EMS 101 Critical Reading and Writing     (3 credits)

Students in Critical Reading and Writing learn to read and write rhetorically. To do so, they will summarize, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the published views of others. They will consider their own and others’ rhetorical choices based on audience, purpose, and context. The course addresses questions such as: How do we comprehend a difficult text? What communicative norms might we encounter in society and business, and how can we navigate between them? How is meaning created through written work, and how do we assess its credibility? Course readings advance students’ learning by challenging them intellectually, engaging them in the process of thinking critically about the issues raised, and motivating them to create meaning of their own. Four-year students are expected to complete Critical Reading and Writing in their first semester at the university.

Typically Offered: Fall

EMS 101L Critical Reading and Writing with Lab     (3 credits)

Designed for native speakers of English who can benefit from an intensive writing lab.

Students in Critical Reading and Writing learn to read and write rhetorically. To do so, they will summarize, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the published views of others. They will consider their own and others’ rhetorical choices based on audience, purpose, and context. The course addresses questions such as: How do we comprehend a difficult text? What communicative norms might we encounter in society and business, and how can we navigate between them? How is meaning created through written work, and how do we assess its credibility? Course readings advance students’ learning by challenging them intellectually, engaging them in the process of thinking critically about the issues raised, and motivating them to create meaning of their own. Four-year students are expected to complete Critical Reading and Writing in their first semester at the university.

Typically Offered: Fall

EMS 102 Critical Reading and Writing for ESOL     (3 credits)

Designed for Multilingual Students. Students in Critical Reading and Writing learn to read and write rhetorically. To do so, they will summarize, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the published views of others. They will consider their own and others’ rhetorical choices based on audience, purpose, and context. The course addresses questions such as: How do we comprehend a difficult text? What communicative norms might we encounter in society and business, and how can we navigate between them? How is meaning created through written work, and how do we assess its credibility? Course readings advance students’ learning by challenging them intellectually, engaging them in the process of thinking critically about the issues raised, and motivating them to create meaning of their own. Four-year students are expected to complete Critical Reading and Writing in their first semester at the university.

Typically Offered: Fall

EMS 102L Critical Reading and Writing for ESOL with Lab     (3 credits)

Designed for Multilingual Students who can benefit from an intensive writing lab.

Students in Critical Reading and Writing learn to read and write rhetorically. To do so, they will summarize, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the published views of others. They will consider their own and others’ rhetorical choices based on audience, purpose, and context. The course addresses questions such as: How do we comprehend a difficult text? What communicative norms might we encounter in society and business, and how can we navigate between them? How is meaning created through written work, and how do we assess its credibility? Course readings advance students’ learning by challenging them intellectually, engaging them in the process of thinking critically about the issues raised, and motivating them to create meaning of their own. Four-year students are expected to complete Critical Reading and Writing in their first semester at the university.

Typically Offered: Fall

EMS 104 Multimodal Communication     (3 credits)

Pre-Req: EMS 101 or EMS 101L (EXP 101 or 102)

The course introduces students to key concepts and competencies in communications, logic, and rhetoric. Students will build upon the skills they developed in Critical Reading and Writing, moving from summary and analysis to argument and persuasion. They will learn how to recognize and adapt communications for different audiences, occasions, and mediums, especially via oral communication. Along the way, they will hone their ability to find and evaluate evidence, then incorporate that evidence into coherent and compelling arguments. Students will also examine some of the ethical issues that arise in communication, especially issues related to accessibility and diverse audiences, and to give and receive critical feedback.

Typically Offered: Spring

EMS 105 Multimodal Communication for ESOL     (3 credits)

Pre-Req: EMS 102 or 102L

EMS 105 is for multilingual students. The course recognizes the specific needs of multilingual learners, maximizing professor feedback & promoting additional opportunities for in-class speaking, discussion, & peer collaboration. The course introduces students to key concepts and competencies in communications, logic, and rhetoric. Students will build upon the skills they developed in Critical Reading and Writing, moving from summary and analysis to argument and persuasion. They will learn how to recognize and adapt communications for different audiences, occasions, and mediums, especially via oral communication. Along the way, they will hone their ability to find and evaluate evidence, then incorporate that evidence into coherent and compelling arguments. Students will also examine some of the ethical issues that arise in communication, especially issues related to accessibility and diverse audiences, and to give and receive critical feedback.

Typically Offered: Spring

EMS 200 Introduction to Film, Literature and Media     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior

This course helps students become more adept readers of cultural texts. When we read a text, we engage in a practice; this practice is shaped by the text and by the conditions of its production and reception. This course provides a basic foundation for understanding how a variety of textual forms and genres work in terms of style and form. Students will read, view and listen for plot and pleasure, as well as for the intricate processes of narrative, visual and sonic construction that create meanings and affect audiences. This course asks students to think about how texts are made and to think about what practices we use to critically read cultural texts.

Typically Offered: Once a year

EMS 202 Introduction to Cinema Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality.
Formerly CIN 270

Over a hundred years since its inception, cinema continues to hold a central role in our multimedia environment. This course is designed to introduce students to the history and analysis of film. Students learn the technical and critical vocabularies of film studies, and examine films representing a variety of styles and genres, including experimental, documentary, and narrative modes. Course readings and class discussions familiarize students with extra-textual discourses about film industries as social and economic institutions. Because the course has both a global and an historical scope, we study films from the silent period to the present, and from many different nations around the world.

Typically Offered: Once a year

EMS 220 Introduction to Cultural Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly EMS 201

This course considers culture as an arena of social and political struggle. This course looks at how cultural texts change meaning and significance as they become increasingly popular. Is what we consider popular completely evacuated of substantive meaning? Is it a matter of generational and disciplinary differences? If we are considering subcultural formations, do you have to be in the "culture" to be able to read the texts produced by that culture? What does it mean to read from outside? This class gives students a vocabulary to enter debates about the meanings of cultural texts.

