48 courses with the subject MEDS, 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.
MEDS 122Queer Italian American Media0.5
(Same as ITAL 122 and WFQS 122 ) Representations of Italian Americans are ubiquitous in American media, from the mafia patriarch, to the family-obsessed nonna, these archetypal tropes have trained audiences to understand Italian Americanism in terms of exaggerated heteorsexuality. This course looks for characters and narratives that push back against those norms, creating cracks in the foundation for other modes of embodiment. We look at movies and popular TV shows that play with the archetypes, like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where the hypermachismo of the blue collar greaser takes the form of a proud gay man; or Younger , where the lasagna loving zia is an out lesbian. We study the parallels between the mobster and queer in The Sopranos and Alto, and we read first-hand accounts from queer Italian Americans working in the media about what representation and the lack thereof has meant to them. This short course introduces students to the interconnected fields of media, film, gender and Italian studies. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods accompanied by film screenings. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ITAL 123 and WFQS 123 ) This six week course takes a close look at the representation of women in some of the most iconic examples of Italian cinema. From La dolce vita to La vita è bella this course puts gender theory in dialogue with media studies to consider the ways the art form interacts with and reflects changing attitudes towards women and female sexuality. Each week is devoted to a different historical moment as we move from the early divas of silent cinema, to contemporary films like those of the Rohrwacher sisters whose directing and acting work interrogates the categories of both Italian and woman. No knowledge of Italian is necessary to take this course. Second six-week course. Two 75-minute periods accompanied by film screenings. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course explores concepts and issues in the study of media, attentive to but not limited by the question of the “new” posed by new media technologies. Our survey of key critical approaches to media is anchored in specific case studies drawn from a diverse archive of media artifacts, industries, and technologies: from phonograph to photography, cinema to networked hypermedia, from typewriter to digital code. We examine the historical and material specificity of different media technologies and the forms of social life they enable, engage critical debates about media, culture and power, and consider problems of reading posed by specific media objects and processes, new and old. We take the multi-valence of “media”—a term designating text and apparatus of textual transmission, content and conduit—as a central problem of knowledge for the class. Our goal throughout is to develop the research tools, modes of reading, and forms of critical practice that help us aptly to describe and thereby begin to understand the increasingly mediated world in which we live. John Andrews, Theresa Loong (a); John Andrews (b). Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 203 and PHIL 203 ) Theorizations of the carceral state are commonly traced back to 1975, when, in Discipline and Punish , Michel Foucault famously defined the “carceral archipelago” as a series of institutions that, well beyond the frontiers of criminal law, exported penitentiary logics and penal practices to the entire social body. In this course, we pursue a reconstruction of, both, Foucault’s evolution in his assessment of the carceral archipelago – from the ideology of disciplinary institutions to more capillary self-representations and self-fashionings of individuals in late capitalism -, and the constellations of scholars that, before and after Foucault, have provided theorizations of the carceral state. Among those who preceded Foucault, we focus on Jeremy Bentham’s late 18th century layout of the panopticon as the architectural archetype of the modern correctional facility, and Antonio Gramsci, whose 1930s Prison Notebooks inspires us to reflect on how carcerality has become a culturally hegemonic framework within which to imagine life, death, and survival in today’s world. Among the thinkers who came after Foucault, we concentrate on three different sets of voices: social movements, including the Chicano Movement and the Black Panthers, who launched the prison as a stage and a platform of political resistance in the 1960s and 1970s; social scientists and civil rights advocates, who have theorized the continuity between the plantation economy and the prison industrial complex, including William J. Wilson and Michelle Alexander; and public intellectuals, such as Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, who have upheld prison abolitionism as the linchpin of criminal justice reform. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as PSYC 204 ) This course is designed to introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of “media psychology,” which applies social scientific theory and methodology to the study media use, content, and impact. We first review theoretical contributions from both Communication Studies and Social Psychology before moving into a range of “hot topics” in the field (e.g., violent media, persuasion and advertising, news, politics, representations of social groups, social media). Along the way, we consider: psychological processes relevant to media use and impact, individual differences that motivate selective exposure and reception, the positive and negative effect that media may have on our attitudes and behaviors, and the complexities of developing and executing media effects research. Dara Greenwood.
