Week 1

Introduction – nature of communication and media – influence on pop culture

Ch. 2

Week 2

Ownership and regulation of media – role of the FCC and corporate influences

Ch.8

Weeks 3 and 4

Advertising – Frontline film The Merchants of Cool - Project

Ch.14

Week 5

Music industry and radio

Ch.7 and Ch.11

Weeks 6 and 7

TV and Video – Project

Ch.12

Week 8

Internet based mass media – copyright and intellectual property issues

Week 9

Newspaper and other news media (All the President’s Men)

Ch. 9 and Ch. 13

Week 10

Intro to film – silent film (Nosferatu)

Ch. 6

Week 11

Development of “Talkies” - the studio system – director as auteur (Singing in the Rain)

Weeks 12 and 13

Genre films: Western, screwball comedy, gangster, hardboiled detective, film noir, musical, family melodrama (High Noon, The Maltese Falcon)

Weeks 14 and 15

Hitchcock (Rear Window, North by Northwest)

Week 16

Modern film – the rise of the “indie” film (Smoke Signals)

Week 17  

Film based paper (research, personal response, review)

Grading:

~ Personal response journal to text, articles, and films

~ chapter study guides

~ tests on the text

~ film based paper

~projects