Communications and Popular Culture

3 credits · Undergraduate

(3 hrs Lecture) This course provides students with the historical, social-political, and cultural contexts for studying contemporary rhetoric and communications. Students look at changing rhetorics of taste, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, as new media made art and culture more accessible to the public. Students examine how new processes of mediated distribution of art, and the rise of modern capitalism, changed the discursive strategies for writing about popular culture. Course topics include the rise of photography and the technological reproducibility of images; mass media and the culture industry; technology and globalization; and augmented reality and video games. Requisite Courses: Any section of Academic Writing or exemption from the writing requirement and completion of 24 credit hours [prerequisite(s)].