Typically Offered: Once a year

EMS 221 Introduction to Media Theory     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 200

Media impact our lives on a daily basis, often in ways we don't think about. Whether we are concerned with content television shows, films, recorded music, news, advertisements, video games; with who produces it professionals or consumers; with how we use it for entertainment, for surveillance, to gather and distribute information; or even with the means with which media content reaches us traditional broadcast, the Internet or mobile devices the range of questions we can ask about media are vast. This course looks at the ways we can make sense of media through theory its production, distribution, audiences, effects, uses and meanings in order to help students become both more media literate as well as become sophisticated analysts and producers of media.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 222 Introduction to Communication Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspective: Values, Ethics, and Society
Formerly COM 322

The study of persuasion, or rhetoric, began in a society with no lawyers, ancient Greece. Much has changed since then, including the shift from face-to-face persuasion and negotiation to the introduction of writing and then mass media, and with it, new forms of persuasion including advertisement. The course covers all these forms and topics such as the relation between truth and rhetoric, and between form and content, and the psychology of persuasion. Students may analyze persuasive strategies used in advertising, literature, political/legal discourse, and science and technology.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 223 Introduction to Mass Communication     (3 credits)

Formerly COM 321

Through printed texts and film, radio and television broadcasting, and electronic information networks, mass communication plays a central and worldwide role in distributing both information and ideas. Focusing primarily on electronic and print media, this course surveys the major theoretical perspectives on three aspects of mass communication: the means of production, the form and content of mass media messages, and the reception and use of those messages by audiences.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 224 Lies, Promises, and Insults     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Values, Ethics and Society
Formerly LIT 226

Lies, promises, and insults are all instances where the meaning of words, and the sentences in which they appear, cannot be separated from the effects they produce. Intended meaning can fail or misfire, like when a promise turns out to be a lie. This course examines the complex relationship between language and action in 20th and 21st century drama, fiction, and other media. The course introduces students to philosophies of language that acknowledge the active force of words and their effects.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 240 Introduction to Media Production     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior.
Formerly MC 220

Serving as a foundation to media practice, this course offers students a broad introduction to media production through hands-on exercises involving digital photography, video and audio production, as well as graphic and sound design. Students will have the opportunity to explore various media formats and methods of distribution through the course's emphasis on the fundamentals of visual language and the creative process. The overarching framework for a study of media is provided in the course: analysis and synthesis are emphasized as projects evolve throughout the process of conceptualization, visualization, production and reception.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 241 Introduction to Video Production     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior, formerly MC 224

This course highlights the creative process and serves as a foundation for students to learn the technical and artistic aspects of digital video production. The fundamentals of screenwriting, visual conceptualization, cameras, lighting techniques, sound recording, and nonlinear editing are covered.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 242 Introduction to Photography     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 222

Photography has permeated our world within the past century. Billboards and advertising, personal snapshots, and the limitless web seeing the world photographically and learning to interpret these images is a contemporary imperative. Within the past decade, digitally-based imaging has taken center stage in photography. This course is focused on communicating effectively and visually through digital imagery. Students examine three important facets of visual communication in the rapidly expanding digital world: the art of photography, image manipulation, and finally, applications for these images. Students will shoot and edit their own digital photographs using their own cameras, provide written responses to topic questions, and can create a web-based portfolio of their work.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 260 English Romanticism, 1790-1850     (3 credits)

Contexts & Perspectives: Change, Culture, & Behavior
Formerly LIT 355

In the decades following the American and French Revolutions, a revolutionary cultural and literary movement had a powerful impact on intellectual and social life in England and the rest of Europe. The imagination, the subjective experience of individuals (no matter how humble), and sentiment or emotion were extolled as superior to (or at least as important as) the rational and scientific ideals of the Age of Reason. This course considers what was (and wasn't) revolutionary in the work of romantic writers such as poets William Blake and John Keats, essayist William Hazlitt, and novelists Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 261 The Victorian Period     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Globalization, formerly LIT 356

British literature of the 19th century reveals the excitement and the struggle of learning to live in a world of rapid technological advances. During this period, England led the world in industrial development, in urbanization, and in the possibilities and disruptions brought on by these changes. Writers of the Victorian period novelists like Charles Dickens and George Eliot, poets like Tennyson and Browning eagerly examined and portrayed the great new world. They investigated the changes in city and country life, political and religious upheavals (particularly the clash of religion and science), and the development of a Victorian "attitude" about respectability and values. This course presents some of the great authors and works that mark this remarkable period.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 270 American Traditions     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Value, Ethics, and Society, formerly LIT 261

The United States has always been a contact zone, a meeting place of a variety of cultures. This course introduces some of the diverse American literature produced between the 17th and 20th centuries. Students will learn about the many writers associated with the Boston area, such as Bradstreet, Alcott and Thoreau, as well as writers such as Douglass, Twain, Dickinson and Cather from the diverse regions and cultural backgrounds within the United States.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 271 American Literature: Realism and Naturalism     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Value, Ethics, and Society
Formerly LIT 363

The period between 1870-1920 was the era of the invention of the bicycle, the telephone and the incandescent light. The poet Walt Whitman captured the spirit of optimism of these inventions and celebrated the creative force of Americans. Awed by the inhuman scale of new technologies, naturalists including Dreiser and Wharton were not as optimistic about one's capacity to shape personal destiny. It was everyday life and emotion not grand or disastrous destinies with which realist writers such as Howells were concerned. This course explores these varied viewpoints on this transformative era as they are expressed in literature written between the war "to preserve the union" and "the war to end all wars."

