.cuny.edu)

The Media Studies Department is offering an opportunity for aspiring journalists and podcasters: a project-based seminar where students will receive mentorship from WNYC senior reporter Arun Venugopal (Race and Justice Unit). Since 2010, Arun Venugopal has produced the podcast series Micropolis, featuring stories from small neighborhoods around the city, focused on the immigrant experience. Inspired by this focus on the experiences of every-day New Yorkers, students in our seminar will produce their own podcast series, The Local, reporting on their own communities.

Space in this seminar is very limited. Students must apply by sending a statement of interest to Prof. Amy Herzog (amy.herzog@qc.cuny.edu) by November 15^th. Prior experience with audio editing or podcasting (e.g. having enrolled in MEDST 266: Podcasting or 313: Creative Sound Production) is preferred. These courses can be taken simultaneously with our seminar.

MEDST – 758.2: Creative Sound Production

Thursday 1:40PM – 5:30PM. Class meets in person in King Hall 105.
Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. Cross-listed with MEDST 313. MA students will complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit for it.

MEDST – 758.3: Digital Economics: Crypto, NFTs and the Blockchain

Monday 1:40PM – 4:30PM. Class is Online-Synchronous.
Douglas Rushkoff (Douglas.Rushkoff@qc.cuny.edu)

A critical look at the migration of our economy into the digital realm, including the impact of Silicon Valley startups, exponential growth, and online trading platforms, as well as the emergence of crypto, blockchain, bitcoin, NFTs and Web3.

MEDST  759: Media, Tech, Democracy

Monday 6:00PM – 8:30PM. Class meets in person, off-campus.
Douglas Rushkoff (Douglas.Rushkoff@qc.cuny.edu)

A collaboration between Cornell Tech, Columbia, NYU, The New School, CUNY Journalism, and QC Media Studies to understand the various threats to journalism and democracy, and attempt to address these challenges using civic tech, engineering, media, and computational methodologies. From leaders inciting violence and hurling insults to technology platforms siphoning revenue, independent journalism and civic discourse have increasingly been under attack. The program, including the course, lecture series, and research and development activities, will address new challenges to democracy and human rights including security and cybersecurity threats; surveillance economics; credibility and reliability threats including fake news and discrediting campaigns; obstacles and challenges in conducting and funding investigative journalism and civic discourse; and the shifting business models and income sources that threaten both local and national news organizations and coverage.

Media Studies 702: Media & Capitalism
Wednesdays 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM. Class meets in person in G200
Professor Shinjoung Yeo (Shinjoung.Yeo@qc.cuny.edu)

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar offers an introduction to global capitalism and its relation to contemporary media systems. We will focus on shifts in the structures, public policies, and cultural practices of media systems, moving across successive generations of media from traditional news to digital media. The course will focus on social and political struggles over media systems in their relations with the defining features of capitalism.

Media Studies 704: Gender, Sexuality & Media
Mondays 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM. Class meets in person in G200
Professor JV Fuqua (JV.fuqua@qc.cuny.edu)

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the relationships among gender, sexuality, and media. Recognizing the power of media representations, technologies, and industries to shape and enforce dominant ideas about gender and sexuality, students learn about various forms of media activism addressing gendered injustice, exploitation, and inequality.

Media Studies 758.1: Creative Sound Production
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)
Thursdays, 1:40 PM – 5:30 PM. Class meets in person, room TBA

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. Cross-listed with MEDST 313. MA students will complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 758.2: Creative Coding
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Wednesdays, 1:40 PM – 5:30 PM. Class meets online, details TBA

In this class we will be looking at using computational algorithms as a tool to create beautifully designed visual graphics. Over the semester we will be exploring design topics like form, color, grids, typefaces and 3 dimensional objects and combining these with computational topics like randomization, repetition, transformation, generative and data manipulated design. Each class will consist of a lecture and live coding examples as well as student project presentations and critiques. We will be using Processing and p5js as our main platform to focus on the intersection between the visual arts and code. Cross-listed with DESN 249 (25548). MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

MedSt 758.3: Data Visualization
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays, 10:00 AM – 1:50 PM. Class meets in person, room TBA

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations. Over the course of this semester, we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5. Cross-listed with DESN 270 (25524). MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 759.1: Film Theory: Strategies of Resistance
Professor Amy Herzog (amy.herzog@qc.cuny.edu)
Mondays, 1:40 PM – 4:30 PM. Class meets in person in KY 315

This course provides a survey of Film and Media Theory, with a particular focus on activist media and strategies of resistance. The seminar will be organized historically, spanning Soviet revolutionary films, 1960s newsreel collectives, Third Cinema movements, labor organizing media, activist television, contemporary anti-gentrification media, and digital and social media production. Sessions will juxtapose mainstream fictional and non-fictional representations with contemporaneous media produced by independent resistance groups, as well as studies of the labor conditions and economic structures that shape the media industries during that period. Questions of intersectionality and power will be core of the course. What formal strategies have emerged at different historical moments, and toward what ends? How do industry structures, distribution networks, and exhibition contexts impact the meaning of media texts? Who performs what labor within the media technology industries, and how is access determined? What historical forces impact the evolution of film and media theories? How can spectatorship be theorized in relation to diverse media audiences and transforming sites of consumption? Cross-listed with MEDST 341W. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 788.1/788.2/788.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797.1/797.2/797.3: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

MEDST 758-002 (46649): Form and Genre 
TECH, MEDIA, AND DEMOCRACY 
Mondays, 6-8:30p. Live meetings 6-7p at Craig Newmark School of Journalism in Manhattan; 7-8:30p online with consortium of other grad programs at NYU, Cornell, Columbia, and New School. Students may take this course online or hybrid. 

A collaboration between Cornell Tech, Columbia, NYU, The New School, CUNY Journalism, and QC Media Studies to understand the various threats to journalism and democracy, and attempt to address these challenges using civic tech, engineering, media, and computational methodologies. From leaders inciting violence and hurling insults to technology platforms siphoning revenue, independent journalism and civic discourse have increasingly been under attack. The program, including the course, lecture series, and research and development activities, will address new challenges to democracy and human rights including security and cybersecurity threats; surveillance economics; credibility and reliability threats including fake news and discrediting campaigns; obstacles and challenges in conducting and funding investigative journalism and civic discourse; and the shifting business models and income sources that threaten both local and national news organizations and coverage.

MEDST 758-001 (46648): Form and Genre
Thursday 2:40 PM – 6:30 PM
Professor Zoe Beloff

Creative Sound:  A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies.

MEDST 758-003 (46647) Form and Genre
Monday 1:40 PM – 5:30 PM
Professor Zoe Beloff

This class involves creating documentary graphic novels and simple animations about the real world. It is all about how to tell compelling stories with images and words. There is lots of hands on as well as presentations on the work of artists and filmmakers. No  prior experience necessary.

MEDST 759-001 (46646): Studies in Communication
DESIGNING THE INTERNET
Jeff Jarvis, Newmark J-School, and Douglas Rushkoff, Queens College 
Mondays, 2p-450p at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in Manhattan.

This course, open to graduate students from any discipline at the Grad Center or any CUNY campus, (as well as undergraduates by permission) will cover the history and impact of the internet to date, with an emphasis on how we might still intervene in the direction of its development. We will test the hypothesis that the Internet is still in its infancy, and that we are still vested with the agency and responsibility to design and steer the net we wish to see in the future. Throughout the course, students will work on a proposal for that future. This may take the form of a new feature, company (though this is not intended as an entrepreneurial course), regulatory or ethical regime, standard for design, news and information strategy, a business model to support information or creativity, a covenant or manifesto of rights and responsibilities, a perspective from communities and markets that are underserved, net syllabi…anything.

