Current Grad Classes - Fall 2012

Course Number: COMM 7014/8014 and PUBH7014/8014
Title: Public Health Communication
Instructor: Amanda Young
Days/Time: T 6:00 - 9:00 pm

Course Description:
This course explores the communication processes and practices that are used to promote positive changes in health behavior and to inform publics about specific health risks. After exploring the research models and methodologies used to disseminate health information and promote behavior change, we will examine issues of health literacy; formats for disseminating medical, health, and wellness information; and the complex, specific audiences that public health communication must address.

Course Objectives:
To understand the role of communication in public health campaigns, interventions, and research
• To develop an awareness of the complex issues of health communication in the public health arena
• To examine theoretical models, research design, and evaluation methodologies inherent in public health communication
• To appreciate the interplay of theory and practice in communication in public health settings and campaigns
• To begin to recognize the multicultural audiences in public health communication

Proposed Text: Essentials of Public Health Communication. By: Parvanta, Nelson, Parvanta, and Harner
Particulars: Cross listed with Public Health

Course Number: COMM 7322/8322
Title: Persuasion & Influence
Instructor: Craig O. Stewart
Days/Times: W 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Course Description: This course will survey traditional theories and approaches to persuasion research from social psychology and communication studies as well as how concepts and problems in persuasion have been critiqued and reconfigured by researchers working in the traditions of discursive and rhetorical psychology. Theories will be applied to various contexts including public media, interpersonal and health.

Proposed Texts: Daniel J. O'Keefe, Persuasion: Theory & Research, 2nd Edition (Sage, 2001).

Course Number: COMM 7350/8350
Title: Rhetorical Theory
Instructor: Brad S. McAdon
Days/Time: M 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Course Description: In this engaging course, we will try to cover a wide range of rhetorical texts (from Alcidamas' On Those Who Write Written Speeches, written somewhere around 400 B.C.E., to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's The New Rhetoric (first published in 1958) from a wide range of historical periods and cultural contexts. Because of the amount of material to cover, our focus will be on reading as widely as possible and on grasping the wide variety of conceptions of rhetoric by the respective writers, and how and why any of these conceptions have come to influence contemporary rhetorical theory and practice.

Particulars: Weekly, one-page (single-spaced) summaries and reflections on the required readings (35 %), An end-of-semester 15-20 page research paper with annotated bibliography (35%), Lead one class discussion of the assigned reading for that week (15%), and, depending upon how many students register for the course, an oral presentation of your research project (15%)

Course: COMM 7/8362
Title: Seminar in Public Address: Presidential and Political Rhetoric, 1865-present
Instructor: Leroy Dorsey
Days/Time: T 5:30-8:30 p.m.

Course Description: We will examine selected case studies involving the great public advocates, the pivotal issues of this time period, and special topics of interest to students of rhetoric, history, and public affairs, as we look to explore the fundamental assumptions and interpretive practices surrounding the rhetorical study of presidential and political discourse. The course will allow you to develop and to enhance your abilities as a rhetorical scholar by giving you the opportunity to analyze various forms of significant, political discourse—rhetoric that is important historically, theoretically, and ideologically.

Planned Texts (subject to change): Stuckey, Defining Americans; Beasley, You, The People; Bostdorff, The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis; Campbell and Jamieson, Presidents Creating the Presidency; Dorsey, We Are All Americans; and selected articles on reserve.

Particulars: In-class report; final paper of rhetorical criticism.

Course Number: Communication 7374/8374
Title: Introduction to QualitativeResearch Methods
Instructor: Katherine G. Hendrix
Days/Times: W 1:00-4:00 p.m.

Course Description:
Qualitative methods is offered as an analytic tool complementing and/or serving as a alternative to statistics and rhetorical criticism. This course will introduce graduate students to qualitative research as a means of investigating a phenomenon of interest with an emphasis on data collection methods such as researcher observation and participant interviews. In addition, students will gain experience in understanding qualitative data analysis software. The course content serves as a foundation for further study in advanced qualitative methods including online interpretive research, case study, and ethnography. Advanced learners who do not necessarily plan to employ a qualitative approach (how do you know until you understand what it is???) should at least be familiar with this method and capable of reading and assessing such research.
Graduate Texts:
Creswell, J.W. (2012). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions (3rd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Bazeley, P. (2007). Qualitative data analysis with NVivo (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Selected readings will also be distributed in class.

Recommended:
Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.). (2008). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Denzin, N.K., & Lincoln, Y.S. (Eds.). (2011). Sage handbook of qualitative research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Course Number: COMM 7806/8806
Title: Trends in Mass Comm - New Media & Society
Instructor: Kris M. Markman
Days/Time: R 5:30-8:30

Course Description: Critical issue or issues facing communications today. Topics will vary each time offered. May be repeated for a maximum of 6 credits.

Proposed Text:
A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites, Edited by Zizi Papacharissi, 2010, Routledge
The Social Media Reader, Edited By Michael Mandiberg, 2012, NYU Press
other readings as assigned
Particulars:
YouTube. Facebook. Smartphones. Twitter. These and other new media channels are reconfiguring our identities and our relationships, our communities and our culture. They present new opportunities for collaboration and creativity, but also for surveillance and control. This graduate seminar will examine these issues in detail, with an emphasis on core themes of "networkability," mobility, and privacy. The course will also include an overview of key theories in new media. Major seminar paper will be required.

Course Number: COMM 7808/8808
Title: Mass Media and Society: Affective Politics, Politics of Affect
Instructor: Marina Levina
Days/Time: T 1:00-4:00 p.m.

Course Description: This seminar addresses a current "affective turn" in rhetorical and cultural theorization of political and public spheres. Since 9/11 and the ensuing "war on terror," affect has emerged as a key site of political mobilization and critical concern. We will examine several questions related to affect theory and its rise. First and foremost, what is affect? How might one theorize politics of terror, politics of hope, and other political affects? How do affects lend force to causes such as Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party activism, or Arab Spring? How does affect figure in current political battles over contraception, gay marriage, and health care reform? How does affect change the nature of labor in the neoliberal market economy? How do certain affects shape identity politics? Finally, what does affect bring to the study of rhetorical and cultural criticism? We will look at affect as potential, "a body capacity to affect and be affected" (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010), and a site of political struggle that shapes our bodies and subjectivities.

Proposed Texts: Melissa Gregg and Gregory J Seigworth (Eds) The Affect Theory Reader (Duke UP: 2010); other readings will be assigned
Particulars: Students will be expected to complete a research paper and participate in weekly blog postings.