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 272 The Roots of American Activism in American Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Value, Ethics, and Society
Formerly LIT 362

Many of the major social and political issues that divide Americans have their roots in the decades before the Civil War. This course examines the nineteenth-century struggles surrounding westward expansion, Native removal, slavery and women’s rights through novels, short stories, essays, and autobiographies, from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” to Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. We also analyze adaptations of 19th century materials on film—such as The Last of the Mohicans and Django Unchained—to explore how these conflicts are understood by modern audiences.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 273 Modern American Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 364

This course considers the major developments in 20th century American Literature, with special emphasis on issues of race, class and gender. It examines responses to the upheavals of the two world wars, the liberation movements of the 1960s, including feminism, and the influence of literary developments in other parts of the world. Significant attention will also be given to more recent writers, such as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Louise Erdrich and Derek Walcott.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 300 The Novel     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 214

The first novels were romances, tales of wanderers, allegories and satires. Works by Cervantes and John Bunyan exemplify the early novel. The novel as a genre soon developed an enthusiastic audience and a variety of forms, from realistic to fantastic. The course presents novels from different times and places to sample some of this variety and to see how authors have made use of the enormous potential of the novel.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 301 The Short Story     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 216
Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change and Behavior

The modern short story is characterized by its movement toward a moment of realization or insight. How can we decipher and benefit from this insight? This course studies the different forms a short story can take and the different ends to which individual writers subject the form. It includes writers who have contributed to the development of the modern short story (such as Anton Chekhov, Edgar Allan Poe and Katherine Mansfield) and more recent innovators (such as Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver).

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 302 Nonfiction     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 218

This course examines the most protean of literary forms, the essay, and explores its development into a flexible medium capable of reflecting on personal matters as well as sports, business, politics, food and science exploration. Authors vary from Michel de Montaigne and Samuel Johnson to such contemporary American writers as Annie Dillard and Stephen Jay Gould.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 303 Biography and Autobiography     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 220

Biography and autobiography—stories about real people—have been called the most useful form of literature: they provide real-life models to emulate, real-life mistakes to beware of, and real-life experiences that help us understand ourselves and the forces that shape us. But it is important to remember that no matter how hard they try to be honest and accurate, biographers and autobiographers can provide only versions of someone's life (even their own), of which other versions are always possible. This course invites students to study the lives of others (both famous and ordinary), to appreciate the wide range of factors—cultural, social, political, and historical—that shape the kinds of stories writers tell, and just as importantly, the stories they do not tell. Selection and focus of biographies and autobiographies vary by instructor and semester.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 304 Graphic Novel     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 340

The graphic novel, and its older cousin the comic, is a medium that joins text and image, has been historically dismissed as marginal to “serious literature,” and as such, less deserving of critical attention. It’s been deemed “kid’s stuff,” ephemera, stuff you read during childhood, that may or may not have pedagogical value, that you let go of as an adult. Yet, this form of expression hasn’t gone away. It has, instead, become part of our everyday popular culture and the basis of economic and cultural juggernauts DC and Marvel. The course explores the medium, its visual and textual grammar, and place in contemporary culture. This course is currently taught through five different themes: The Rise and Fall of the Superhero; All the Feels: The Autobiographical Graphic Novel; Heroes, Rebels, and Monsters; Nationalism, Trauma, and Violence; and Diaspora: Migrations, Old and New.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 305 Mythology and Folklore     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 232

This course studies selected archetypal stories and legends as well as games, riddles and proverbs to discover basic patterns and variations in the human experience. It includes materials from all parts of the world, and from a variety of perspectives, regarding such topics as creation, myths of the elements, the seasons, the loss of paradise, death, the underworld, the hero, the Great Mother, and the trickster.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 311 Revisions and Retellings     (3 credits)

Context & Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior

Our cultural landscape is littered with adaptations of previously told tales that we may not even recognize as tales reworked for our consumption. Analyzing retellings within contemporary popular culture, this course investigates reimagining of previously told tales and asks students to get beyond the question of whether or not there is an original text that should be preserved or that is better, but to critically engage with the creative, cultural, and political aspects of revision, translation, and adaptation. This course moves beyond traditional understandings of adaptation to encourage thinking about the more complicated ways that narratives migrate across platforms and creative networks. Students will read multiple genres: folk tales, poetry, novels, films, graphic novels, games, and social media.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 312 Horror/Sci-Fi in Film and Television     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 384

Horror and science-fiction in film and television offer unique insight into the consequences of the “what if?” scenario. Overlapping in shared codes, conventions, and iconography, these genres provide a means to debate cautionary tales surrounding unforeseen futures, usually dystopias, through the creation or existence of unimaginable beings as a detriment to humanity. Their most central conveyance concerns the perception of the “other” and a protagonist’s struggle to remain or become human and/or moral. Issues of gender, race, sexuality, class, and sustainability will be surveyed through such topics as disaster (e.g., alien invasions, environmental catastrophes, the apocalypse, and pandemics); identity (e.g., cyborgs, clones, biotech and government experimentation, precognition, and artificial intelligence); and the fantastical (e.g., monsters, the paranormal, time travel, and the devil incarnate. Ultimately, this course explores what “being human” means.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 313 Film and Television Genres     (3 credits)

Formerly CIN 372

Genre is one of the most significant ways we classify cultural works. The film and television industries have borrowed genres from other fields such as literature and theater and created new genres. This course will expose students to a range of film and television genres. Possible genres include horror, comedy, romantic comedy, dramedy, situation comedy, and crime.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 321 Shakespeare     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 352

Referring to the hero of an early Shakespearean play, Elizabeth I is reputed to have said, "I am Richard II, know you not that?" This course explores some of the history plays and comedies written in the earlier part of Shakespeare's career, to discover why so many readers and playgoers then and today have identified with characters such as Richard II, Prince Hal and Falstaff from the histories or Viola, Bottom and Touchstone from the comedies. Emphasis varies from year to year, but may include such themes as romantic love, gender identity, kingship, and the formation of a national consciousness. Attention is given to the historical context of the plays as well as to their dramatic and poetic form.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 322 Jane Austen in Fiction and Film     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 357

Students study the novels of Jane Austen and their cinematic adaptations. In addition to developing insight into the novels and movies, students also analyze selected critical, historical and biographical contexts. Students can thus incorporate scholarly and popular views into their analyses of the novels and films. Participants get to focus on the work of a single major author whose writing established many of the traditions of modern fiction, and become immersed in an important historical period. They also learn to think and write critically about social, artistic and commercial motives behind the enduring interest in Austen.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 323 Great Directors     (3 credits)

