COMM 615 - Communication and Popular Culture

Credits: 3

This course explores the intersection between rhetoric and public culture. Traditionally, rhetoric scholarship has focused on the conception, composition, presentation, and reception of messages that tend to be persuasive in nature. Scholarship in cultural studies, on the other hand, has tended to analyze the production of meanings and how they relate to social practices. Drawing from the two fields, we will explore how different cultural texts and their meanings are produced, interpreted, and circulate. Specifically, we will investigate such issues as: ideology, hegemony, polysemy, discourse, text/context, rhetor/audience, publics, place/space, collective memory, narrative, and power. In addition, we will learn about the different research practices of rhetorical criticism and cultural ideas.

Prerequisite(s): Admission to the Master of Arts in Communication program or the Joint Undergraduate-Master’s Path (JUMP) option of the Communication Studies major (BA/BS degree)

Term(s) Offered: Irregularly offered

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