PSYC 105 is required. MEDS 160 is recommended but not required. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 206Racial Capitalism0.5
(Same as AFRS 206 , ANST 206 , and PHIL 206 ) First coined by Cedric Robinson in 1983, racial capitalism asserts that the potential for the accumulation and optimization of profit, which drives capitalism, would not be possible without the project of racial ordering and racialized exploitation. This course reconstructs the history of this concept, from Robinson, who was writing at the rise of neoliberalism, privatization, and deregulation in the Reagan era, through and after the War on Terror, the pandemic, until today. By close-reading main sources in this theoretical lineage, students are given critical skills to reflect on two implications universally shared by racial capitalist theorists: on the one hand, rather than homogenizing social relations as Karl Marx had wrongly assumed, capitalism differentiates populations by racializing them, first of all epidermically, and then geographically, culturally, and religiously; on the other hand, in contrast with prominent historical reconstructions of the rise of capitalism and modernity, including Max Weber’s, capitalism absorbs and reformulates racialized orderings that structured the feudal order that preceded it in medieval Europe. To exemplify the workings of racial capitalism on a material level, we devote considerable time to examining the case of London’s West India Dock, from its modern colonial reconstruction in 1802 until its transformation into an educational museum and a tourist attraction located in Canary Wharf. We show how the development of the West India Dock, from a key colonial hub of transport and exchange, including human bodies, to a Wunderkammer of postcolonial equivocations, encapsulates the feedback loop between the conditions of production organizing the plantation economy in the Caribbean and the workings of the imperial metropole, yesterday and today. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ANST 215 and ANTH 215 ) This intensive acquaints students with some of the documentary, experimental, and narrative films/videos of indigenous filmmakers from North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Screenings include films by Rachel Perkins, Tracey Moffatt, Sherman Alexie, Victor Masayesva, Alanis Obamsawin, and Zacharias Kunuk. Discussions of films engage the notion of visual sovereignty, and the use of film/video to document indigenous lives and concerns, and to reframe stories told about them and to tell new stories. First six-week course. One 2-hour period plus outside screenings. Course Format: INT
MEDS 217Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy: Cultural Studies Between Media Theory and Philosophy0.5
(Same as AFRS 217 , ANST 217 , and PHIL 217 ) This course is dedicated to exploring the theoretical approach developed by the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies. Its core is a close-reading of selected works by its two most impactful voices: Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. A foundational methodology for many interrelated fields – from postcolonial studies to media theory, from sociology to critical race studies – cultural studies seek to understand how meaning is produced by culturally hegemonic social and media formations, which have the power to shape both agencies and counter-agencies. We trace the history of the Birmingham school from the late 1970s, when it was born as a response to the neoliberal agenda of the Thatcher government, through the War on Terror, the pandemic, until today. While focusing on the development of Hall and Gilroy as scholars of Black Atlantic diasporic constellations, we also look back at their critical sources, especially their transformation of the Marxist legacies of Antonio Gramsci and Louis Lefevre, and forward at their ongoing worldwide impact, especially in South Africa and Latin America. Giovanna Borradori. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 220Detectives in the Archive: Reading Medieval and Renaissance Texts1
(Same as MRST 220 ) This course offers a survey of the history of books and manuscripts from late antiquity to the early modern period, with a focus on developments in the West. We begin with discussion of scrolls and early codices, and then examine how manuscripts were produced during the medieval period. Next we consider some high points in manuscript production in different places and times. Some attention is given to early printed books as well. The course includes guest lectures by Vassar faculty, and direct work with manuscripts in the Vassar Library. Marc Epstein, Ronald Patkus. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 222 ) This studio-based course serves as a comprehensive introduction to video in the expanded field. Through a series of projects, students are introduced to camera operation, sound recording, lighting, video and sound editing, and projection mapping. Student work takes the form of experimental videos, multi-media installations, public projections, and sound installations. Through class discussions, visiting artist lectures, screenings of historical and contemporary works, and visits to galleries/museums in NYC, students refine their critical vocabulary and gain a broad understanding of key issues in the field. These include the relationship between images and sounds, digital images and physical objects, projected images and architectural space. Through these activities, our aim is the formulation of each student’s unique artistic language. No prior familiarity with video or digital media is required. John Hulsey.
ART 107 and permission of the instructor. Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall and Spring
MEDS 224Japanese Popular Culture and Literature1
(Same as ASIA 224 and JAPA 224 ) This course examines Japanese popular culture as seen through popular fiction. Works by writers such as Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, and Murakami Ryu, etc. who emerged in the late 1980s to the early 1990s, are discussed. Literary works are compared with various popular media such as film, music, manga, and animation to explore how popular youth culture is constructed and reflects young people’s views on social conditions. This course emphasizes discussion, and theoretical readings are assigned.
