95 courses with the subject EMS, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
or EMS 101L Critical Reading and Writing with Lab or EMS 102 Critical Reading and Writing for Multilingual Students or EMS 102L Critical Reading and Writing for Multilingual Students with Lab And one from:
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
Typically Offered: Fall
Typically Offered: Fall
or EMS 105 Multimodal Communication for Multilingual Students
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
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 th 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
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
Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior Formerly LIT 320 Whenever we have to present our ideas in front of an audience, whether it is a low or high stakes situation or to a large or even small group, many of us “freeze.” We lose our confidence, words, and even our breath. This course introduces students to skills and strategies for performing and presenting. Students will practice basic breathing and calming exercises, develop physical and vocal techniques, hone memory, concentration, and improvisation skills, and be encouraged to use their imagination. Students will approach this craft through exercises, reading and discussing dramatic texts, performance and role playing. This introduction to acting is designed to help students succeed whether they are planning a career in media production or management, or just wanting to learn how to stand in front of a room and present the best version of themselves. Typically Offered: Spring 2026-2027-Undergraduate 193
Context and Perspectives: Values, Ethics, and Society Pre-req: EMS 104 or EMS 105 Advances in digital technologies, from social media to artificial intelligence, have dramatically reshaped the way we live. How do we navigate a digital landscape and its material effects? What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? In this class, students will explore the e ways digital media affects what individuals see, believe, and understand about their world, and it explores the cultural forces that have made digital media a powerful force in culture, political governance, and the economy. This course focuses particularly on critical debates in digital media studies, identifying “digital divides” that perpetuate inequality, cases of disinformation and their consequences, technocratic beliefs that may exploit users, and concerns about truth and power at the heart of democratic citizenship. This course allows students to develop their ability to analyze, discern, and critique the ever-growing field of digital information. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
t EMS 225 The Wonder of Human Language: An 3
Select one media studies elective: 3
Context and Perspectives: 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
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
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
Pre-req: EMS 104 or EMS 105 Formerly COM 210 A dynamic presenter can command a room, get people’s attention, and remain memorable long after their presentation is over. This kind of dynamism is invaluable for every profession. In this studio course, students will extend their public speaking abilities beyond what they learned in Multimodal Communication (EMS 104/105), incorporating speaking techniques from performance and communication studies. Students will apply communication concepts, theories, and skills critical to their own creative practices to ensure success in interpersonal, group, organizational, and public communication. Students will prepare for leadership by practicing effective intercultural communication, constructive criticism, interviewing skills, identifying and navigating communication networks, and nonverbal communication. Students will receive coaching on their development and provide feedback to their peers. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
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
Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior Formerly MC 224 Visual storytelling – movies, TV, YouTube, TikTok, ads – is everywhere. Most of us breathe it like air and can’t imagine a day (or an hour) without it. But how is it made? How do we turn an idea into a script? How do we decide where to put the camera and when to cut to a new shot? How do we get good audio and use effects? Should AI be part of the process? And, when it’s all done, how do we find an audience? This course is designed to give students a complete overview of the video production process in a hands-on, collaborative environment. In addition to the practical and technical aspects of video production, students will critically analyze the meaning and aesthetics of the moving image. This class shows students how video content and films are made and fosters the ability to think critically about what they mean. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
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
This course not eligible for students who completed EMS 499 - Intro to Graphic Design in Fall 2024 or Spring 2025. Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior This project-based course introduces students to the core principles of graphic design, focusing on typography, branding, motion graphics, and publication design. Through multiweek projects, students will develop visual and conceptual problem-solving skills while gaining hands-on experience with industry-standard tools like Adobe Creative Suite. Emphasizing design as both a creative and analytical discipline, the course explores the role of hierarchy, composition, and information design across print and digital media. Students interested in careers in graphic design, media production, marketing, and branding will build a portfolio of work that demonstrates their ability to craft compelling visua communication. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
Context and 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 2026-2027-Undergraduate 195
Context and Perspectives: GlobalizationFormerly 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
Context and Perspectives: Values, Ethics, and SocietyFormerly 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
l Context and Perspectives: Values, 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
credits) Context and Perspectives: Values, 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
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
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
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
Context and 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
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
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
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
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. An example of the course includes focusing on five contemporary directors who are pushing the cinematic form in exciting ways: Jordan Peele, Greta Gerwig, Bong Joon Ho, The Safdie Brothers and Yorgos Lanthimos. These critically celebrated directors are able to work as "independents" while still finding degrees of commercial success. Typically Offered: Every two or more years
EMS 332 EMS 333
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
Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior Formerly LIT 312 Most good plays and movies start out with a well-crafted script. The main purpose of this course is to improve your analytical and creative skills as they relate to writing for stage or screen, depending on the semester’s theme. Classwork includes multiple writing assignments, workshops to critique student work, in-class exercises, and analysis of the work of noted playwrights or screenwriters. Assignments and classroom discussion focus on dramatic form, character development, dialogue writing, and plot construction. Typically Offered: Every two or more years
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 2026-2027-Undergraduate 197