Formerly CIN 371

This course will focus on the work of a single director or a group of related directors, investigating their characteristic themes and concerns, and their special ways of using the medium of cinema to tell a story. One recent version of this course was devoted entirely to Hitchcock; a second examined four great directors: Fellini, Bergman, Truffaut, and Altman. Other directors to whom the course might be devoted include: Wilder, Lang, and Lubitsch; Scorsese, Ford & Hawks; and Orson Welles.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 331 Writing Poetry     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 310

This course develops the students' ability to recognize, analyze and design effective structures of imaginative language and poetic form. Classroom methods include workshops to critique student work, in-class exercises, analysis and exposition of works by noted poets, and frequent writing assignments. The class is limited in size so that every student writer's work can receive full attention.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 332 Writing Fiction     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 311

This course is an intensive workshop in writing short stories and an exploration of the creative process. The material of the course is drawn primarily from students' own experience. The emphasis is divided between the technique of short-story writing and an analysis of the psychological difficulties faced by individual writers. Students will study the elements of fiction, analyze the stories of a contemporary writer, and apply what they learn in their own writing. They will also read work in progress and receive constructive suggestions from the group. Each student will be helped to conceive, write and revise four complete short stories during the course of the semester. Visiting writers are frequently invited to sit in on a class. The class is limited in size so that every student writer's work can receive full attention.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 333 Writing for Drama/Screen     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 312

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 334 Creative Nonfiction/Essay Writing     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 313

Personal essay and memoir are among the most popular forms of literature today, a fact one can confirm by looking any Sunday at the best-seller list in the New York Times. This course emphasizes creativity of expression and provides an opportunity to practice these genres. It encourages experimentation with a variety of first-person forms and shows how to treat subjects that students know about and that are important to them. It is conducted as a workshop in which students share their work with and learn from one another. Frequent individual conferences with the instructor are required. The class is limited in size.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 335 Creative Writing and Multimedia Production     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 314

Each student chooses his or her own work (family history or memoir, love poetry or satire, nature or adventure writing, among others). Using class and individual exercises, videotaped inspiration, and guests discussing their own work in progress, students will learn the major skills of each written genre to apply to their own special piece. Includes word choice, imagery, language rhythm, conflict, characterization, narrative intervention and tone. Other overarching concerns that professional writers struggle with include subtext, production and intention. The class is limited in size.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 340 American Icons     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly LIT 366

Meet three commonly identified American icons - the cowboy, the capitalist and the feminist - to see what they reveal about themselves and U.S. culture. Through literature, film, historical documents and narratives, students will see how these representations of America evolve and change in response to changes in society itself, and how they differ from icons in other cultures. The course addresses ethnic, racial and other variations in American life embodied in these American icons.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 343 American Landscapes     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Value, Ethics, and Society
Formerly EMS 330

In this course we engage with the interdisciplinary field of “ecocriticism.” This means that we use a variety of theories and critical frameworks to analyze the relationship between cultural texts—literature, film, the visual arts—and the physical environment. Our aim is to understand how those texts reflect and articulate evolving concepts of nature and the nonhuman through engagements with a range of cultural studies discourses on race, gender, class, etc. We also look at how theories connect with the practice of environmental activism.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 344 American Cities in Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 371

This course uses literary texts as a lens through which to look at American cities and their significance in American culture in general and American literature in particular. It aims at understanding urban American intellectual and social culture, and the architecture, music, politics and philosophy that embody it. Students will examine five important U.S. cities New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Nashville and Los Angeles as case studies of American life at moments of dramatic technological and cultural change. Students will study the work of some of the premier creative writers and thinkers in American history, from the Romantic authors who generated a literary Renaissance in Boston to the musicians of Memphis and the counter-cultural activists of San Francisco. Readings for the course include texts by Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Tennessee Williams and Joan Didion.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 345 American Cities in Film     (3 credits)

Formerly CIN 382

This course examines the image of the city in American film. Close attention is paid to issues of race and sexual orientation amid the multiple, sometimes conflicting, portrayals of urban centers as places of refuge and violence, liberalism and intolerance, prosperity and poverty. While setting provides the conceptual theme of the course, students are invited to analyze these films from the widest possible array of perspectives, grounded in the critical approaches relevant to the discipline of cinema studies and interpretation of narrative meanings.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 346 Sitcom Nation: The American Family in Fiction and Film     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 381

The nurturing nuclear families of television sitcoms such as "Leave it to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" are often idealized by contemporary Americans anxious about and frustrated by contemporary family conflicts and complexities. The media converts these anxieties into consumable types (e.g., the deadbeat dad) and positions them against the sitcom ideal of the self-sacrificing mother and tough, but loving, father. By analyzing literary and cinematic responses to "classic" TV sitcom representations of American familial and cultural norms, this course explores the entrenchment of and challenges to gendered (and race- and class-based) family ideals. It addresses the impact of consumerism and the media on people's perceptions of the ideal American family and their own distance from its norms. As this is a Communication Intensive section, it includes writing workshops and individual writing conferences in which students develop and hone their oral and written communication skills.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 350 Black Lives Matter: African American Literature and Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly EMS 320

The contemporary response to state violence against African Americans has a long and moving history. This course begins with a historical context, briskly surveying the years in and around the Harlem Renaissance before transitioning into the literature and music of the modern era. We engage in a deep study of the Civil Rights Movement (from James Baldwin to Marvin Gaye), and the course concludes with the artistic production of the hip-hop generation. History and politics are the theme, but the emphasis throughout the course is on using literary methods to interpret the aesthetic value of protest art.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 351 Latina/o/x Literature and Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 255