One course in Japanese language, literature, culture, Asian Studies or Media Studies, or permission of the instructor. This course is conducted in English. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 225Italian Food: Fact and Fiction1
(Same as ITAL 225 ) How can we define “Italian” cuisine in a country characterized by myriad local culinary traditions? How did eating habits, food knowledge, local pride and storytelling intersect to shape a globally circulating image of Italy as a “food nation”? The course investigates the development of Italian culinary traditions in relation to local, regional, and national identities; the long-standing cultural association of Italy with food, both within the national boundaries and without, particularly in the US; and the representation of food across various media (fiction, cookbooks, documentary and fiction film, television and web series, advertising) since the 19 th century, focusing particularly on key moments of change in the history of the modern nation, such as: the national unification process, the Fascist regime and World War II, the post-war economic miracle, the women’s movement in the 1970s, and immigration in the 21 st century. We look at the ways in which representations of food in a variety of media construct or challenge specific images of Italy and Italians and consider the problematic notions of authenticity and typicality so frequently applied to certain dishes, ingredients, or culinary habits. We explore the lasting importance of cities in Italian food history, and the nostalgia for the countryside that urban life projected onto food marketing in the late 20 th century. The changing roles of women in relation to food preparation and consumption, as well as to the transmission of knowledge, are central to the course inquiry. The iconic status of Italy as “Slow food nation” on one hand, and the often lamented “foodification” of the country on the other also constitute topics of discussion. Simona Bondavalli. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Translation is ubiquitous yet often invisible in our daily life. As citizens of the world, patrons of the arts, and professionals in all fields, we all depend on the too-often invisible work of translators. This course studies this crucial human and increasingly AI-driven practice first by analyzing and describing multilingualism as the necessary premise for translation; and second, by considering pivotal moments in the history of translation and the intellectual debate surrounding it. While providing theoretical insights from semiotics, linguistics, pragmatics, translation and interpretation studies, this class also offers moments of interaction with professional translators and hands-on, peer-to-peer practice sessions. The course is open to students comfortable working in one additional language besides English.
Interested students should contact the instructor during registration. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 231Minorities in the Media1
(Same as FILM 231 ) This course examines the dynamics of race, class, gender and sexuality as they are represented in American society. Throughout the semester, we analyze media (i.e., films, television programs, YouTube videos, advertisements), and mediated discourse, to assess the way categories of “minority” and “majority” identity have been constructed in mainstream society and popular culture. In addition to examining images of those persons collective known as “minorities,” (BIPOC, LGBTQIA), we consider the representation of those defined as “majority” Americans. This course utilizes Black British Cultural Studies, African American Studies, Critical Race Theory and Sociology. The course also engages scholarship from the field of whiteness studies. Issues and topics may include the concept of “model minorities” (i.e., Henry Louis Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Rahm Emmanuel, Ellen DeGeneres, the Williams Sisters, Barack Obama); global branding; the BLM movement; police brutality (i.e., Rodney King, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, George Floyd); the Proposition 209 conflict; the WNBA; gay marriage; Islamophobia; and the representation of the Middle East. Readings, weekly screenings, and papers required.
