Areas of Research
The Department emphasizes the cultural dimensions and implications of communication practices from oral and written language, to film, television, and digital narrative. Organized into three areas of research - rhetoric and public culture, film and media studies, and performance and ethnography - the curriculum brings together faculty with a broad range of backgrounds and interests within these fields and provides a solid foundation in the history and theory of each area. Explore the links below to learn more about our approach to teaching and research.
Rhetoric and Public Culture.....Film and Media Studies......Performance and Ethnography
The study of rhetoric and public culture engages rhetorical theory and practice to analyze, interpret, and critique political life. We value rhetoric as a critical mode of cultural production that addresses democratic tensions and imaginaries as they are negotiated through a wide range of communicative performances, including language, embodied gesture, and visual image. This transformative project is one committed to a more just democratic world. It requires that we take seriously the tasks raised by historical and contemporary contexts, including both oppressive and resistant discourses constituting war and dissent, death and desire, law and judgment, race and ethnicity, feminism and sexuality, nature and environmentalism, and class disparity in a global economy. Such a robust enterprise hones our skills as rhetorical critics and inevitably requires a rigorous interdisciplinary plan of study both within our department and outside, involving areas such as media studies, visual culture, political and social theory, American Studies, and cultural studies. Through examining how rhetorical judgment and invention are articulated by democratic exigencies, we aim to challenge constraints to freedom and to foster a more participatory and responsible citizenry.
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Undergraduate Course Offerings | Graduate Course Offerings
Rhetoric and Public Culture....Film and Media Studies....Performance and Ethnography
The study of media focuses primarily on cinema, radio, television, and new media in U.S. and international contexts. Within the tradition of humanistic scholarship, we focus on the theory, history, and criticism of each medium, as well as the vital points of intersection that define them in an increasingly integrated media landscape. We examine the industries, technologies, authors, genres, and forms involved in media production, distribution, exhibition, and reception worldwide. Throughout, we are engaged with the theoretical and cultural implications of media practices and texts, particularly as they raise issues concerning: the operations of media industries; the relations between communication forms, technologies, and the structure of everyday life; the aesthetics and politics of narrative, documentary, and avant-garde media; globalization and the transnational relationships between cultures and peoples; national, racial, ethnic, gender, class, and sexual identities; and the interpretive activities of audiences. To provide an important hands-on component, Media Studies offers a series of film and video production courses.
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Undergraduate Course Offerings | Graduate Course Offerings
Rhetoric and Public Culture.....Film and Media Studies......Performance and Ethnography
The study of performance investigates communicative practices in their sociocultural context from three related perspectives. First, it foregrounds the performativity of communicative forms and practices as modes of action, ways of accomplishing social ends. Second, it directs attention to the poetics of communicative practice, the ways in which communicative acts are crafted and communicative skill is displayed. And third, it focuses on performances as a special class of events, such as rituals, spectacles, festivals, or fairs, in which a society's symbols and values are publicly displayed, interpreted, and transformed. Performance studies employs a variety of methods, but draws heavily on the ethnographic study of communicative forms and practices in their social context.
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Undergraduate Course Offerings | Graduate Course Offerings