The course will be taught by Jeff Jarvis of the Newmark J-School, author of What Would Google Do? and Public Parts, and Douglas Rushkoff of Queens College, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Team Human, and Present Shock. They approach the subject from different perspectives: Jarvis a defender of internet freedoms, Rushkoff a critic of the net’s current proprietors. But they align on the goals for the internet and this course: to alter the discussion of the net from dystopian despair to productive engagement, to propose that the net is not finished, to suggest to students that they consider the possibility that they have the time and ability to redirect the net to better ends, and to empower themselves and others. The course is housed at the Journalism School because, for those students, this is an attempt to help them see that the canvas for journalistic service is broader than publication. For students from other schools, it is an opportunity to bring their disciplines to the evaluation and development of the net, as well as the power of the net to their respective disciplines and areas of practice, from science and humanities to economics and social justice.

Students will select a proposed project early in the course — individually or in groups — and work on it through the term, with workshops and milestones along the way and presentations at the end. Class time will be devoted to both review of progress on projects, as well broad study of state of the net and human agency through readings including Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson, Licklider, Tim Berners Lee, McLuhan, Wiener, Shoshana Zuboff, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Tim Wu, Ruha Benjamin, André Brock Jr., danah boyd, and many others. We will also hear from regular guest speakers from industry, social justice, journalism, tech development, education, civics, and areas that emerge as interests of the class.

Media Studies 769: Digital Activism Lab
Wednesday 6:30-8:20
Professor Jamie Cohen (jamesncohen@gmail.com)

A seminar and hands-­on workshop in web, app, and/or physical computing specifically applied toward activist, hacktivist, and cause­-related efforts. The course looks at theory and case studies of digital activism, while also teaching skills in project based units.

Media Studies 758.1: Sound Design
Thursdays 2:40-6:30, Hybrid
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. Cross-listed with MEDST 313. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.2: Drawing & Experimental Media
Mondays 1:00-5:00, Hybrid
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

Co-taught with Professor Gregory Sholette from the Art department, this class will focus on personal and collective storytelling. Returning to the roots of moving image technology, drawing and comics, students complete two projects, a one-chapter graphic novel created through Risograph printing and a film combining animation and live action. No prior technical know-how or drawing skills are necessary. Cross-listed with MEDST 250. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.4: Documentary Filmmaking
Wednesdays 10:30-11:30 AM, Hybrid
Professor Madeleine Hunt-Erhlich (Madeleine.Ehrlich@qc.cuny.edu)

Through lectures, readings, screenings, discussions, workshops, and hands-on projects, this course focuses on the aesthetic and technical fundamentals of documentary production. Students will engage theoretical and ethical issues of documentary, and gain practical experience by researching, writing, planning, and producing an original documentary project over the course of the semester. Cross-listed with MEDST 310. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.5: Data Visualization
TBA, Online
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations. Over the course of the semester, we will cover this entire process. First, sourcing publicly available data sets. Then, analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And, finally, designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5. Cross-listed with ARTS 270. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

MedSt 758.6: Physical Computing: Designing Physical Interactions for a Digital World
TBA, Online
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)

Using a keyboard and mouse is not how we communicate with each other so why do we use these archaic tools to communicate with our machines? In this course, we will be focusing on how we can use microprocessors (like the Arduino or Raspberry Pi) and their programming frameworks, along with sensors, motors, potentiometers, cameras, etc. to allow humans to more naturally interact with digital and physical installations. The ability to use our hand gestures, facial features, touch, body movements, voice, along with other environmental and biometric sensors will allow us to break the awkward relationship that we currently have with our computers. Students will be encouraged, through weekly assignments, to take these technical skills and equipment to come up with interesting, creative and artistic outputs. Inter disciplinary and cross-departmental collaboration will be highly encouraged. Some examples: Collaboration with dancers to make interactive performances, with sculptors to make kinetic and interactive artwork, and with musicians to make new interfaces for musical expression. Although this class covers technical skills like electrical engineering, physical engineering, and programming, we will also have lectures on design, sculpture and the performing arts. Cross-listed with ARTS 265. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 759.1: Race, Migration & Media
Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30 PM
Professor Sara Hinojos (sara.hinojos@qc.cuny.edu)

The course examines how media represents issues about and concerning migration and migrants in the US. Not only will the course focus on how migrant communities are constructed (via gender, race, and ethnicity) in film, television, newspapers, and scholarly readings, but also how these communities creatively use various media in the US. With an interdisciplinary approach combining sociology, media, and cultural studies, we will explore how media practices and representations inform the everyday lives of migrants.

Media Studies 759.2: Social Justice Documentary
Mondays, 6:30-8:30 PM
Professor Saba Riazi (saba_riazi@yahoo.com)

This course is dedicated to the study of documentaries recounting issues of social justice, and narratives of struggle that help engage, inform and impact their audience in taking action and encouraging them towards civic participation.

Media Studies 788.1/.2/.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797.1/.2/.3: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

All Spring 2021 classes will be conducted online. After you are registered in classes, please contact the professor (emails provided) for specifics about the platform and online format the course will use.

Media Studies 703: Media & Social Justice
Professor Roopali Mukherjee (roopalimukherjee@gmail.com)
Wednesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar examines political, cultural, and sociological approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation within struggles over race, class, and gender. Introducing major theoretical and conceptual approaches in media studies, the course emphasizes how the digitization of society (mediated selves, networked counter-publics, digital resistance) impacts, and is impacted by, relationships of power as well as activist histories of social justice.

Media Studies 758.1: Sound Design
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)
Thursdays, 2:40-4:30 PM

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. Cross-listed with MEDST 313. MA students will complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 758.2: Drawing & Experimental Media
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)
Mondays, 1:40-3:30 PM

Co-taught with Professor Gregory Sholette from the Art department, this class will focus on personal and collective storytelling. Returning to the roots of moving image technology, drawing and comics, students complete two projects, a one-chapter graphic novel created through Risograph printing and a film combining animation and live action. No prior technical know-how or drawing skills are necessary. Cross-listed with MEDST 250. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.3: Information Design
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
TBA

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations. Over the course of this semester, we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5.  Cross-listed with ARTS 269. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.  

Media Studies 759.1: The Yes School//Trickster Academy
Professor Jacques Servin (fluxdepot@gmail.com)
Tuesdays, 6:40-8:20 PM

This course offers you a rare opportunity to work with the acclaimed media activist group, The Yes Men.

Led by Jacques Servin, a founding member the Yes Men, along with collaborators, the experience immerses students in one or more ongoing projects being implemented by The Yes Men. The course is designed for highly-motivated individuals with a commitment to collaborative media practice. Skills in writing, visual presentation, and/or video production will be welcome. Grades reflect a semester-wide assessment of how diligently a student contributes to an ongoing project or projects as well as how effective such contributions are to the success of the project or projects. Before you register, familiarize yourself with the Yes Men’s work and modes of working, at www.theyesmen.org/work; you will essentially be joining us as an “apprentice Yes Guide” (www.theyesmen.org/work/join). You should look around the material at www.theyesmen.org/work/dont as well as peruse the sorts of projects we’ve typically done (at www.theyesmen.org/hijinx) and imagine yourself as part of one.

Media Studies 759.2: Gender and Media
Professor Amy Herzog (amy.m.herzog@gmail.com)
Wednesdays, 1:40-2:40 PM

This course will approach questions of gender, sexuality, and power in popular media, from early cinema’s appeals to middle-class female audiences at the turn of the last century, to the contemporary use of social media by feminist activists of color. Gender and sexuality will be viewed at the intersections of other identity categories, including race, class, orientation, ability, and ethnicity. We will examine the ways in which different media forms can be used to complicate, reinforce, exploit, challenge, or transform those hierarchies. Readings will survey the history of feminist and queer media theory, as well as critiques and debates about these paradigms. The course is organized around “constellations” of texts that emerge from particular historical-geographic settings. These case studies represent key moments in the history of gender and sexual politics. Dossiers of scholarly, primary, and popular media texts will juxtapose a range of representations and perspectives that we will read collectively, experimenting as we do so with a mix of methodologies. This “constellation” approach will serve as a model for the final projects that students will conduct throughout the semester. Cross-listed with MedSt 320W.