FILM 175 or FILM 209 , and permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 237Theorizing Pandemic Media and Their Afterlives0.5
(Same as ASIA 237 , PHIL 237 , and STS 237 ) This course is based on a forthcoming book, Theorizing Pandemic Media and Their Afterlives, that I co-authored with Ruoyu Li, a Vassar alumna and my former student, now starting as an Assistant Professor in the Program on Peace and Conflict at Colgate University. The course begins from the observation that the COVID-19 pandemic was conceived, narrated, and visualized as a “numerical” crisis. In contrast to other pandemics (including the 1919 Spanish Influenza, which was represented as a spillover from the WWI battlefield, and HIV-AIDS, which was blamed on socially endangering behaviors), COVID-19 was hailed as an absolute statistical exception. We critically look at how the unprecedented proliferation of COVID-19 dashboards, coupled with the literacy universally required to decode their data visualizations, has conditioned the experience of living and dying under COVID-19, across different geographies, social and educational backgrounds, genders and generations, as well as political regimes. Theorizing the Dashboard as the premiere pandemic mass media enables us to analyze a new set of biopolitical practices that bestowed both care and abandonment by numerically targeting distinct populations of the world. We read the work of theorists of biopower and necropower, including Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Achille Mbembe, as well as scholars such as Belinda Kong, who has claimed that “the pandemic” is the foremost bio-securitizing and bio-orientalist discourse of the third millennium, and Bishnupriya Ghosh, whose concept of epidemic media as “biotechnical forms” make viral infections not only legible but actionable. These readings not only give students the opportunity to reconnect with the most globally shared trauma of this generation, but also enable them to appraise the COVID-19 pandemic as a specific form of geospatial and biostatistical “world-making,” whose military legacies have transformed how we live and relate to each other today. Giovanna Borradori. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 240Italy and its Migrations: Multimedia Cultural History1
(Same as ANST 240 , INTL 240 , and ITAL 240 ) This course follows the waves that shape and change Italian culture from the time of Unification, in 1861, up through today. We learn about the experiences, dreams, memories and politics of Italian emigration and immigration through a careful study of novels, poetry, cinema, and theater, as well as letters and media coverage. We consider the ways different narrative styles reflect the historical realities of the times, and take a critical analysis approach to the question of how public attitudes towards immigrants have shaped Italian national and diasporic sentiment. Beginning with the first major waves of emigration to the United States in the 1880s, this course provides a unique look at a moment of significant transition in Italian history and the makings of Italian-American Culture; we read literary texts, personal letters detailing the immigrant experience of cross the Atlantic at the turn of the century and of crossing the Mediterranean today, news coverage of significant events like the trial and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, and cinematic renditions of past and current migrant experiences. We look at this cultural material in relation to the specific historical context in which it was produced, reflecting on the impact and legacy of things like the U.S. Emergency Quota Act of 1921, and the Italian Race Laws of 1938. As we read and discuss narratives of migration, we also examine the ways gender, sexuality and social roles determine and are determined by movement through space and time, reflecting critically on the exclusion of women’s voices from early accounts of migration. Sole Anatrone. This course is offered in English; Italian majors please see ITAL 340 . Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as FILM 244 ) This course explores various approaches to the conception and development of works of screen art, with special attention to the short form. We consider the often unheralded role that research plays in the artistic process, as well as the types of critical and imaginative thinking across disciplines that can support us in the early stages of any creative project. While different forms of writing remain important to the work of creative development, in this course we also employ non-textual traditions and techniques that have long been crucial to filmmakers and more broadly to artists of all kinds, including inspiration boards, mood reels, video “sketches,” and various improvisational and collaborative exercises that can aid in the genesis of original artistic ideas. Students learn through practice, study, and reflection how these creative methodologies provide the foundation for later stages of development and pre-production. This course foregrounds collective practices and paragogy (peer-learning) as essential components of creative development: beyond project-level collaboration, we explore how our membership to various creative and scholarly communities brings with it a whole range of responsibilities, opportunities, and challenges. In so doing we are revisiting and reimagining what the concepts of the auteur and the caméra-stylo might mean to us in this particular cultural moment, when mobile devices and social media have transformed our relationship to the moving image.
MEDS 160 or FILM 209 and permission of the instructor; first-years are not eligible to take this course. One 3-hour period and additional lab time required. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 245Producing Audio Narratives1
(Same as FILM 245 ) This practice-based course places contemporary podcast forms within the larger context of sonic artistry across cinema, radio, and other media. As we produce our own original short audio narratives, we draw from a wide range of disciplines, techniques, and methodologies, including oral history, deep listening, non-extractive journalism and documentary practices, radio drama, voice acting and live performance, audio essay and collage, as well as abstract sound art and design. Students use professional equipment and software to produce their audio assignments, and they work collectively to create a showcase event and/or platform for their nal projects.
FILM 240 or FILM 241 or MEDS 250 and permission of the instructor.
Corequisite
FILM 246 - Wild Sound . Required for students enrolled in FILM 246 - Wild Sound . One 3-hour period and additional lab time required. Not offered in 2026/27.
