Featured Courses
FALL 2013
COMM 291A/401A and UNIV 390: Shakespeare Festival
Prof. Amy Hayes
Based on the educational wing of Shakespeare & Company’s (Lenox, MA) nationally renowned and recommended high school Shakespeare program, this course prepares DePauw students to do Shakespeare with local high school and middle school students. Part classroom activity and part in-school practicum, the course stresses the visceral, emotional, and intellectual power of experiencing Shakespeare’s language physically and vocally. Culminates in a festival of Shakespeare’s plays performed by local students at DePauw at the end of the semester. Repeatable for credit.
COMM 291B: Multimedia Story Telling
Prof. Mark Tatge
Study of the dynamics of non-fiction storytelling through the use of traditional story framing constructs used by magazine journalists. Strong emphasis placed on story development and use of journalistic reporting techniques to create compelling non-fiction stories. Each student builds a website and publishes content produced in this course. We will cover the basics of website creation, design and search engine optimization. Prerequisites: Sophomore or above standing. Recommended: Basic knowledge of multimedia editing software in a PC or Mac environment (iMovie, Final Cut or Sony Vegas), student media experience, and completion of one or more of the following: Eng 232, Eng 321, Comm 235, Comm 236.
For more information: http://www.tellingdigitalstories.com/
COMM 291C: Film History and FILM 200
Prof. Seth Friedman
Although the recent proliferation of new technologies greatly enhances our access to some moving image media, it also increasingly demonstrates that film history is vast and inexhaustible. In fact, one of the most notable consequences of the digital age is that it has become more challenging to keep up with many interesting happenings in global moving image media. No semester-long course in film history, therefore, could possibly encompass all of the significant developments in world cinema since the advent of the medium in the late nineteenth century. Rather than attempt to provide this inevitably inadequate encyclopedic overview, we will explore how the choices we make about what to study shape and are shaped by our conceptions of world cinema history. To accomplish this objective, this course will indeed cover some of the major trends in global cinema since its inception, concentrating primarily, but not exclusively, on narrative film in Hollywood and other commercial contexts. This focus, in conjunction with associated course assignments, discussions, readings, and screenings, will ultimately make us keenly aware of how emphasizing certain aspects of film history obscure alternative ways to comprehend the impact and story of arguably the most influential medium of the twentieth century and beyond.
COMM 401B: Financial Basics for Communication
Prof. Mark Tatge
Overview of how business and markets operate and the role of government in a capitalist system. Strong emphasis placed on critical-thinking skills: Reading and interpreting financial statements (balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows), contrasting non-profit and for-profit enterprises, learning financial analysis basics, developing budgets and making personal financial decisions. Students will follow a public company for the semester and explore various aspects of its operations. Prerequisite: Junior standing, Econ 100 or permission of instructor. Recommended: Eng 232, Econ 140, student media experience.
COMM 401C: Visual Rhetoric
Prof. David Worthington
Images permeate the way we receive and understand the world; at no time in human history have constructed images been as prevalent as they are today. In this class students will engage visual culture as rhetorical artifact studying the way images influence the politics, culture, and attitudes of public life in the United States. Students may engage traumatic, gendered, political, cultural, sexualized or other elements of visual culture. Readings will be drawn from contemporary scholarship and students will be expected to produce scholarly/artistic work to complete the course.
COMM 401D: Greenwich Village 1913: Suffrage, Labor and the New Women
Prof. David Worthington
This course takes students to the beginning of the modern era when urbanization, industrialization, and massive waves of immigration were transforming the U.S. way of life. As the game begins, suffragists are taking to the streets demanding a constitutional amendment for the vote. What, they ask, is women’s place in society? Are they to remain in the home or take an active role in the government of their communities and their nation? Labor has turned to the strike to demand living wages and better conditions; some are even proposing an industrial democracy where workers take charge of industries. Can corporate capitalism allow an economically just society or must it be overturned? African-Americans, suffering from the worst working conditions, disenfranchisement, and social segregation, debate how to support their community through education and protest, thereby challenging their continuing marginalization in both the South and the North. Members of all these groups converge in Greenwich Village to debate their views with the artists and bohemians who are in the process of remaking themselves into the new men and new women of the twentieth century. Their spirited conversations not only show a deep understanding of nineteenth-century thinkers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Karl Marx; they are also informed by such contemporaries as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane Addams, W.E.B. Du Bois, Emma Goldman, John Dewey, Franz Boas, and Sigmund Freud. The game asks what social changes are most important as well as how one can or should realize these goals.