Media Studies 759.3: Global Feminisms
Professor Emily Crandall (emilykcrandall@gmail.com)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:30-5:45 PM

This course explores key global debates and issues in contemporary feminism from Western and Non-western perspectives, with a focus on the various intersections of feminism(s) with religion, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and class. Topics include: social movements; reproductive rights; political representation; transnational migration; sex work; labor; the politics of the body; violence and war; and lesbian, gay, and transgender rights. Cross-listed with WGS 250.

Media Studies 759.4: The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion and Identity in Italy and France
Professor Eugenia Paulicelli (eugenia.paulicelli@qc.cuny.edu)
Wednesdays 5:00-6:50 PM

An interdisciplinary study of fashion, fabric and material culture and their bearing on a heterogeneous cultural identity that interconnects with race, gender and class. Starting with the Early Modern period and continuing to the present, the course examines the clothing culture of Italy and France in a comparative perspective, linked to the Italian and French courts and cities, the formation of national kingdoms in Europe (Spain, France, England), international powers such as the Ottoman Empire, and the influences of colonialism and empire. Fashion, however, was not a European invention. The concern for appearance and the desire for beautiful things, as well as the know-how and expertise needed for the production of fashion and textile, were long at the core of the economies of India, China, Japan and Mesoamerica. Re-contextualizing fashion in light of the growing scholarship on decolonizing fashion, material culture, global history, the course draws on a range of literary and philosophical traditions to investigate how and when fashion came to establish itself as a powerful economic force, as a threat to morality and religious beliefs, and as a vehicle for gender, class and ethnic/race definitions. Students are guided to produce innovative projects using texts from literature, film and video, art, visual culture and new media. Cross-listed with Italian 781.

Journalism XXX: Technology, Media, and Democracy
Professor Jeremy Caplan (jeremy.caplan@journalism.cuny.edu)
TBA

A collaboration between Cornell Tech, Columbia, NYU, The New School, CUNY Journalism, and QC Media Studies to understand the various threats to journalism and democracy, and attempt to address these challenges using civic tech, engineering, media, and computational methodologies. From leaders inciting violence and hurling insults to technology platforms siphoning revenue, independent journalism and civic discourse have increasingly been under attack. The program, including the course, lecture series, and research and development activities, will address new challenges to democracy and human rights including security and cybersecurity threats; surveillance economics; credibility and reliability threats including fake news and discrediting campaigns; obstacles and challenges in conducting and funding investigative journalism and civic discourse; and the shifting business models and income sources that threaten both local and national news organizations and coverage. MA students will register via e-permit with the J-School.

Media Studies 788.1/788.2/788.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797.1/797.2/797.3: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 702: Media & Capitalism
Mondays 6:30-8:20, G200
Professor ShinJoung Yeo (sjdiscordia@gmail.com)

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar offers an intensive introduction to global capitalism and its relation to contemporary media systems. We will focus on shifts in the structures, public policies, and cultural practices of media systems, moving across successive generations of media from traditional news to digital media. The course will focus on social and political struggles over media systems in their relations with the defining features of capitalism.

Media Studies 707: Methodology in Media Research
Wednesdays 6:30-8:20, G200
Professor Roopali Mukherjee (roopalimukherjee@gmail.com)

An introduction to interpretive and critical research methods within the field of media studies. Readings introduce the philosophical arguments behind research methods. We cover social science approaches that focus on qualitative observation or examination of media phenomena or problems as well as critical approaches grounded in cultural, historical, textual, institutional and/or political economic analysis of media, including, Marxism, feminism, or post-structuralism. Course assignments guide students to frame their conceptual approach, identify research questions that engage with social justice issues purposefully, and design a scholarly project that uses research methods suited to their areas of scholarly inquiry.

Media Studies 745: Advertising & Marketing
Tuesdays 6:30-8:20, G200
Professor Mara Einstein (mara.einstein@gmail.com)

An examination of the complex dynamic among business, technology and consumers. Learn the objectives, strategies and tactics that are used to brand and sell across a variety of products and services from consumer packaged goods (CPG) to personal branding. Topics include consumer behavior, industry analysis, media planning and buying, and the development of creative communication. Case studies will be used to put theory into practice.

Media Studies 758.1: Creative Sound
Thursdays 2:40-6:30, Music 225H/G200
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. Cross-listed with MEDST 313. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.2: Drawing & Experimental Media
Mondays 1:00-5:00, Klapper 284
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

Co-taught with Professor Gregory Sholette from the Art department, this class will focus on personal and collective storytelling. Returning to the roots of moving image technology, drawing and comics, students complete two projects, a one-chapter graphic novel created through Risograph printing and a film combining animation and live action. No prior technical know-how or drawing skills are necessary. Cross-listed with MEDST 250. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.3: Creative Coding
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays 2:00-5:50 PM, IB 213 or Tuesday 2:00-5:50 PM, IB 201

In this class, we will be looking at using computational algorithms as a tool to create beautifully designed visual graphics. Over the semester we will be exploring design topics like form, color, grids, typefaces, and 3-dimensional objects and combining these with computational topics like randomization, repetition, transformation, generative and data manipulated design. Each class will consist of a lecture and live coding examples as well as student project presentations and critiques. We will be using p5js as our main platform to focus on the intersection between the visual arts and code. Cross-listed with ARTS 249. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 758.4: Information Design
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Wednesdays 1:40-5:30 PM, KG 107

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations. Over the course of this semester, we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5.  Cross-listed with ARTS 269. MA students complete graduate-level requirements and receive graduate credit.

Media Studies 769: Digital Activism Lab
Thursdays 6:30-8:20, G200
Professor Alex Rivera (alex@alexrivera.com)

In this seminar/praxis hybrid, class discussions will focus on how technology currently both empowers and marginalizes activism within local communities. We will concentrate specifically on the production and dissemination of the digital moving image. Projects developed in the class will bring critical theory and study to bear on student experiences as they are embedded in the ongoing efforts of local activist organizations.

Media Studies 788.1/788.2/788.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797.1/797.2/797.3: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 703: Media & Social Justice
Professor Roopali Mukherjee (roopalimukherjee@gmail.com)
Wednesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar examines political, cultural, and sociological approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation within struggles over race, class, and gender. Introducing major theoretical and conceptual approaches in media studies, the course emphasizes how the digitization of society (mediated selves, networked counter-publics, digital resistance) impacts, and is impacted by, relationships of power as well as activist histories of social justice.

Media Studies 704: Gender, Sexuality & Media
Professor JV Fuqua (jvfuqua@gmail.com, joy.fuqua@qc.cuny.edu)
Tuesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the relationships among gender, sexuality, and media. Recognizing the power of media representations, technologies, and industries to shape and enforce dominant ideas about gender and sexuality, students learn about various forms of media activism addressing gendered injustice, exploitation, and inequality.

Media Studies 758.1: Creative Sound
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)
Thursdays 2:40-6:30 PM, Room TBA (cross-listed with MEDST 313)

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. 

