The Department offers two main degree tracks within Media Studies: the M.A. and Ph.D. A dual degree option is available for students pursuing the M.A. track.

Areas of Interest

The department's faculty have multiple and varied areas of interest that might be described as areas in which we concentrate our research and teaching including our typical course offerings. We have tried to describe these below. All faculty have alliances to multiple areas, and many courses reflect the breadth of these areas. Students are free to take any course offered during their program of study.

Analysis and Evaluation of Texts

Theoretical frameworks and methods include new criticism, content analysis, genre study, auteurism, structuralism, semiotics, deconstructionism, feminism, ideological criticism, and various psychological approaches. Additionally, the study of textual evaluation addresses philosophical questions about social and psychological functions of texts, as evident in debates regarding mass culture and canons, modernity and postmodernity, and aesthetic or socio-political uses of mass media texts.

Critical and Cultural Studies

This research and teaching focuses on the critical examination of media industries, texts, and their audiences from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives with special emphasis on cultural studies and the political economy of the media. Also addressed are the analysis of media content and the systems and organizations that produce it and its influence on political, social, cultural, and personal communication. Of concern are also media and culture, the function of media in the lives of individuals and communities, how audiences receive and interpret content, the processes of media production, the analysis of media institutions and organizations, and media economics, law, and policy.

Almost all RTF faculty and graduate student do aspects of what is described above under critical and cultural study. The major focus of some faculty in what has been considered a separate area of critical and cultural study focus on the following.

Ethnic/Race Issues and the Media

This area of interest investigates the relationship between the media and ethnic/minority groups. It also addresses questions of race, critical race theory and the representation of race in media. Teaching and research considers questions such as how ethnic/minority groups are represented and stereotyped in the media, how they are conceived as political and economic target audiences, how ethnics/minorities respond to mass communications, and how ownership and other structural characteristics of ethnic-oriented media influence all these issues.

Film and Television Studies

The Department has a principal interest in studying film and television. Courses and research may focus on film or television, but they are often integrated into considerations of the relations and differences among the institutional systems of production, textual features, and audience affects. We encourage knowing the history and textual specificities of both.

Gender and Sexuality Issues and the Media

This area of interest focuses on issues of gender and sexuality in media representations, institutions, production processes, and subjectivities. Teaching and research considers the nature of social structures that both condition production processes and create spectators and audiences who perceive representations in various ways; portrayals in different media products; stereotyping; problems in representing bodies and desire; media contributions to sexual, gender, and sex role socialization; sexism and heterosexism in production processes; the claims of the "feminization" of certain media or genres; and genders and technology.

Global Media and International Communication Issues

This area of interest focuses on the globalization of communication systems and their underlying technologies. It also focuses on the cultural questions of genre, text, and context in the global sphere. The growth and trajectory of national cultural, economic, political, and technological forces are analyzed in the context of globalization and the incorporation of national communication systems into a global communication network. Impacts and uses of technology, development communication, critical studies of the growth of communication industries, and research on local and national cultural systems are emphasized.

History and the Historiography of Media

Research and teaching focus on the history of the production, reception, and influence of twentieth-century media. Research examines sources of that history in earlier cultural forms and in the interconnected nature of specific technologies, industries and institutions. Emphasis is placed on how such histories are written, considering a variety of economic, social, and political theories used to explain the production and reception of texts within historical contexts. The relation of specific communities (e.g., youth, ethnic, feminist, social activist, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) to media is also addressed.

New Media and Society

This area of interest focuses on the social, culture, and political contexts of various communication and information technologies and broader issues related to social and cultural dimensions of these technologies. It examines various questions related to who uses new media, including children, youth and older people, as well as minorities, immigrants, race, and gender issues. This area includes questions of media literacy and extends to new media production and its implications. It focuses on Internet, games, mobiles, and other new media.

Technology and ICT Policy

This area of interest focuses on the history, development, and policy implications of information and communication technologies (ICT). It addresses policy and the information society, in the U.S. and globally. Specific technologies addressed include the Internet, computers, mobile phones, video and computer games, telecommunication and satellite systems, film, broadcasting and cable systems, digital networks and digital production technologies, as well as the impacts of these technologies on older systems like print media and oral communications.