MEDS 248The Book in America1
(Same as ANST 248 ) This course examines the history and influence of books and printing in American society from earliest times to the present. We touch on a range of topics, including the place of books in the colonial era and the new republic, the spread of printing technologies in the 19th century, the emergence of large publishing houses and rising rates of literacy, the role of libraries, bookstores, and book clubs, modernist publishing, the rise of the paperback, the work of private presses, artist’s books, and the effect of recent technologies on reading. Along the way we consider questions relating to the production, dissemination, and reception of texts. The Archives & Special Collections Library serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course offers an historical view of books and printing from a global perspective. We begin with thematic discussions of early systems of writing, the ancient book, the medieval book, paper, bookbindings, printing, and illustration processes. We then examine the history of the book in particular places, starting with countries in Europe, and moving to other parts of the world, including Russia, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, and the United States. The course investigates not only the design and production of books around the world, but also their connection to society. The Archives & Special Collections Library with its rich holdings serves as a laboratory for the course. Guest speakers and one or more field trips enhance our study of key topics. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course instructs students in a varied set of practical media skills in order to interrogate and possibly transform the uses to which they are habitually put. It grounds a creative reflection on the relation between theory and practice through the critical use of production technologies. Each semester is devoted to a topic or a question to be explored through three distinct kinds of media “making.” These techniques include graphic design, literary journalism, sound recording, book production, the digital still image and its sequencing, the moving image and post-production techniques, computer graphics, games and physical computing, user interface design. Students compose a formally sophisticated, rhetorically inventive “essay” in three medium specific idioms. They also are asked to determine how the three exercises go together, how they work as interlocking parts of a transmedia narrative or ensemble. Theresa Loong.
MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor. Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 251Language and Power1
(Same as ANTH 251 ) How can the study of language and its use enhance our understanding of power and political action? This course explores how language is essential for the distribution and exercise of power through the discussion of readings that focus on language, mass media, and the public sphere. Readings on political campaigns examine the impact of poetics, framing, metaphor on social movements, political influence, and public opinion. Readings on the speech of politicians, activists, and pundits examine the use of language for the performance of (in)civility, as well as the covert mobilization of class, racial, gender, and ethnic stereotypes for political gain. Finally, readings on public relations campaigns, populist discourse, and democracy promotion campaigns in post-colonial settings explore the role of language in affirming or contesting liberal and secular ideals of democracy. Students apply methodological and theoretical tools of linguistic anthropology to analyze the poetic features and the political effects of real-world examples of satire, scandal, and political oratory. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as FILM 256 ) This course surveys the history of television in the United States from the 1940s to the present. It examines the social and industrial significance of television and its impact on issues such as class, race, gender, consumerism, and national identity. We investigate changes in televisual aesthetics and narrative paradigms and the ways that television responded to significant cultural, political and technological changes in American society. Throughout the semester we draw upon a range of critical frameworks including media industry studies, genre theory, and celebrity studies as we address topics such as the attempts to develop alternate models of broadcasting, networks’ efforts to bolster television’s cultural status, media convergence, and the formal characteristics of different television genres. Screenings include I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer , and Orange is the New Black . Katie Model.
FILM 175 or FILM 209 for students registering for FILM 256. MEDS 160 for students registering for MEDS 256. Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 260Media Theory1
This course aims to ramify our understanding of “mediality”—that is, the visible and invisible, audible and silent contexts in which physical messages stake their ghostly meanings. The claims of media theory extend beyond models of communication: media do not simply transport preexisting ideas, nor do they merely shape ideas in transit. Attending to the complex network of functions that make up media ecologies (modes of inscription, transmission, storage, circulation, and retrieval) demonstrates the role media play not only in the molding of ideas and opinions, but also in the constitution of subjectivities, social spheres, and non-human circuits of exchange (images, information, capital). Texts and topics vary from year to year, but readings are drawn from a broad spectrum of classical and contemporary sources. John Andrews.
MEDS 160 or permission of the instructor. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 261Indigenous Book Histories0.5
(Same as ANST 261 and ENGL 261 ) This course introduces students to the study of books as physical objects, focusing on the field-transforming interventions of Indigenous studies and the cultural productions of Native peoples in colonial America and the nineteenth-century U.S. Meeting once a week for six weeks, we examine primary sources and critical scholarship that allow us to consider 1) various material textualities of Indigenous expression, within and beyond alphabetic literacy and print, and 2) alternative models of authorship that disrupt what scholar Robert Warrior describes as “the fetishization of single-author works.” Throughout, we interrogate archival power structures and erasures, using recent criticism that conceives methods for tracing in the archives Indigenous agency and survivance. The texts we study may include birchbark books, poems, painted baskets, traditional creation narratives, personal narratives, execution sermons, hymns, treaties, and receipts, along with scholarship by Drew Lopenzina, Phillip Round, and Kelly Wisecup, among others. Blevin Shelnutt. First six-week course. One 2-hour period. Course Format: INT
This topics course focuses on gender as it plays out in any number of forms of culture and media. Various texts help elucidate how gender is constructed, represented, and consumed, with important interventions derived from feminist theory, queer theory, media and cultural studies.