Media Studies 758.2: Creative Coding
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays 2:00-5:50 PM, I Building 213

In this class we will be looking at using computational algorithms as a tool to create beautifully designed visual graphics. Over the semester we will be exploring design topics like form, color, grids, typefaces and 3 dimensional objects and combining these with computational topics like randomization, repetition, transformation, generative and data manipulated design. Each class will consist of a lecture and live coding examples as well as student project presentations and critiques. We will be using Processing and p5js as our main platform to focus on the intersection between the visual arts and code. Cross-listed with Arts 249 (undergraduate). Media Studies MA students receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 758.3: Data Visualization
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Wednesdays 1:50-5:30 PM, KING 107

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations. Over the course of this semester we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5. Cross-listed with ARTS 370. Media Studies MA students receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 759.1: Technology, Media, and Democracy
Professor Douglas Rushkoff (rushkoff@rushkoff.com)
Mondays, 6:30-9:30 pm, various locations in NYC
A collaboration between Cornell Tech, Columbia, NYU, The New School, CUNY Journalism, and QC Media Studies to understand the various threats to journalism and democracy, and attempt to address these challenges using civic tech, engineering, media, and computational methodologies. From leaders inciting violence and hurling insults to technology platforms siphoning revenue, independent journalism and civic discourse have increasingly been under attack. The program, including the course, lecture series, and research and development activities, will address new challenges to democracy and human rights including security and cybersecurity threats; surveillance economics; credibility and reliability threats including fake news and discrediting campaigns; obstacles and challenges in conducting and funding investigative journalism and civic discourse; and the shifting business models and income sources that threaten both local and national news organizations and coverage. This class will meet Monday evenings, gathering together participants from the five graduate programs at one of the campuses – usually in Manhattan.

Media Studies 759.2: Social Movements
Professor Michael Lacy
Thursdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

A course in the rhetoric of social movements, from Saul Alinsky to Black Lives Matter. This course will cover the theory and praxis of rhetoric by social movements, as well as how to apply these techniques in the field. 

Media Studies 788.1/788.2/788.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797.1/797.2/797.3: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 702: Media & Capitalism
Thursdays 6:30 – 8:20 PM, G200
Professor ShinJoung Yeo (syeo@qc.cuny.edu)

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar offers an intensive introduction to global capitalism and its relation to contemporary media systems. We will focus on shifts in the structures, public policies, and cultural practices of media systems, moving across successive generations of media from traditional news to digital media. The course will focus on social and political struggles over media systems in their relations with the defining features of capitalism.

Media Studies 758.1: Drawing & Experimental Media
Tuesdays 2:00 – 5:30 PM, Klapper, Room TBA
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

Co-taught with Professor Gregory Sholette from the Art department, this class will focus on personal and collective storytelling. Returning to the roots of moving image technology, drawing and comics, students complete two projects, a one-chapter graphic novel created through Risograph printing and a film combining animation and live action. No prior technical know-how or drawing skills are necessary.

Media Studies 758.2: Creative Sound
Thursdays 2:40 – 6:30 PM, Music 225H/G200
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies.

Media Studies 758.3: Creative Coding
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays 2:00-5:50 PM, I Building 213

In this class we will be looking at using computational algorithms as a tool to create beautifully designed visual graphics. Over the semester we will be exploring design topics like form, color, grids, typefaces and 3 dimensional objects and combining these with computational topics like randomization, repetition, transformation, generative and data manipulated design. Each class will consist of a lecture and live coding examples as well as student project presentations and critiques. We will be using Processing and p5js as our main platform to focus on the intersection between the visual arts and code. Cross-listed with Arts 249 (undergraduate). Media Studies MA students receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 758.4: Physical Computing
Professor Danne Woo (Danne.Woo@qc.cuny.edu)
Wednesdays, 1:40-5:30 PM, Klapper 107

This course focuses on how we can use microprocessors (like the Arduino or Raspberry Pi) and their programming frameworks, along with sensors, motors, potentiometers, cameras, etc. to allow humans to more naturally interact with digital and physical installations. Students will be encouraged, through weekly assignments, to take technical skills and equipment (like hand gestures, facial features, touch, body movements, voice, along with other environmental and biometric sensors) to come up with interesting, creative and artistic outputs. Inter disciplinary and cross-departmental collaboration will be highly encouraged, including, for example, collaborations with dancers to make interactive performances, sculptors to make kinetic and interactive artwork, and musicians to make new interfaces for musical expression. Although this class will cover technical skills like electrical engineering, physical engineering, and programming, we will also have lectures on design, sculpture and the performing arts. Students will need to have a notebook or sketchbook to bring to every class, your Arduino starter kit, as well as a 4gb or larger thumbdrive to transfer digital files, and earphones for listening to video tutorials in class. Listed as Arts 370 (undergraduate). Media Studies MA students receive graduate credit for it.

Media Studies 759.1: Class & Media
Mondays 6:30 – 8:20 PM, G200
Professor Amy Herzog (amy.herzog@qc.cuny.edu)

This seminar surveys issues of class in film, television, and digital media, both as represented on screen, and in relation to processes of production, consumption, and activism. The course is organized historically, spanning depictions of workers in silent cinema, Soviet revolutionary films, 1960s newsreel collectives, family sitcoms, Third Cinema movements, labor organizing media, reality television, contemporary anti-gentrification social media, and digital media generated by and about the Trump administration. Class discussions juxtapose mainstream fictional and non-fictional representations with contemporaneous media produced by independent resistance groups. Engaging with local activist media groups and actions throughout the semester, students will research their own “constellation” of historical media texts related to class, and media-based creative projects will be encouraged.

Media Studies 759.2: Propaganda
Wednesdays 6:30-8:20 PM, G200
Professor Douglas Rushkoff (rushkoff@rushkoff.com)

This seminar explores the techniques, underlying assumptions, and influence of propaganda from Lippman and Bernays through weaponized memes and digital hacktivism. Rather than a strictly historical survey, we will explore propaganda by venue and medium, including spectacle, atmospherics, television, and social media. For instance, in studying the use of spectacle we will compare the Roman games to the Nuremberg Rallies to an NFL football game. Our study of atmospherics will include the Victorian Crystal Palace, the 1964 Worlds Fair, and Disneyworld. Readings and films will include Walter Lippman, Edward Bernays, Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman, Adam Curtis, Michael Moore, The Yes Men, Leni Riefenstahl, Brooke Gladstone, Noam Chomsky, Frank Capra, Nancy Snow, Laura Belmonte, Thomas Sorenson, Theodor Adorno, Alicia Garza, William Burroughs, Fred Turner, and others. We will give particular focus to the migration of propaganda techniques between governments and corporations, as well as the way propaganda changes the greater media landscape of a society. Finally, we will look at countercultural deconstruction of propaganda, as well as uses and ethics of propaganda by social activists. Students will be responsible for leading one class discussion with an accompanying short paper, presenting a case study in propaganda with an accompanying paper, and developing a propaganda campaign of their own.

Media Studies 759.3: Film/Fashion/Media
Professor Eugenia Paulicelli (eugenia.paulicelli@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays 5:00 – 6:50 PM, Queens Hall 325

Fashion and film share a highly interactive quality. As two of the most well-known and widespread commercial industries to grow out of modernity, film and fashion rely on the technology of the camera and that of a gendered and racialized body. The power of fashion in its material and immaterial qualities cannot be understood without a critical understanding of media (old and new). While examining the relationship between fashion and film, the course will also focus on the power and economic structures that underlie the global fashion industry such as exploitation of cheap labor and social inequalities. Drawing on Italian cinema and approaching Italian fashion in a larger global context, the power of these two domains will be explored in depth. Cross-listed with Italian 779.

Media Studies 769: Digital Activism Lab
Tuesdays 6:30 – 8:20 PM, King 106
Professor Alex Rivera (alex@alexrivera.com)

In this seminar/praxis hybrid, class discussions will focus on how technology currently both empowers and marginalizes activism within local communities. We will concentrate specifically on the production and dissemination of the digital moving image. Projects developed in the class will bring critical theory and study to bear on student experiences as they are embedded in the ongoing efforts of local activist organizations.