This course introduces students to the presence and historical legacy of Latina/o/x literature and culture. It takes a broad sweep of the textual production of Latina/o/x writers through a range of texts such as historical documents, poetry, allegories, novels, short stories, and autobiographies. These selected texts move students from early colonial encounters to the work of contemporary authors such as Valeria Luiselli and Carmen Maria Machado. Students focus on the diverse cultural backgrounds and shared experiences that shaped Latina/o/x Literature in the US as well as how writers developed narrative strategies in response to colonial histories, immigration (and migration), racial constructions, and mixed identities.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 352 Native American Literature and Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 262

In this course students will examine the long history of Native American textual production, from early Native writers such as Samson Occum and William Apess to contemporary authors including Louise Erdrich and Sherman Alexie. Within these readings students will focus on narrative strategies for physical and cultural survival and remembrance in the face of colonialism and erasure. At the same time, students will investigate how native American writers deploy a diverse array of tactics and theories to consciously oppose stereotypes of Native identity in mainstream literature and film.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 353 Immigrant and Ethnic Literature     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 365

The United States has been called "a nation of immigrants." Certainly ,most people living in the U.S., if not immigrants themselves, are the descendants of people who were born overseas and came to these shores seeking political asylum, religious freedom, or-most often- economic opportunity. Stories will reflect the pains and satisfactions of adjustment to American culture, as well as the sometimes troubled relations between immigrant parents and their American-born children. The ethnic groups represented in the course may change from semester to semester.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 354 Black Cinema     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 387

This course combines close readings of film style and aesthetics with a careful examination of the cultural contexts of Black cinema. Students will examine how Black filmmakers have told stories that matter, invented new visual and sonic cinematic vocabularies, and worked to represent Black experiences within genres and industries that were designed with whiteness at the center. This course prioritizes work produced by Black filmmakers, but the course will also incorporate and analyze representations of Blackness constructed by members of other racial/ethnic groups. Students become acquainted with an array of cultural tropes and stereotypes before diving into the efforts of writers and directors to add complexity to Black images in cinema.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 359 Passing in American Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 370

'Passing' refers to the conscious adoption of a new category of identity. While passing traditionally refers to the practice of African Americans passing as white, American literary history provides many examples of people who, for various reasons, assume another race, sexual identity or gender. This course examines fictional 20th-century representations of such passing in order to question the act of passing from a social and cultural perspective.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 360 Women in Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 334

This course explores the literary representation of women's nature, lives and issues. The literary definitions and dynamics of women appear in such terms as self, voice, autonomy, relation to men, and position and agency in the world. The course considers whether the gender of the writer affects the literary treatment of the subject. The texts studied will vary each semester.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 361 Women and Film     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 375

Women have shaped the development of cinema in many central ways since its beginning over a hundred years ago. This course surveys major concepts and analytic approaches in the study of women and film. Readings focus on the objectification of the female image, the agency of female spectators, and the intersections of issues of gender and cinema with race, class, and sexuality in an historical context. We also examine discourses of the female star, confluences of gender and genre, and film production by women directors working within as well as outside of Hollywood.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 362 Wonder Women     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 381

From the preternatural strength of Buffy Summers to the sultry confidence of Jackie Brown, heroic women characters often have a profound and lasting impact on the cultural imagination. But when is "girl power" really challenging staid notions about gender roles, and when does it simply serve as a fantasy reinscription of old premises about women as servants, caregivers or sex objects? This course applies these critical concerns to a number of heroic, superheroic and antiheroic women characters in television and cinema.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 363 The Male Image in American Film     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 380

This course examines how masculinity functions in cinematic narratives centered on Hollywood's "leading men." Students identify and critique notions about what makes a male protagonist heroic, or even more simply what makes him a functional citizen. This critique necessarily leads to a larger discussion about the evolving concepts of American culture, and how and why mainstream film champions the popular cultural impulse of rebellion. The course emphasizes the theoretical approaches of formalism (close reading) and deconstruction to relate a gendered reading of each character to these larger social concerns. Films examined may include "High Noon", "Strangers on a Train", "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", "Midnight Cowboy", "The Shining", "American Beauty", and "Collateral."

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 364 LGBQ American Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 369

From power lesbians to drag queens, representations of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals are now visible throughout popular culture. But when does a novel or film accurately reflect the lives of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals? And when do they simply reproduce stereotypes? This course surveys contemporary gay literature and cultural expression in American life since the advent of the gay rights movement in 1969. It explores the representation of sexual identity in language, the intersection of political and aesthetic goals, and the differences in representations in class, race and ethnicity. It asks what defines gay, lesbian and bisexual literature, what distinguishes contemporary gay, lesbian and bisexual literature from earlier texts, and how gay, lesbian and bisexual literature has changed.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 365 Transgender American Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 377

Trans literally means across or beyond. This course surveys recent American literature to ask how people journey across or beyond gender identity categories. Are terms like masculine and feminine, heterosexual and homosexual, and male and female always mutually exclusive? Or can they be negotiated? Who defines someones gender, the individual or society? The stories, novels, poetry and films discussed in this course utilize drama, humor and autobiographical events to convey the complexity of transgender lives and their variety, which includes cross-dressers, transsexuals and drag queens and kings, and any person whose gender identity or expression does not fit traditional categories.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 366 Queer and Trans Media Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly EMS 342

The goal of this cultural studies course is to give students an expanded critical vocabulary for talking about gender and sexuality. This course helps students think about the pasts, presents, and futures of gender and sexual citizenship. This course explores theories of identity, subjectivity, identification, representation, cultural texts, forms, and platforms. We explore temporal and spatial dimensions of queer and trans cultures and think through intersectionality: what it means to read bodies, performances, and constructions and their articulation in and between nation, globalization, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 370 Cultural Studies and the Body     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly EMS 341

This course explores how identity is constructed through cultural representations of the body. Through the study of literary texts, films, advertising, museums, laws, and sports, students will develop an understanding of how different types of discourses (legal, scientific, literary, popular, etc.) have categorized and positioned individuals and communities in terms of race, gender, class, sexuality, and (dis)ability.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 371 Literature and Medicine     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 290