Subject
MEDS
Credits (min)
1
Credits (max)
1
Credit unit
unit(s)
Type
course
Repeatable
May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed.
One prior course in WFQS or permission of the instructor. May be repeated for credit if the topic has changed. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 268After 1968: Sustainable Aesthetics1
(Same as ART 268 and URBS 268 ) This course studies the emancipation of the visual arts after 1968, here and abroad, together with the political and philosophical discussions that guided them. Theory and practice would form new combinations. The traditional fine arts as well as the new media, performance, film, architecture and installation art are treated as part of the wider global evolution creating new theaters of action, critique, community and hope. Molly Nesbit.
ART 105 or ART 106 . Two 75-minute periods and one film screening. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 271Hello, Dear Enemy: Mounting an Exhibition on Children’s Experiences of War and Displacement1
(Same as EDUC 271 , INTL 271 , LALS 271 and WFQS 271 ) At a time when the world is witnessing the largest displacement of people since WWII, due in significant measure to armed conflict, this course examines select case studies (both past and present) of armed conflict and their consequences for children. Journalists, photographers, and writers of children’s literature have done much to raise awareness about children and armed conflict, and to treat them in such a way that audiences develop understanding, empathy, and solidarity with children affected by armed conflict. A principal aim of the course is to study the topics of armed conflict and displacement through photography, photojournalism, and children’s literature, and then to mount exhibitions both on campus and a traveling exhibition in the Vassar Collaboratory. Our work is enriched by the study of human rights and humanitarian laws and policies concerning children affected by armed conflict, as well as by interaction with visiting artists, educators, and children’s rights experts from the United Nations and other international organizations. The course focuses on the impact of armed conflict on girls, and includes such topics as displacement, education, child soldiers, child labor, birth registration, and sexual violence. Tracey Holland. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 272Critical Approaches to Media and Popular Culture1
(Same as SOCI 272 ) From television and cinema to hip hop stars and YouTube stars to billboard ads and pop up ads, popular media is a ubiquitous facet of social and cultural life. It is also one that often seems so natural or trivial as not to warrant serious sociological analysis. The goal of this course is to introduce students to classic perspectives on popular culture and media, and to evaluate their relevance in both historical and contemporary contexts. We attend not only to the content of pop culture but also to the political economy of mass media and its relationship to other social institutions of the family, education, health care, and government. In doing so, we consider a broad range of genres including sitcoms, reality television, disaster films, professional sports, video games, podcasts, karaoke, mash-ups, and selfies as well as and the role of various axes of social difference such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. Through writing, discussion, podcasts, and presentations, students practice developing and supporting arguments regarding the role of popular culture in our lives. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as DRAM 285 ) What makes for a compelling podcast? What makes an audio play unforgettable? How do writers build, maintain, and grow an engaged audience through sound alone? This course explores the art and craft of writing for podcasts and audio performance, examining how storytelling is transformed when voice, sound, rhythm, and silence become the primary tools of dramatic expression. Students study contemporary podcasts, radio drama, and audio storytelling forms to understand how writers create intimacy, tension, atmosphere, and emotional resonance without visual elements. Through listening analysis, writing exercises, collaborative workshops, and script laboratories, students develop original scripts for podcast and audio performance while learning how audience engagement, episodic structure, pacing, and sonic identity shape successful audio narratives. The course emphasizes the relationship between text and sound, asking students to consider not only how stories are written, but how they are heard. Attention is given to storytelling strategies that sustain listener investment across episodes, cultivate distinct narrative voices, and create immersive auditory worlds. Patricia Achiro Olwoch. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
The Senior Project is a full-length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project. During the Fall semester, students write a Project Proposal and Bibliography, and complete a Chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement. In the Spring, students finalize the Senior Project under the supervision of Project Advisor. All students present their Projects in a Public Symposium at the end of the semester. The Projects become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. The Department.