Media Studies 788: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

Media Studies 797: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

MEDST 701: Media Archaeology
Professor Noah Tsika (noah.a.tsika@gmail.com)
Mondays, 6:30-8:20 PM

This introduction to media historiography surveys material approaches to media history, locating media artifacts within broader cultural contexts, and mapping established and emergent audiovisual archives. Designed with an international focus, this course engages a range of historical strategies, from traditional chronologies to new theoretical and experimental methodologies, including ecological perspectives and alternative histories of obsolete technologies, abandoned sites, and neglected practices.

MEDST 703: Media & Social Justice
Professor Roopali Mukherjee (roopalimukherjee@gmail.com)
Wednesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

One of two core classes required for the Media Studies MA degree, this seminar examines political, cultural, and sociological approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation within struggles over race, class, and gender. Introducing major theoretical and conceptual approaches in media studies, the course emphasizes how the digitization of society (mediated selves, networked counter-publics, digital resistance) impacts, and is impacted by, relationships of power as well as activist histories of social justice.

MEDST 758.1: Creative Sound Design
Professor Zoe Beloff (zoe@zoebeloff.com)
Thursdays, 9:10 AM-1:00 PM

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands-on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. 

MEDST 759.1: Gender, Sexuality & Media
Professor JV Fuqua (jvfuqua@gmail.com, joy.fuqua@qc.cuny.edu)
Tuesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the relationships among gender, sexuality, and media. Recognizing the power of media representations, technologies, and industries to shape and enforce dominant ideas about gender and sexuality, students learn about various forms of media activism addressing gendered injustice, exploitation, and inequality.

MEDST 759.2: Race, Migration & Media
Professor Sara Hinojos (sara.hinojos@qc.cuny.edu)
Thursdays, 6:30-8:20 PM

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the relationships among race/ethnicity, (im)migration, and media. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach, the course explores how media practices and representations construct immigrant communities as well as the ways these communities creatively use media to trouble and contest dominant ideologies that shape their lives and life-chances.

MEDST 769: Digital Activism Lab
Ari Melenciano (arimelenciano@gmail.com)
Wednesdays, 6:30-8:20 PM, Room G004

In this seminar/studio hybrid, students are invited to investigate how technology currently both empowers and marginalizes different communities, while also exploring how the possibilities within technology can advance their own activism practices. Projects developed in this class lie at the intersection of physical computing, creative computation, Internet of Things, and web/app development.

MEDST 788.1/788.2/788.3: Cooperative Education Placement
By permission of department

Up to three credits of experiential learning through job placements developed by the Queens College Cooperative Education Program. Opportunities to test, apply, demonstrate, and expand on academic learning in an organizational setting. Students must provide information about and justification for the placement to the MA Director to secure department permission.

MEDST 797: Special Problems
By permission of department

Up to three credits of supervised independent study on special problems that may be related to, or in preparation for, the thesis. Students must make all necessary arrangements with the supervisor of the independent study and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

MEDST 790: Thesis
By permission of department

Students must make all necessary arrangements with the thesis adviser and inform the MA Director to secure department permission.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication (VT) Countercultural Media History of New York
David Hershkovits
Monday, 6:30 – 8:20 pm

This seminar will explore the history and significance of the media in the evolution of the second iteration of the counterculture in post hippie New York of the 70s, 80s and 90s. It is the story of how marginal youth cultures embedded in lower Manhattan — punks, skater kids, hip hoppers, gay men and women, club kids and outsiders created a powerful counter narrative to the dominant “culture industry” in music, performance, fashion and the arts that ultimately prevailed and went on redefine modern living. Media’s role — specifically Paper magazine which I founded in 1984– and how it served to connect these divergent counter cultural communities will be central to this conversation as will the rise of alt.media.  We will also examine the relationship between media and culture to help us understand the ways power is contested through cultural activation. This course provides an introductory overview to some of the most significant countercultural contributions of 20th and 21st- century and its influence on makers and activists for social change. The course will review source material and include visits from seminal downtown figures.

MEDST 745: Advertising and Marketing: Critical Perspectives
Mara Einstein
Tuesday 6:30 – 8:20 pm

Critical analysis of the advertising and marketing industries, particularly as they migrated from the print and broadcast spaces to the Internet and social media. Taught by Mara Einstein, author of Black Ops Advertising, Brands of Faith, and Compassion Inc., and the upcoming The New U: Marketing, Money and Misplaced Dreams.

MEDST 702: Media & Capitalism
and
MEDST 759: Studies in Communication – Digital Economics
Douglas Rushkoff
Wednesdays 6:30 – 8:20 pm

In one course, we will cover the influence of capitalism on media as well as the influence of digital technology and media on capitalism. For the former, we will read and discuss seminal works by Marx, Chomsky, Gramsci, Fuchs,  McChesney, Wu, Schiller, and Wasko. Students who took 702 and may have covered any of these readings will be offered alternatives.

We will also study and prototype digital money systems, game points, social currency, transactional models, and investing platforms. We will consider blockchain, the future of work, financial activism, startup mechanics, and universal basic income. Does digital technology offer new approaches to economic activity, or will it merely reify those from the printing press era? What are the values inherent but generally unrecognized in the economic operating system we use, who or what do these values foster, and how does their migration to digital spaces change their biases? Readings will vary according to student interest and projects, but will focus on works by Rushkoff, David Graeber, Jaron Lanier, Bernard Lietaer, Adam Smith, Hayek, Charles Eisenstein, Eric Schmidt, and Art Brock.

MEDST 758: FORM & GENRE (VT): Speculative Fiction: Dissident Futures
(Taught together with MEDST 381 (SEC 2) undergraduates)
Alex Rivera
Wednesday 1:40 – 4:30 pm

From “Black Mirror” to “Black Panther,” the genre of speculative fiction is increasingly central to the American imagination and entertainment industry.  It is also a form that is going through changes.  Many recent  works feature characters and storylines that have been historically excluded, and explore near-term futures to address urgent techno/social concerns that we live with in our present day.  In “Speculative Fiction: Dissident Futures,” students will watch, read, and discuss speculative fictions that feature these innovative perspectives.  The primary focus of the class, however, will be on the production of an original work.  During the course of the semester each student will be required to write and produce a short video in the genre of speculative fiction.

Students will be required to hit three benchmarks during the course of the class.  The first will be the production of a found-footage film, in which students will focus on writing and using sound design to give new meaning to old images.  The second will be the original production of a short film that expands on their ideas.  In the final third of the semester, students will expand on their idea, and finish the best and fullest version of their short film by the end of the semester.  To successfully balance this hands-on film production process, with a rigorous track of screenings and readings about speculative fiction, will require that students are highly committed to the class and ready for an intense and rewarding journey.

MEDST 769: Digital Hacktivism: Technology Development Lab.
Jason Van Anden
Thursday 1:40 – 4:30 pm, G-004

In this studio course, participants bring their own technology concepts from the idea stage to full proposals and prototypes. Each week, guest industry experts will help students explore precedents and influences, choose platforms, develop user scenarios, determine market fit, write wireframes, evaluate social, economic, and environmental impact, prepare and rehearse proposals, build prototypes, and then participate in a live pitch before a panel of funders and technologists. Up to three projects will be invited to participate as members of QC’s new Technology Incubator. For department masters students, the focus will be on the impact of technology design on economic and social justice. Masters students may also do scholarly work on these issues instead of technology development.