This course is not open to students who completed EMS 499 - Creative Writing: Climate Fiction in Spring 2024. Context and Perspectives: Globalization “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis,” journalist Rebecca Solnit writes. This creative writing course teaches students how to write stories that confront and reconfigure our relationship to climate change and the earth. “Climate Fiction” is a subgenre of literary fiction that has arisen as a humanistic response to the climate crisis. Students will practice transforming scientific research into compelling stories, using the craft mechanisms of fiction writing. Students will explore questions such as: What are the goals and driving questions of Climate Fiction? Why and how do we write it? How does climate change alter the way we write? Does Climate Fiction have to be hopeful? Typically Offered: Once a year
Pre-req: EMS 104 or EMS 105 The field of journalism has been revolutionized in the age of digital media, but the methods of journalists remain vital for the public to develop an understanding of public figures and events that shape our lives. In this course, students will learn how to write, report, edit, produce and publish multimedia stories on deadline in a cross-platform news environment. The class will mimic a newsroom. Students will have a multifaceted experience and emerge as versatile, self-sufficient reporters/producers/ writers. They will also learn critical thinking, decision making, ethical responsibility, teamwork and communication skills. The knowledge and skills learned in this course will allow students to create compelling, ethically responsible content that will help them progress in their careers and engage in the public sphere. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
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
Context and Perspectives: Values, 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
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
Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power 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
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
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
Context and Perspectives: Institutions and Power 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
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
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
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 wil vary each semester. Typically Offered: Every two or more years
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 2026-2027-Undergraduate 199
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
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
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 l 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
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 367 3 EMS 371 3 EMS 380 3 EMS 405 3 Global Studie GLS 205 GLS 225 3 GLS 238 GLS 239 3 GLS 333 3 History HI 340 3 HI 343 3 HI 347 3 HI 350 3 HI 353 3 HI 354 HI 356 HI 358 HI 359 HI 372 HI 381
Context and Perspectives: Race, Gender, and Inequality Throughout history, women rhetoricians have consistently resisted marginalization and employed a variety of rhetorical strategies to make their voices heard. In this course, students will analyze the ways in which women from past to present have constructed arguments for feminism and strategically navigated social barriers to advance their arguments. The course will focus on feminist rhetorics that have gained widespread attention and will ask students to analyze the rhetorical situations of the texts in order to consider how the construction and composition of the arguments struck a societal nerve. Students will analyze the writing and public speaking of various women rhetoricians including Sojourner Truth, Mary Wollstonecraft, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Naomi Wolf, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Sara Ahmed in order to consider the evolution of feminist arguments and conceptualize a women’s rhetorical tradition. Typically Offered: Once a year
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
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
Context and Perspectives: 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
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
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
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
3 EMS 391 International Cinema 3 3 EMS 392 Youth Cultures in International Cinema 3 3 Global Studies 3 GLS 101 Globalization 3
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
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
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
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
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 403 Select one media studies elective: 3 EMS 405
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
Superheroes in Popular Culture
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
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 2026-2027-Undergraduate 203
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. e Typically Offered: Every two or more years
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, where aural stimulation can produce 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
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
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
Formerly MC 324 Many of us have an image of a Film Director. We picture a person 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? In this class, students will focus on the work of the director in the filmmaking process, exploring topics such as pre-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 apply their knowledge by directing their own short scenes. Final scenes will be screened for the class and some will be nominated for the Bentley Film Festival. Throughout the production process, there will be opportunities for students to receive feedback on their work both from faculty and peers. Typically Offered: Once a year
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
Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and BehaviorFormerly 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 visual media, students are encouraged, where applicable, to consider the interconnection of images, typography, language, time, form, and composition. Typically Offered: Every two or more years
Context and 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
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
Not eligible for students who completed this course as EMS 499 - Fashion Photography in Spring 2024 or Spring 2025. Fashion is more than what we wear. For this course, students will explore fashion as an artform to learn how it shapes—and is shaped by— society, culture/identity, and the human experience. This course familiarizes students with the creative, technical, and mechanical skills used in advertising and editorial image making in-studio and on- location. Students will learn techniques for lighting, photographing, retouching, and cataloging engaging artistic, editorial, and commercial fashion images. Students will also learn to collaborate with models and incorporate peer feedback to deepen their creativity and solve problems. Typically Offered: Once a year
This course not eligible for students who completed EMS 499 - Designing Brands for Change in Spring 2025Context and Perspectives: Culture, Change, and Behavior This course introduces students to methods and practices of and for designing brand identity for transformation and positive change. “Branding” and “designing brand identity” are in this case viewed as cultural and applied mechanisms for change (corporate, cultural, personal, societal, and community-based). Through explorations of case studies and project work, students explore “branding” and brand identity as catalysts for innovation, growth, and transition. Designing brand identity for change can signal corporate and cultural visions of a better future, but it can also mean that brands themselves can be designed to change over time (flexibility, adaptability, resilience, sustainability, etc.). Students will learn skills in visual branding and graphic design that give them expertise at the intersections of media, marketing, and cultural analysis. Typically Offered: Fall and Spring
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
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
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 medi 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
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
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
Source: Bentley University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