Permission of the Director is needed if taking MEDS 303 in Spring. Yearlong course 303- MEDS 304 . Individual conferences with the instructor. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall and Spring
MEDS 304Senior Project Completion0.5
The Senior Project is a full-length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project. During the Fall semester, students write a Project Proposal and Bibliography, and complete a Chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement. In the Spring, students finalize the Senior Project under the supervision of Project Advisor. All students present their Projects in a Public Symposium at the end of the semester. The Projects become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. The Department.
Permission of the Director is needed if taking MEDS 304 in the Fall. Yearlong course MEDS 303 -304. Individual conferences with the instructor. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall and Spring
MEDS 305Senior Project1
The Senior Project is a full-length Thesis or a (Multi) Media Project allowed in only the most exceptional of circumstances. During the semester or summer prior, students write a Project Proposal and bibliography, and complete a chapter or a comprehensive Project Statement under the supervision of the Project Adviser. The students finalize the Senior Project with the continued supervision of the Project Adviser to completion, which will then become part of a permanent Media Studies Archive. The Department.
Completion of MEDS 310 and permission of the instructor. Individual conferences with the instructor. Course Format: INT
Offered
Fall or Spring
MEDS 310Senior Seminar1
A course on methods and tactics for all senior Media Studies majors, providing a capstone experience for the cohort. This course is taught in the fall semester each year. The capstone seminar for Media Studies aims to consolidate our majors’ core coursework in theory and praxis with an eye to giving them useful tools for the critical making of their senior projects. Through readings and structured dialogue, we revisit frameworks introduced throughout our Media Studies courses such as “old and new” media, media specificity and postmedia, scale, reproducibility, the interface, virtuality, embodiment, surveillance capitalism, and the possibilities for decolonizing media. Dara Greenwood.
MEDS 250 or MEDS 260 ; and permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
MEDS 322Video/Expanded Media II1
(Same as ART 322 ) This advanced studio course expands on the work in ART 222 / MEDS 222 and ART 223 . The course provides the conceptual and practical foundation for students to make ambitious work across a range of media, including video, installation, multi-media performance, collaborative projects, and site- and context-specific works. Particular attention is paid to the methods, materials, and issues in contemporary artistic practice. Class discussions, screenings, readings, and visits to galleries/museums supplement our work. John Hulsey.
ART 222 / MEDS 222 or ART 223 and permission of the instructor. Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 352The City in Fragments1
(Same as URBS 352 ) In this seminar, we use the concept of the fragment to explore the contemporary city, and vice versa. We draw on the work of Walter Benjamin, for whom the fragment was both a central symptom of urban modernity and a potentially radical mode of inquiry. We also use the figure of the fragment to explore and to experiment with the situationist urbanism of Guy Debord, to address the failure of modernist dreams for the city, and to reframe the question of the “global” in contemporary discussions of global urbanization. Finally, we use the fragment to destabilize notions of experience and evidence—so central to positivist understandings of the city—as we make regular visits to discover, as it were, non-monumental New York. Readings include works by Walter Benjamin, Stefano Boeri, Christine Boyer, Guy Debord, Rosalyb Deytsche, Paul Gilroy, Rem Koolhaas, Henri Lefebvre, Thomas Lacquer, Saskia Sassen, Mark Wigley, and others. Not offered in 2026/27.
(Same as HISP 353 and LALS 353 ) Digital media are ubiquitous. Through them we communicate, inform ourselves, organize our lives, watch one another, self-soothe and invent ourselves. Digital media are both central to struggles for social justice and at the same time, in the hands of corporate and state agents, weapons against these struggles. This course explores how the history, physical infrastructure, political economy and symbolic and affective meanings in media-scapes across Latin America, the Caribbean, Mexico and Spain are crucial for understanding digital culture and its impact on us. Topics studied include Indigenous digital culture; digital literacy; fake news; social media and social movements; gendered, racialized and classed identities in online communities; (dis)embodiment; the networked self; and border surveillance technologies. We analyze a range of media texts including novels, films, theoretical essays, manifestos, archives and multi-media born-digital content. Taught in Spanish.