MEDST 758 Form & Genre (VT): Creative Sound Design
(Taught together with MEDST 313 undergraduates)
Zoe Beloff
Thursday 1:40 – 5:30 pm

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre (VT): Drawing II/Experimental Media (3 cr.; 4 hours) (taught with undergraduate MDST 381)
Zoe Beloff
Tuesday 2 – 5:50 pm, Klapper 284

This class will focus on personal and collective storytelling . Returning to the roots of moving image technology, we will experiment with new forms of expression and narrative while creating do-it-yourself media apparatuses, direct film animation, video for performance, and graphic novels. There will be hands on projects, screenings and discussions. It is open to all students, undergraduate and graduate, art or media, who wish to expand their creative potential. No prior technical knowhow or drawing skills are necessary. It is recommended for graduate students who wish to explore hands on media archeology practices using analog equipment.

ARTS 269 (4,3)-VT: Information Design
(Graduate course number will be used for masters students)
Professor Danne Woo
Friday 10 – 1:50 pm, I-Building 212

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations.

Over the course of this semester we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5.

Arts 249 (4,3) Creative Coding
(Graduate course number will be used for masters students)
Professor Danne Woo
Wednesday, 6 – 9:50 pm

The computer is an amazing tool that most designers really do not use to its full potential. The software applications that are used by the masses are just that, created for the masses and are not perfect for every project. In this class we will be looking at using computational algorithms as a tool to create beautifully designed visual graphics.

Over the semester we will be exploring design topics like form, color, grids, typefaces and 3 dimensional objects and combining these with computational topics like randomization, repetition, transformation, generative and data manipulated design. Each class will consist of a lecture and live coding examples as well as student project presentations and critiques. We will be using Processing as our main platform to focus on the intersection between the visual arts and code.

CUNY Journalism School. 

Our students are eligible for most CUNY J-School courses. Consult their catalogue/ and we’ll work with you to register.

MEDST 701: Media Archeology 
Professor Amy Herzog
Wednesday 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G-200

Media archaeology is an emergent field, one that excavates the histories of contemporary media via neglected and often-obsolete practices. It is an approach that is at once deeply rooted in the materiality of media technologies, and attuned to the social and political sites in which they circulate. This project-based seminar will survey the key texts that have driven this archaeological turn in media studies, with a critical perspective on new ways the past can shed light on our current conditions. Sites of consumption and exhibition will prove central to our practice, which will involve mapping the shifting relations among technologies, users, and urban space.

MEDST 703: Media & Social Justice 
Professor Roopali Mukherjee 
Tuesday 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G200

MA core course that examines a variety of approaches to media as agents of political, economic, and social change with an emphasis on historical struggles over social justice. Topics introduce a long and vibrant history of media activism ranging from the earliest influences of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, to the continuing role of media within significant labor, antiwar, civil rights, and anti-globalization struggles. Critically examining a variety of modes of resistance – from non-violent civil disobedience to revolutionary Marxism, from small acts of sabotage to the networked tactics of guerrilla warfare – the course is geared to understanding how those with little or no power manage, nevertheless, to destabilize and sometimes topple powerful institutions of oppression, injustice, and exploitation.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication: Technology, Media and Democracy – Assessing the Threats to an Informed Electorate 
Professor Douglas Rushkoff 
Mondays 6:30-9:30 pm, various locations in Manhattan

A collaboration between Cornell Tech, Columbia, NYU, The New School and QC Media Studies to understand the various threats to journalism and media, and attempt to address these challenges using design, engineering, and computational methods and techniques. From leaders inciting violence and hurling insults to technology platforms siphoning revenue, independent journalism has increasingly been under attack. The program, including the course, lecture series, and research and development activities, will address key challenges faced by independent media including: security and cybersecurity threats to news organizations and journalists; credibility and reliability threats including fake news and discrediting campaigns; obstacles and challenges in conducting and funding investigative journalism; and the shifting business models and income sources that threaten both local and national news organizations and coverage.
This class will meet Monday evenings, gathering together participants from the five graduate programs at one of the campuses – usually in Manhattan. The semester will conclude with a day-long workshop and press conference on a Friday or Saturday. 

MEDST 791: Thesis Research 
Professor Mara Einstein 
Tuesday 4p – 6p
For students to narrow focus, develop a research question, explore research methodologies, write a thesis proposal and conduct literature survey (or the equivalent) for the thesis project. 

Additional Electives: 

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Creative Sound Production 
Stephen Bartolomei 
Thu 9:10 am – 1 pm
A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. 

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Podcasting Production  
Stephen Bartolomei
Tuesday 9:10am – 1pm  Podcasting planning, content, and production. 

MEDST 702: Capitalism & Media
Professor Matt Crain
Wednesday 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G-200

Seminar offers an intensive introduction to global capitalism and its relation to established and contemporary media systems. This is primarily a theory course that will teach graduate students to understand, analyze and research the diverse forms of governance, cultural power, knowledge, public policy, and resistance associated with media as they shape, and are shaped by race, class, and gender politics.

MEDST 752: Media Theory (3 cr.; 2 plus conf. hour)
Professor JV Fuqua
Tuesday 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G-200
Media theory examines the relationship among media, culture, and technologies. Media theories are tools that can be used by scholars, activists, artists, and others to help us explain the ways power is established and contested through cultural artifacts. This course provides an introductory overview to some of the most significant theoretical contributions to 20th and 21st- century critical thought and an examination of how these theories have been taken up by makers and activists for social change. This course shows the connections between theory and practice, analog and digital media. Grounded in a cultural studies approach to the study of “the culture industries” and social justice, we will examine psychoanalysis, Marxist critical theory, semiotics/structuralism, poststructuralism/postmodernism, feminist and queer theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory as well as digital theory, science and technology studies (STS), and recent ways of responding to “the posthuman.”

MEDST 769: Digital Hacktivism: Technology Development Lab.
Professor Douglas Rushkoff
Wednesday 1:40 to 4:30pm, Room G-200 and G Building Basement Lab

In this studio course, participants bring their own technology concepts from the idea stage to full proposals and prototypes. Each week, guest industry experts will help students explore precedents and influences, choose platforms, develop user scenarios, determine market fit, write wireframes, evaluate social, economic, and environmental impact, prepare and rehearse proposals, build prototypes, and then participate in a live pitch before a panel of funders and technologists. Up to three projects will be invited to participate as members of QC’s new Technology Incubator. For department masters students, the focus will be on the impact of technology design on economic and social justice. Masters students may also do scholarly work on these issues instead of technology development. Web announcement.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication: Media, Manipulation, and Magick
Professor Douglas Rushkoff
Mondays 6:30 to 8:20pm
G-200

This seminar will explore the relationship between influence techniques, media technology, and the occult: From the radio sigils of Aleister Crowley and Adolf Hitler to the occult rituals of Jack Parsons and L Ron Hubbard; the cut-and-paste of Gysin and Burroughs to the charging of corporate sigils; and from the psychedelic origins of the internet to the magical intentions of Pepe the Frog. We will compare and contrast the digital influence techniques of BJ Fogg, Nir Eyal, and Cambridge Analytica with the viral hacktivism of the YesMen and Anonymous.  We will explore magick-influenced cultural phenomena Burning Man to anti-Trump binding spells, and choose individual lines of scholarship or praxis.

Additional Electives: 

ARTS 370-VT: Special Topics in Design: Data Visualization
Professor Danne Woo
Fridays, 2:00PM – 5:50PM
I-Building 213

The massive amounts of data that we produce as a culture is steadily rising year after year. This ever-growing sea of information needs to be understood. Since we are all naturally visual people, the best way to understand this data is to graphically interpret it as data visualizations.  Over the course of this semester we will cover this entire process. First sourcing publicly available data sets. Then analyzing these data sets to pull out the points of interest. And finally designing visualizations based on our findings for a specific audience. The first portion of the semester will be focused on printed infographics and the second half will be entirely interactive interpretations of the data using HTML5.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Creative Sound Production
Stephen Bartolomei
Thu 9:10 am – 1 pm

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Podcasting Production 
Stephen Bartolomei
Tuesday 9:10am – 1pm

Podcasting planning, content, and production.

