Communication

This course examines the theatrical and performative modes of writing, including writing delivered live by a performer or performers in a theater, encountered by a seated or mobile audience, or experienced through media such as headphones or hypertext.

This course details how talk is managed in a range of professional settings, including education (e.g. teacher-student interactions), medicine (e.g. doctor-patient consultations), psychology (e.g. counseling), law (e.g. question design in courtrooms), and journalism (e.g. radio interviews). Students are exposed to interactional practices that are common to all workplaces: negotiation and resolving conflict, sources of misunderstanding, aligning with other speakers, managing topics, and different cultural practices in making sense of talk at work. Students learn how interaction is organized based on the fundamental tenets of conversation analysis: turn-taking, repair, and the sequential organization of talk.

In this internship, students work closely with their host organization for up to 12 hours per week over the course of a semester. Final assessment is comprised of a mentor evaluation, a self-evaluation/reflection, and an organizational report.

This is a highly interactive elective seminar course encouraging maximum student participation and leadership. Grounded in the concept of praxis (learning by doing, education for use), the course explores the nature of influence, legitimate and non-coercive methods of influence, and different ways of exercising that influence. Ranging from the academic and philosophical to the practical and personal, the course considers forms, methods, and networks of influence, weighs questions related to messaging, visibility, and the power of example, as well as offering training on how to give a successful speech, how to go on television with no time to prepare, how to exercise influence in organizations, and how to create your own persona as an influencer.

This course provides a study of communication companies in relation to the concepts and practices in organization, management, production and marketing of information products. Topics covered include: the history and development and structure of media companies, management principles and their applications, information markets, marketing and marketing management structure (income and expenditure), multimedia group organization, and strategic management of media companies. 

This course examines the online technologies, platforms and industries at the heart of constant economic and social changes. It covers key skills in analysis, evaluation and critique of these objects, situated in a historical context. It also interrogates the implications of emerging internet worked phenomena such as the internet of things, augmented reality and algorithmic cultures.