This course explores the relationship between literature and medicine through a range of texts concerned with health, illness, trauma, and care. Throughout the semester, we engage with representations of and responses to the rise of medical science from the early nineteenth century to the present. We read doctor memoirs, patient journals, and novels informed by the lived experience of illness and the various knowledges and traditions that have been employed in the service of healing. Topics we address include: rhetorical strategies in medical and literary writing; the inner-psychic and interpersonal nature of illness; the representation of medical ethics in literature; the role of narrative in the clinical setting; diverse and global therapeutic traditions.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 372 Cultures of Contagion     (3 credits)

Context and Perspective: Values, Ethics and Society

This course explores the concept of contagion in U.S. literature and film, focusing on the ways that outbreak narratives shape human society as they point to the transmission of ideas as much as the transmission of microbes. The class focuses on aesthetic accounts of communicable disease to examine contagion as a foundational concept in the study of culture, religion, and society. In it, we analyze how contagion circulates not just across populations but also various scientific, journalistic, and creative sources, considering the many impacts of infectious disease on human interaction and imagination.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 380 Money, Love, and Death: Colonialism in Literature and Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly LIT 380

Students will explore colonialism as an important frame of reference for understanding contemporary cultures, and the connections among the themes of money, violence, love and colonialism, including cases involving U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Can there be love between people on opposite sides of a political conflict? How are the motives of romantic fantasy and profit connected in campaigns to exert political influence (hegemony) or dominance over another culture or group? To what extent is the legacy of colonialism a story of physical and emotional violence? What can we learn about our own lives from experiences such as European imperialism and Vietnam? Can we speak of an "internal colonialism," here in the culture we inhabit? Students will explore a broad range of cultural materials, both visual and textual, film and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, to understand these and other complex questions about cross-cultural relationships.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 381 Diasporic Literature and Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Globalization
Formerly LIT 385

The term diaspora is of Greek origin and means “to scatter or disperse.” Its earliest usage was used to describe the dispersal of Jewish peoples. This course looks at cultural productions produced out of late modern formations of colonial capitalism. Students examine cultural texts: literature, film, music, and cultural practices that have evolved out of colonial capitalism’s political and economic processes and forces. We consider the social and cultural dimensions of migration as well as the transnational flows of ideas, capital, and people in the context of our contemporary notions of homeland, mother/father land, and host nation. We begin with the question of ontology, what diaspora means, and what it means to exist as a diasporic subject.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 382 Caribbean Literature     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Globalization
Formerly LIT 337

This course introduces students to the literature of the Caribbean. Texts will be selected from the offerings of several islands and from various genres: novel, poetry and short fiction. Emphasis will be placed on the shaping influences of the island's rich mystical heritage and on questions of personal identity. The effects of slavery, African cultural survivals, and the role played by the English, French and Spanish colonials, white creoles, mulattos and blacks in forming the cultural mosaic of the island will be studied. Students will read the works of such authors as V. S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Jacques Roumain, Derek Waltcott and Esmeralda Santiago, among others.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 383 Images of the Hero     (3 credits)

Formerly LIT 332

Heroes can be warriors or pacifists, romantics or realists, officers or outlaws, or a composite of all of these. The kind of hero a culture admires can tell us a lot about its values, its beliefs and its fears. This course examines male and female heroes from a spectrum of modern and traditional cultures. It considers how literary heroism functions as an expression of cultural values and social expectations. In exploring the ways that heroes do and do not function as role models, it also explores the conflict between individuality and social responsibility often revealed in heroic narratives.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 390 Global Media     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 250

This course looks at international media industries, products and audiences to provide an introduction to a multinational and multiethnic culture. In addition to providing a strong general grasp of how international media are structured, the course focuses on how cultural and media products impact democracy internationally. Students consider the elements, interaction and impact of media culture and mass communication in national and international arenas, with special attention to questions of ideology, political economy and global democracy.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 391 International Cinema     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Globalization
Fulfills literature requirement or arts and sciences elective.
Formerly CIN 376

This course focuses on one of the wide varieties of important national cinemas or film movements that have played a major role in the development of film as a virtually universal artistic language. Topics to which the course might be devoted include German Expressionism; Soviet Cinema and Montage Theory; Post-war Italian Cinema, Rosellini through Bertolucci and beyond; the French New Wave; Japanese Cinema; and Bollywood and the development of film in India.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 392 Youth Cultures in International Cinema     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Globalization
Formerly CIN 383

This course is a focused study of youth cultures in international cinema. We study films primarily as documents of youth culture: as explorations of the ways in which youth occupy urban and non-urban spaces, how they experience the local and the international, and how their identities and lives are represented in media, old and new. Assigned films will function as case studies enabling discussion of major issues: youth self-fashioning and identities, family, tradition and social change, violence, gang culture, fashion, technology, education, poverty, gender and sexuality. Our study of the films will be supplemented by extended scholarly essays that add depth and context, framing our study within broader critical discourses on culture and within scholarship in transnational film studies.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 393 Intercultural Communication     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly COM 320

This course explores theories of intercultural communication and the way in which specific cultural knowledge informs communication. The class will consider the ways race, class, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation and age affect communication within (domestic) and across (international) cultures. The course readings are drawn from a wide variety of sources. Some take a broad view and are theoretical. Others relate a piece of cultural knowledge or practice that has the potential to impact intercultural communication in a variety of ways. The class will view videos and occasionally listen to music as additional means of understanding some of the multiple ways different cultures go about communicating similar issues and tasks. The class involves a great deal of participation, and regular reflection on readings and experiences.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 400 The Television Industry     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power, formerly MC 260

Radio and television broadcasting are major parts of the U.S. economy, national identity and contemporary culture, yet their pervasiveness is rarely matched by critical scrutiny of how media become meaningful to audiences and to American society. Drawing on an integrated approach where the textual, industrial, policy, social and audience dimensions of broadcasting are considered, this course guides students through a survey of American broadcasting style, regulation and content. Readings, screenings and class discussions address the roles that American radio and television have played in constructing dominant and marginalized cultures. By examining the intersection of art and commerce in American radio and television, students analyze the ways that broadcasting content has evolved and how media industries have responded to social and regulatory change.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 401 Disney+: Content + Platform     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly EMS 310