MEDST 701: Media Archeology (required for students who entered in 2015 or before)
Amy Herzog, Wednesday 3 – 5 pm
Noah Tsika, Monday 6:30 – 8:20 pm

Media archaeology is an emergent field, one that excavates the histories of contemporary media via neglected and often-obsolete practices. It is an approach that is at once deeply rooted in the materiality of media technologies, and attuned to the social and political sites in which they circulate. This project-based seminar will survey the key texts that have driven this archaeological turn in media studies, with a critical perspective on new ways the past can shed light on our current conditions. Sites of consumption and exhibition will prove central to our practice, which will involve mapping the shifting relations among technologies, users, and urban space.

MEDST 745: Advertising and Marketing: Critical Perspectives
Mara Einstein, Tues 6:30 – 8:20 pm

Critical analysis of the advertising and marketing industries, particularly as they migrated from the print and broadcast spaces to the Internet and social media. Taught by Mara Einstein, author of Black Ops Advertising, Brands of Faith, and Compassion Inc. 

MEDST 760: Rhetorical Theory: Social Movements
Michael Lacy, Wed 6:30 – 8:20 pm

A course in the rhetoric of social movements, from Saul Alinsky to Black Lives Matter. This course will cover the theory and praxis of rhetoric by social movements, as well as how to apply these techniques in the field. 

MEDST 790: Thesis Lab
Douglas Rushkoff, Wed 3 – 5 pm

For students completing their thesis projects.

MEDST 791: Thesis Research
Douglas Rushkoff, Wed 3 – 5 pm

For students to narrow focus, develop a research question, and conduct literature survey (or the equivalent) for the thesis project.  

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Creative Sound Production
Zoe Beloff, Thu 9:10 am – 1 pm

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies. 

MEDST 702: Capitalism & Media
Professor Matt Crain
Wednesdays 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G200

Seminar offers an intensive introduction to global capitalism and its relation to established and contemporary media systems. This is primarily a theory course that will teach graduate students to understand, analyze and research the diverse forms of governance, cultural power, knowledge, public policy, and resistance associated with media as they shape, and are shaped by race, class, and gender politics.

MEDST 703: Media & Social Justice
Professor Roopali Mukherjee
Mondays 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G200

MA core course that examines a variety of approaches to media as agents of political, economic, and social change with an emphasis on historical struggles over social justice. Topics introduce a long and vibrant history of media activism ranging from the earliest influences of Thomas Paine’s revolutionary pamphlet, Common Sense, to the continuing role of media within significant labor, antiwar, civil rights, and anti-globalization struggles.​ Critically examining a variety of modes of resistance – from non-violent civil disobedience to revolutionary Marxism, from small acts of sabotage to the networked tactics of guerrilla warfare – the course is geared to understanding how those with little or no power manage, nevertheless, to destabilize and sometimes topple powerful institutions of oppression, injustice, and exploitation.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Media and the Environment
Professor JV Fuqua
Tuesdays 6:30 to 8:20 PM, Room G200

This course examines how our perceptions of human and natural environments are framed by technologies and how those same technologies are used by media activists to intervene in, challenge, and change the larger cultural and political contexts of our environment. We will engage with an array of media including photography, film, digital forms and technologies, maps, illustrations, sound, and use both narrative (fiction) and documentary (nonfiction) texts. It addresses the materiality of media technologies and their role in contemporary extraction capital and global precarity. These issues will be addressed using theoretical groundings in historical theory as well as contemporary theories (new feminist materialism, critical race theory, queer theory, critical animal studies). Key concepts include but are not limited to: nature, the nonhuman, wilderness, agribusiness, environmental racism, extinction, the anthropocene, rewilding, domestication, deforestation, extraction capital, desertification, petrochemical cultures, animality, postcoloniality, purity/toxicity, consumerism, urban/rural, e-waste, and technological obsolescence.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Interactive Narrative
Professor Douglas Rushkoff
Wednesdays 3:00p to 5:00p, Room G200

This hybrid seminar/lab considers the impact of interactivity on traditional narrative structure, and explores new methods for conveying narrative in non-linear, digital, and augmented forms of art, entertainment, and communications. How can we create the experiences of reversal, recognition, and catharsis in interactive contexts – and do we want to? What are the social and political biases implicit in particular narrative structures, and how are they changing in new media landscapes?   Each class meeting is broken up into two parts. The first is a seminar discussion either examining an aspect of traditional narrative and the way it is threatened or rendered obsolete in an interactive context or exploring theory and examples of interactive narrative. The second half of each session takes the form of workshop exercises and short projects through which alternative narrative forms specifically suited for an interactive environment are conceived, prototyped and evaluated. Students also work on longer-term experiments in interactive narrative, developing rule sets through which narratives may emerge, or prototyping non-narrative work.

MEDST 790: Thesis Lab 
Professor Mara Einstein
Tuesdays 4pm to 6pm, Room G200

Required for students completing their thesis projects. 

MEDST 791: Thesis Research 
Professor Mara Einstein​
Tuesdays 4 – 6 pm

For students to narrow focus, develop a research question, explore research methodologies, write a thesis proposal and conduct literature survey (or the equivalent) for the thesis project.

(June 6 – June 29)

MEDST 769: Digital Hacktivism Lab
Roy Vanegas, Sat 8:30am-12:30pm

A seminar and hands-on workshop in web, app, and physical computing specifically applied toward activist, hacktivist, and cause-related efforts. The course looks at theory and case studies of digital activism, while also teaching skills in project-based units.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication: Networked Activism
Molly Sauter, M, T, W Th – 6p-7:40p

An intensive seminar on the history and theory of networked activism. Molly Sauter is a Vanier Scholar and a PhD candidate at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. Her research is on the political and technological philosophy of interrupted ICT spaces. She holds a Master in Comparative Media Studies from MIT, and is an affiliate scholar at the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab and at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. She is the author of The Coming Swarm: DDoS Actions, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet. 

MEDST 752: Media Theory (3 cr.; 2 plus conf. hour)
Professor Douglas Rushkoff
Wednesday, 6:30-8:20 pm
G-200

Media theories attempt to explain the relationship between media and society. In this course, we will encounter a variety of theoretical perspectives on old and new media, focusing particularly on the transitions between one media era and another. We will consider the impact of the alphabet on oral culture, that of the printing press on manuscript culture, electronic media on literary culture, and – perhaps most importantly – interactive media on society today.