HISP 216 and one course above 216. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
MEDS 354Race, Language, and Digital Media1
(Same as AFRS 354 and ANTH 354 ) Much recent critical work on digital media and society has scrutinized how organizational, cultural, and ideological blindspots of tech companies in and around Silicon Valley have led to technologies that entrench existing racial biases, strengthen the dominance of English over other languages, and magnify both state and corporate power at the expense of democracy and civil liberties. This course explores the communities of engineers, content creators, entrepreneurs, hackers, digital nomads, and activists who inhabit seemingly peripheral locales that challenge our prevailing views of the digital media technology industry. These far-flung locales include Pacific or Caribbean island tax havens that, despite their smallness, play an outsize role in the global technology industry, and also cities such as Hyderabad, India, and Medellín, Colombia, which host thriving communities of tech developers and hackers. This course introduces concepts such as raciolinguistics, decoloniality, and racial capitalism to examine the role of digital technology industries in perpetuating or contesting racism and linguistic imperialism. Meanwhile, reading and discussing ethnographic research on technology in the so-called global peripheries unsettle prevailing US-and-Eurocentric notions of technology and digital media. This course concludes with a research capstone that surveys a community of tech workers or content creators interested in addressing the inequities produced through digital media technologies. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as SOCI 356 ) This course examines the culture and politics of the public sphere, with an emphasis on the changing status of public spaces in contemporary societies. Drawing upon historical and current analyses, we explore such issues as the relationship between public and commercial space and the role of public discourse in democratic theory. Case studies investigate such sites as media, online platforms, schools, shopping malls, libraries, and public parks in relation to questions of economic inequality, political participation, privatization, and consumer culture. William Hoynes. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Covers a variety of current issues in modern anthropology in terms of ongoing discussion among scholars of diverse opinions rather than a rigid body of fact and theory. May be repeated for credit if topic has changed.
(Same as CHIN 362 and DRAM 362 ) A study of Chinese culture and society through well-known dramatic genres - zaju, chuanqi, kunqu , Beijing Opera, regional operas, modern and contemporary Spoken Drama; a close reading of selected plays in English translation (or in Chinese upon students’ request). Scheduled films of performances convey Chinese theatrical conventions and aesthetics. Research projects are chosen by students or assigned by the instructor. Based upon students’ research presentations, discussions center on a variety of major themes and genres from East-West perspectives. Students are encouraged to use Chinese language in their research projects at their appropriate proficiency levels. Wenwei Du.
One 200-level course in language, literature, culture, Drama, Media Studies or Asian Studies; or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
MEDS 371Fake News: Truth and Media in the Post-Fact Society1
(Same as SOCI 371 ) The post-fact society, according to journalist Farhad Manjoo, is one in which people increasingly live in “divergent, parallel realities.” It is in the context of the post-fact society that President Donald Trump and his followers are able to decry any news that challenges his actions or worldview as “fake” and to offer up ideologically bolstering “alternative facts” in its place. While sensationalized, exaggerated, or false news is not new (think yellow journalism or tabloids like The National Inquirer), the advent of cable news, the 24-hour news cycle, and the Internet have led to the proliferation of multiple realities of fact, troubling public trust in news media and polarizing Americans politically. Drawing on media studies, the sociology of knowledge, and post-structuralist theory, this course examines the cultures of the new post-fact society including: fake news and alternative facts; news taste-makers such as Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson; algorithmic control of online media; conspiracy theories; and political satire. We consider questions such as: How does news media create and reinforce various political ideologies? Why do people look to news media to confirm or deny preexisting beliefs? Is journalism ever fully objective? If in fact there are multiple Truths, how do we as a society develop public trust and social solidarity? One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as CHIN 373 ) This intensive course starts with a focused introduction to the history of Chinese cinema and follow with in-depth studies of the cinematic features of a cluster of internationally well-known Chinese films chosen by participating students based on their respective researches guided by the instructor. The format of the course: weekly lectures and discussions in small groups, individual conferences with the instructor, and presentations by students of their own research projects. Wenwei Du.
Senator Hiram Johnson’s 1917 remark “The first casualty when war comes is truth” is often repeated. But the processes through which (mis)information and images circulate in wartime are less well known. This course explores the role of popular media in the production and circulation of knowledge about war. Drawing on both news and entertainment media, we examine how war is represented and remembered in various media, including newspapers, photographs, radio, television, film, and online. Through a series of historical and contemporary case studies, we explore topics such as the practices of the war correspondent, strategies of news management by military planners, the relationship between media images and public attitudes toward war, media as a propaganda tool, and the role of popular media in constructing and contesting national myths and memories of war.
