CUE

Media & Communication CUE Courses

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Starting the Class of 2024, there is a change in the CUE requirement:

Starting in the Academic year 2023-2024, Media and Communication majors will have a single CUE option, CUE 401: Ways of Seeing. This course gives all Media and Communication seniors the opportunity to have a shared, integrative experience that blends media analysis and media making. While the current “pathways” approach has offered a variety of options to students, these options did not always offer the shared, integrative experience a CUE was intended to offer graduating seniors. In the interests of offering a coherent, comprehensive yet also flexible to the varied interests of our students, the Media and Communication faculty decided to shift to a single course which will be taught by many of our faculty.

Class of 2023 CUE Options:

COM 401 - CUE: Seminar in Media & Communication

1 course unit

Each seminar has its own focal topic and includes an inquiry-driven project requiring students to generate an integrative research or grant proposal, and oral presentation about their proposal.  The grant proposal is designed to build on the core scholarly-knowledge assignments in the department’s required-course sequence.  Focal topics may include children & communication, mediareform, race & representation, media & the home, or media & social theory.  The Seminar in Media & Communication is offered at least once a semester by different members of the department on a rotating basis. 

   Prerequisite(s): COM 301 Media Theory & Methods 

 

COM 467 - CUE: Advanced Video Production

1 course unit

Students explore the convergence of video and digital media while studying the problems of constructing narrative and documentary texts within emerging experimental formats.  Through their research-production projects, students learn to work with more advanced visual and organizational concepts and tools.  Legal and ethical issues involved in media production are considered.  Students present ongoing work and final projects in either an online or broadcast venue. 

   Prerequisite(s): COM 351 Video Production 

 

COM 490 - CUE: Digital Media Design Lab

1 course unit

Students plan, develop, produce, and present CUE productions (whether video, web-based, digital storytelling, audio, animation, documentary, print, or multimedia) in a collaborative workshop setting.  Students planning to enroll in this course prepare a project proposal to be approved by a CUE faculty advisor late in the junior year.  Students design and develop a website, blog, e-book, or e-portfolio to present themselves as graduates prepared for positions in mediarelated fields or students prepared for advanced graduate study in the discipline.  They build their websites/e-portfolios to include representative work - writing, research, media artifacts - as well as representations of learning in the context of co-curricular activities (community service, student organizations, etc.), internship profiles, and study abroad reflections. 

 

COM 965 - CUE: Communication Practicum

1 course unit

Designed to provide both an educational experience and an opportunity to work with professionals in practical preparation for a career, the practicum includes a significant academic (written and/or production) component.  Under faculty supervision, students will serve as interns with newspapers, television and radio stations, advertising agencies, public relations firms, publishers, health, environmental, sports, and human and public service organizations. 

   Prerequisite(s): COM 231 - Documentary Research and instructor permission

 

COM 4XX - CUE: Honors Advanced Research Seminar

1 course unit

This course is modeled on a graduate seminar and is oriented towards giving select students the opportunity to write work that is original and rigorous, builds on your coursework as a major in Media and Communication, and if desired could be used as a writing sample in graduate school applications.  In our course meetings, we will work on refining your honors thesis draft, as well as discuss readings and other resources designed to help you develop your research presentation skills and a public and academic audience for your thesis research.  Students will also participate in peer review workshops to provide feedback to each other about their drafts. These drafts and peer review workshops are part of the overall grade for the course. 

Prerequisite(s): COM 470 - Media and Communication Honors Seminar

 

Class of 2024+ CUE:

COM 401 - CUE: Ways of Seeing

1 course unit

Ways of Seeing returns to and builds on themes and competencies developed in the other core courses: source credibility in Media & Society, the media-maker’s “location” in Documentary Research, and the implications for scholarly knowledge of leading methodologies in Media Theory and Methods. Ways of Seeing picks up this epistemological thread—“Every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing” (Kenneth Burke)—with formats, modes, standards, and mediums in particular focus. Ways of Seeing is designed to challenge the binary between theory and practice, through the idea of media analysis through media making. Bi-weekly units are organized around a mode of “seeing” (in a deliberately capacious sense of that word) like “text” or “image.” For each unit, provocative and often theoretical readings are paired with limited media-making training appropriate to that mode.

 

   Prerequisite(s): COM 301 Media Theory & Methods