Instead of studying the content of a particular medium, in this course we will consider media and their underlying technologies directly, as they are understood by a variety of theorists, practitioners, critics, philosophers, activists, and artists. We will be particularly concerned with questions of human agency and autonomy, and changes in perception, social interaction, and power relationships as different media come to dominate a culture. It is our purpose to gain competence in reading and evaluating media theories, to become familiar with a theoretical approach to media, to be able to distinguish between an opinion and a theory, and to be capable of formulating and articulating our own theories about media, tools, and platforms.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre (VT): Gender, Sexuality, and Media (3 cr.; 2 plus conf. hour)
Professor Amy Herzog
Monday, 4:00-6:00
G-200

This course will approach questions of gender, sexuality, and power in popular media, from early cinema’s appeals to middle-class female audiences at the turn of the last century, to the contemporary use of social media by feminist activists of color. Gender, sexuality, and identity will be viewed at the intersections of other biological and social categories, including race, class, orientation, ability, and ethnicity. We will examine the ways in which different media forms can be used to complicate, reinforce, exploit, or challenge those hierarchies.
Readings will survey the history of feminist and queer media theory, as well as critiques and debates about these paradigms. We will perform formal analyses of media texts, in addition to other methodological approaches (ethnographic, legal, sociological, media archeological, and philosophical) that situate gender and sexuality within evolving cultural contexts.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre (VT): Drawing II/Experimental Media (3 cr.; 4 hours)
Professor Zoe Beloff
Friday, 10:15-1:50
KP 138

This class will focus on personal and collective storytelling . Returning to the roots of moving image technology, we will experiment with new forms of expression and narrative while creating do-it-yourself media apparatuses, direct film animation, video for performance, and graphic novels. There will be hands on projects, screenings and discussions. It is open to all students, undergraduate and graduate, art or media, who wish to expand their creative potential. No prior technical knowhow or drawing skills are necessary. It is recommended for graduate students who wish to explore hands on media archeology practices using analog equipment.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre (VT): SOUND (3 cr.; 4 hour)
Professor Zoe Beloff
Thursday, 2:40-6:30
MU-225H

A study of sound as a creative medium in theory and practice. The class involves a study of motion picture soundtracks, sound art works, radio broadcasts, historical recordings, as well as hands on sound recording and editing using new computer technologies.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication (VT): Media Activism: Black Rebellion & Revolutionary Media
(3 cr.; 2 plus conf. hour)
Professor Roopali Mukherjee
Tuesday 6:30-8:30
G 200

This course offers an intellectual survey of dissent with a particular focus on activist media forms that have shaped, and been shaped by, enduring struggles for black autonomy, voice, freedom, and power. Introducing theoretical approaches to the “revolutionary imagination” drawn from formative works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Cedric Robinson, and others, the course explores a range of activist media forms – early abolitionist journalism, black film, hip-hop, viral media campaigns including, most recently, Black Lives Matter – with an eye to understanding how media activism intersects with, and has been influenced by, histories of black rebellion in the United States.

MEDST 764: International Media Systems: Transnational Media (3 cr.; 2 plus conf. hour)
Professor Anu Kapse
Monday 6:30-8:30
G 200

If screen media (including cinema, television, and social media) are transnational phenomena, how and why might they be used for specific local or national purposes? The goal of the course will be to explore and identify forms of media practice that resist cultural imperialism, and work alongside or against global, transnational norms be they perpetuated by state or corporate entities. Class discussions will pay particular attention to Asia, the Middle East and the global South using  examples from this part of the world as case studies to frame understandings of comparative international media practices.

MEDST 790/MEDST 791: Thesis/Thesis Research
Professor Richard Maxwell
Tuesday 4:00-6:00
G 200

MEDST 757: Media and Politics
Mark Hannah
Wednesday, 6:30-8:20 pm
G-200

The theory, use and abuse of media and technology in political and issues campaigns, including polling, big data, crisis management, social media, debate preparation, media appearances, framing of issues and language, taught by the media scholar who worked on media and debate prep for Obama 08 and Kerry 04.

MEDST 703: Media and Social Change
Arun Kundnani
Tuesday, 6:30-8:20 pm
G-200

Seminar examines political, economic and sociological approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation, topics include the digitization of society and how information technology and networks work within digital capitalism, and the significance of contemporary media within abiding struggles over injustice, exploitation, and social change.

MEDST 760: Rhetorical Theory 
Technologies of Persuasion
Douglas Rushkoff
Wednesday, 2:40 – 4:30 pm
G-200

The (dark) arts of influence as practiced through media and interactive technology. Propaganda to mind control, captology, and user engagement. Deconstruction and critique of the history of influence, as well as crafting projects to influence others.

MEDST 758: Form & Genre: Digital Hacktivism Lab
Roy Vanegas
Monday, 7:00 – 8:50 pm
G Building Basement Lab

A seminar and hands-on workshop in web, app, and physical computing specifically applied toward activist, hacktivist, and cause-related efforts. The course looks at theory and case studies of digital activism, while also teaching skills in project-based units.

MEDST 701: Media Archaeology
Instructor: Noah Tsika

Time: Mondays, 6:30 – 8:20, plus conference hour TBA
Location: Kiely Hall, room 315
Course Code for Registration: 58521

This introduction to media historiography surveys material approaches to media history, locating media artifacts within broader cultural contexts, and mapping established and emergent audiovisual archives.

The spring 2015 version of the course will consider media archaeology as a disciplinary and methodological response to a variety of political, cultural, social, and economic constraints—a way of finding and building audiovisual archives that resist conventional historiographic methods. We will begin by addressing the ongoing tensions between the ordering practices imposed on the global South by European colonialism and the chaotic archives characteristic of the postcolony. We will also address the question of missing archives and “impossible” archaeologies. Using the career of Orson Welles as a case study, we will examine the scholarly practice of writing media history based on missing or incomplete projects, lawsuits, rumors, and material fragments. Finally, we will study—and ourselves produce—archaeologies of the internet, considering the question of how to excavate, or locate traces of, videos from the pre-YouTube era; videos that have been removed from various sites; and videos whose provenance has been the understudied, previously unacknowledged, or legally fraught “pockets” of the internet that may prove to be among the most reliable sources of audiovisual evidence.

MEDST 758: Form and Genre: Interactive Narrative Lab
Instructor: Douglas Rushkoff

Time: Wednesdays, 6:30 – 8:20, plus conference hour TBA
Location: G-Building, 200
Course Code for Registration: 77631

This graduate-level laboratory class considers the impact of interactivity on traditional narrative structure, and explores new methods for conveying narrative in non-linear, digital, and augmented forms of art, entertainment, and communications. How can we create the experiences of reversal, recognition, and catharsis in interactive contexts – and do we want to?

Each class meeting is broken up into two parts. The first is a seminar discussion either examining an aspect of traditional narrative and the way it is threatened or rendered obsolete in an interactive context or exploring theory and examples of interactive narrative. The second half of each session takes the form of workshop exercises and short projects through which alternative narrative forms specifically suited for an interactive environment are conceived, prototyped and evaluated. Students also work on longer-term experiments in interactive narrative, developing rule sets through which narratives may emerge, or prototyping non-narrative work.

This course is suitable for traditional practitioners looking to incorporate interactive narrative elements into their work, as well as experimental and digital artists and theorists exploring new narrative forms. Readings will include Aristotle, Egri, Ball, McKee, Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht, McLoud, Mackendrick, Kaprow, Huizinga, Ryan, Zimmerman, Kucklich, Crawford, Meadows and Rushkoff.

Open to non-department and undergraduates with instructor permission.

MEDST 759: Studies in Communication: Digital Economics
Instructor: Matthew Crain

Time: Tuesdays, 6:30p-8:20p, plus conference hour TBA
Location: Kiely 315
Course Code for Registration 58391

In the last three decades, developments in networked digital communications have challenged established modes of media production, consumption, and circulation. New opportunities for media communication abound, but “disruption” has not produced a digital landscape free of constraints. From the sleek and pragmatic monetization of search advertising to the ham-fisted prosecution of intellectual property “pirates,” industry has unevenly adapted existing business models to meet new circumstances. How do we make sense of a media system where everything has changed, but so much remains the same?

This course provides a critical survey of these transformations, analyzing the structure and social significance of digital economies in relation to still powerful 20th century mass media models. A key starting point is the premise that the technological aspects of media convergence are deeply intertwined within broader dynamics of “post-industrial” capitalism. Course topics may include: the development of the commercial internet and digital media convergence; market structures of online publishing and advertising; consumer surveillance and big data; the crisis of journalism; intellectual property; post-network television; and public policy. Concepts from economics, legal studies, political economy, and media studies are utilized. Emphasis is placed on how digital economies impact collaboration, autonomy, and political and cultural participation on the internet.