Communication Studies

• COMM 100: Communication and Social Process
• COMM 140: Introduction to Media History, Theory, and Criticism

COMM 100: Communication and Social Process

This course addresses the many ways our communication—including language, discourse, performance, and media—reflects, creates, sustains, and transforms prevailing social and cultural practices.

Required Texts

• Wood, Communication Theories in Action, 3rd edition (2003)
• COMM 100 Course Pack

You may purchase the textbooks at the Higher Grounds bookstore in person, online, or by mailing or faxing in the book order form. Refer to the online ordering site for current book prices. Please see Textbooks for textbook purchase dates.

Course Details

• Instructor: Elizabeth Nelson, MA
• Department: Communication Studies
• Credit hours: 3
• UNC-Chapel Hill perspectives/requirements fulfilled: The Office of Undergraduate Curricula has links to information about which perspectives this course fulfills under the “Pre-2006 Curriculum” and which requirements it fulfills under the new curriculum (see “2006 Curriculum”).
• View sample course syllabus.

How to Enroll

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COMM 140: Introduction to Media History, Theory, and Criticism

This course is an introduction to the critical analysis of film and television. Students become familiar with the concepts on which humanistic understandings—as opposed to social scientific understandings—of media and culture are currently based. The course surveys the filmic, televisual, photographic, musical, and digital texts of which the contemporary international mediascape is composed. Students also study the analytic techniques available for making sense of, appreciating, and taking issue with individual media texts, groupings of media texts, and the overall “media ecology,” as understood in their proper cultural and historical contexts.

Required Materials

Textbooks

• Bordwell and Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 8th edition (2006)
• Grossman, Wartella, and Whitney, MediaMaking: Mass Media in a Popular Culture, 2nd edition (2006)

You may purchase the textbooks at the Higher Grounds bookstore in person, online, or by mailing or faxing in the book order form. Refer to the online ordering site for current book prices. Please see Textbooks for textbook purchase dates.

Videos

• Meet Me in St. Louis (Minnelli, 1944, US)
• His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1939, US)
• Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Resnais, 1959, France/Japan)
• Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977, US)

Videos can be rented at most video stores. You are required to have access to a VCR or DVD player.

Course Details

• Instructor: Richard Cante, PhD
• Department: Communication Studies
• Credit hours: 3
• UNC-Chapel Hill perspectives/requirements fulfilled: The Office of Undergraduate Curricula has links to information about which perspectives this course fulfills under the “Pre-2006 Curriculum” and which requirements it fulfills under the new curriculum (see “2006 Curriculum”).
• View sample course syllabus.

How to Enroll

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