This course analyzes cinematic and cultural messaging in films and television controlled by Walt Disney, the media conglomerate that brings together Walt Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm, and Disney-ABC Television Group with Disney+ and Hulu streaming platforms. It considers cultural issues of gender, race, sexuality, and inclusion, while also discussing cinematic concerns related to animation, effects, casting, costuming, production worker agency, and corporate authorship. It evaluates how streaming platforms and the promotional screen industries generate awareness and circulate interpretive frames. The course begins and ends with how Disney+ has re-created many of the kinds of content/promotion shorts produced by Walt Disney for his 50’s Disneyland series, and addresses the ongoing cultural impact of Disney’s classic animation and other legacy properties even as the company has expanded and re-branded over the decades.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 402 Hollywood Production Cultures     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly MC 341

We consume media every day, but we rarely think about the people and institutions responsible for the look and sound of what we see and hear. In its focus on the narratives through which the production cultures in different creative industries describe themselves, this course addresses not only what it means to be a director, writer, cinematographer, music supervisor, composer, and/or web/game/graphic/costume designer, but also how those definitions frame creative work as well as the relationship of production cultures to fans, consumers, and American and global cultures. In addition to analyzing how film, television, music, gaming and new media firms construct corporate cultures via narrative and rhetorical strategies, the course considers how creative industries establish business models governing content production and distribution.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 403 Hollywood Convergence     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly MC 342

This course considers the changes to the structure and scope of Hollywood studio and TV network operations, especially in response to the emergence of new technologies, cross-media conglomerates, alternate content delivery systems (e.g., DVD, iPods, Hulu), and transnational patterns of circulation. Grounding its analysis of the millennial media industries in two case studies of midcentury studio systems, the course provides historical foundations for its examination of convergence culture; the technological, industrial, cultural and social changes in the way media circulates in and between cultures; and the impact of this intersection of media practices on how media industries pursue national and global audiences. Students learn both to analyze particular forms of visual communication and to understand the limitations of that communication given studio, network, and corporate practices and priorities as well as cultural, social and technological constraints.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 404 Hollywood Rebels: A History of American Independent Film     (3 credits)

Formerly CIN 385

The term “independent film” has come to be defined rather broadly. It can mean a film that was produced outside of a major Hollywood studio. It can mean a film that was made for a miniscule budget. It can refer to a style of storytelling and a mode of production that stands in contrast to what we think of as a conventional Hollywood film. Add to this the rapid advances in digital technology that have made filmmaking equipment vastly more affordable and the fact that the Internet now allows millions to distribute their work without the help of traditional gatekeepers, and the definition of “independent film” becomes even more complex. This course will examine American independent film from all of these perspectives: economic, technological, aesthetic and cultural. We will try to place key films within the context of their times and explore how innovations that often start on the fringes can work their way into the mainstream.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 405 Hollywood Genres: Classical Forms and Contemporary Re-Inventions     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality
Formerly CIN 378

Genre films have been synonymous with Hollywood cinema for almost a century. This course explores the historical forms of Hollywood genres from the classical period of the studio system in the 1930s to the present. We consider the different factors that define genres in particular cases, such as the production standards that shaped the Western, the thematic and stylistic features that characterize film noir, and the reception patterns that exemplify the cult film. Class discussions examine the specific ways that different genres create audience expectations and promote particular interpretive strategies. We also study the historical shifts in the popularity of different genres and changing aesthetic conventions. A central focus of the course is the relationship between generic transformations over time and changes in the social and political relationships of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the U.S. 

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 406 Films, Franchises, and Fandom: Superheroes in Popular Culture     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Value, Ethics, and Society
Formerly MC 370

In the last 15 years, Hollywood has produced an extensive catalog of films and television programs, particularly developed by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that has fundamentally transformed prior notions of rigid representations of the superhero archetype. This deluge of superhero media has created a profound shift in re-examining who the superhero is and can be, as it allows for dialogue and debate on issues of gender, race, sexuality, and identity, while complicating the role of villain to further these causes. As a subgenre, it serves a role as part of the larger science-fiction genre that delves into utopias, technology, exploration, and human evolution. And as a lucrative and successful industry franchise that is dependent on fandom, it feeds from a desire produced by its ardent audiences to tell stories of enhanced heroes who are as equally flawed, fallible, and vulnerable as the rest of us but where perseverance, acceptance, and redemption shows itself to be obtainable.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 422 Money, Power, Communication     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly COM 311

Musicians have sung about it; filmmakers have documented it; even video games like "The Sims" have said something about the struggle over money and power who has it, who needs it, and what it can be used for. This course uses a mixture of films, games, lectures, class discussions and exercises to examine this struggle particularly through mass communication. By drawing on examples from a variety of media, the course will illustrate not just how we commonly view money and power but also how we relate our perceptions of those things to other categories such as gender, race and sexuality.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 423 Video Game Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly MC 350

This course focuses on the emergence of PC/console gaming as a medium of communication, an industrial sector, and a cultural arena. Class readings address game design and development strategies and processes, relationships between game publishers and developers, and controversies over authorship/ownership and compensation in the gaming industry. Class discussions examine the emergence of particular game genres, games in learning and media literacy, the evolution of gaming firms, and the emergence of games as a medium in which designers, marketers and players construct and contest gender, race and sexual norms. Writing projects in the course include textual analysis, summarizing and critiquing academic and trade sources, evaluating video game criticism, and a final research paper that examines connections between game design/development, play, and cultural issues in gaming.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 424 Popular Music Studies     (3 credits)

Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power
Formerly MC 345

This course examines changes in the structure of the music industry and the evolution of popular music forms and genres. Industrial topics include the rise and fall of various playback technologies, cultural anxieties surrounding genres such as jazz and rap, and intellectual property. This course provides an introduction to the organization and structure of the music industry through an examination of the activities and strategies of labels, publishers, performance rights organizations, startups and subscription services. Students learn about how globalization and new technologies challenge production and distribution norms. Through course readings and listening sessions, students are introduced to debates about commerce and creativity in rock, pop, indie rock, hip hop, electronica, world and remix music.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 430 Audio Production     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 321

Effective sound design can greatly expand visual elements in all forms of media. Digital audio technologies have enhanced traditional media, such as film and television, and continue to develop in new forms, such as interactive cinema environments and mobile technologies. Yet, sound design is no longer reliant on the production of a definitive image, but can produce what is known as synesthesia in this case, aural stimulation producing involuntary cognitive abilities to create visuals. In the realm of new media, the relationship between sound and image has intensified in that equal weight is given to the approach and creation of the sound design to its visual representations. The fundamentals of microphones, digital recording techniques, sound effects and post?production audio mixing will be covered through hands-on demonstrations and individual and collaborative audio projects.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 431 Documentary Production     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 322

This course will teach the basic skills of documentary production, including handheld camera techniques, interviewing methods, writing narration and historical research. In addition, the course presents important issues in contemporary documentary, such as copyright, grassroots distribution strategies and online exhibition. The course will include a brief history of the documentary and students will view a range of documentary genres with different stylistic and narrative approaches. Students will make their own 7-10 minute video documentary for exhibition at the end of the semester.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 432 Animation Production     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 323

Animation and moving graphics operate as powerful forms of communication within various media. This course focuses on the study of the art of animation production, as well as motion design and visual effects, for time-based narratives. Aspects of moving design and its execution are examined in a range of media through theoretical readings, demonstrations, textual analyses of animation in its many forms, and various production projects. Elements of design, such as color, light, typography, 2D/3D space, time, motion, as well as specific animation techniques, are explored.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 433 Film Directing     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 324

Everyone has an image of a film director. Many of us picture a man or woman in a beret with a bullhorn, sitting in a directors chair, barking action! and cut! But what does a director actually do in the real world of filmmaking? Class topics will include visualization, script breakdowns, casting, location scouting, working with actors, shot planning and film grammar, on set procedures and editing. The first half of the semester will give students a foundation in directing through readings, lectures, film analysis and exercises. In the second half, students will form small production teams. Each student will get a chance to direct their own short script (2-4 pages) while the other members in the group serve as crew. Scripts will be provided by LIT 312s screenwriting students. Throughout the production process, there will be opportunities for students to receive feedback on their work both from faculty and peers.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 434 Film Producing     (3 credits)

Formerly MC 340

How does an idea become a movie, television show, web series or any other finished media project? Before the cameras roll and the director yells "action!", the producer must fill in all the practical blanks including honing the idea, budgeting, acquiring funds, developing the creative team, making distribution deals and more that will bring the project to life. This class will examine the role of The Producer in our current merging media landscape. Once students have a grasp of what a producer is, they will become producers themselves. Working in small teams, students will become producers on actual Bentley media productions: creating schedules and budgets, acquiring key crew members, coordinating auditions and casting, securing locations, and developing a marketing and exhibition strategy. Over the course of the semester, guest professionals from Boston's media community will speak to the class, and there will be a trip to a local production facility.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 435 Design as Communication     (3 credits)

Context and Perspective: Culture, Change, and Behavior
Formerly COM 324

Visual elements can persuasively communicate a given message, emotion or feeling to a targeted audience. This course focuses on the cumulative effect of typography, color, photographic images and layout. Students also examine the interaction of visual images with written copy, and their combined effect on a message. While this course focuses on print media, students are encouraged, where applicable, to generalize from the print medium to visual images in the electronic media.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 436 Podcasting     (3 credits)

Contexts & Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior

The popularity of podcasts has skyrocketed over the last decade. Due to its low barriers of entry for creators, as well as easily accessible distribution channels, many creators and businesses have used podcasts to join current political and cultural conversations. The podcast holds a unique place in the media landscape for listeners as well, as it is time-based but more accessible and easier to integrate into daily life than other media vying for our attention, such as streaming video. Through this course students will learn to apply audio production techniques to issues and questions about life that intrigue or confound them. Students will learn to generate creative ideas, structure compelling stories, engage in the revision process, and see through a polished creative product to completion.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 437 The Art of Editing     (3 credits)

This course examines the crucial role that editors play in shaping motion pictures, both individually and historically as an industry. Whether it is fiction filmmaking, documentary, or music videos, the editor is the guiding hand that maintains the director’s vision while problem solving and providing creative insight. Students in this class learn about this critical collaborator through lectures, screenings and hands-on editing experiences that allow them to fully appreciate an editor’s impact.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 490 Selected Topics in English and Media Studies     (3 credits)

This course is a special topics course in English and Media Studies. Students may repeat the course with a different topic.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years

EMS 491 Directed Study in English and Media Studies     (3 credits)

A Directed Study is designed for highly qualified students who, under the direction of a member of the sponsoring academic department, engage in an agreed upon in-depth independent examination, investigation or analysis of a specialized topic.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 492 Internship in English and Media Studies     (3 credits)

Pre-Req: Internship coordinator permission

Introduces the student to some aspect of the creative or cultural industries; emphasizes the particular operations of a company or organization by assigning a student to a professional in the field under whose supervision the intern undertakes tasks and participates in analyzing the practical applications of literary, communication, or media theories. The intern's progress is monitored and evaluated jointly by the field supervisor and the faculty coordinator during the semester internship.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 493 Capstone Project in English and Media Studies     (3 credits)

Undertaken in the last year of coursework, the capstone course requires students to engage in a major research or creative project.

Typically Offered: Fall and Spring

EMS 499 Experimental Course in English and Media Studies     (3 credits)

Experimental courses explore curriculum development, with specific content intended for evolution into a permanent course. A topic may be offered twice before it becomes a permanent course. Students may repeat experimental courses with a different topic for credit.

Typically Offered: Every two or more years