This course is designed for students to acquire a knowledge of the fundamentals of the Chinese language to be demonstrated in four areas of basic language skills: oral and listening comprehension, speaking, writing (Chinese characters), and some reading ability.
Students helped native Chinese speakers improve their overall English proficiency.
ASTC 1020
Beginning Chinese II
Chiung Tsai
This course is a continuation of the objectives presented in Beginning Chinese I. Attention is given to practical and topics-oriented conversational skills, moods of speech, and complex levels of syntax.
Students helped native Chinese speakers improve their overall English proficiency.
ASTC 3050
Advanced Chinese I
Huimin Xie
This course is a completion of the first two years of Chinese instruction, or equivalent, plus permission of instructor. First semester advanced instruction in the Chinese language, including conversation, reading, and writing.
Student worked at Delgado Community College's ESL program.
This course investigates the social and cultural values of the Roman world by studying Roman private law. The course also examines the development of Roman courts in the empire and the influence of Roman law on modern legal systems.
Students worked with the Family Justice Center, the Pro Bono Project, and the Tulane Domestic Violence Clinic, assisting with family law cases.
CLAS 3170
Greek Art & Archaeology
Jane Carter
This course will introduce major monuments and artifacts of ancient Greece from the Dark Age through the Hellenistic period. Many of the buildings and objects that the students will study in this course are works of art. Students will consider them from the perspective of art history. All elements of material culture both reflect and shape the beliefs and attitudes of their cultural context; thus, students will also consider the historical and social context in which these buildings and objects were created and experienced.
The students explored the interface between material culture and its social context either at the Louisiana State Museum or as a tutor at the Sophie B. Wright secondary school.
CLAS 3190
Pompeii: Life in a Roman Town
Susann S. Lusnia
In this course, students will explore the Roman culture through the study of the town destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 C.E. The focus is on the society, politics, religion, domestic life, entertainment, economy, and art of Pompeii and the surrounding region in the early imperial period.
Students helped Longue Vue House and Gardens develop a landscape manual/database. Students also conducted a "Quality of Life" survey in the 7th Ward.
This course examines aspects of the family in ancient Greece and Rome in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world. What did the ancient Greeks and Romans think about the family and members of the household? What did the concept of the "family" connote to them? How do ancient ideas about the family relate to us today?
Students conducted interviews with nursing home residents to compile family histories that can then be shared with the residents and their families. Students interviewed residents and then create visual histories that can be displayed.
Communication
COMM 1000
Communication Studies
Vicki Mayer
This class introduces students to the theoretical underpinnings of the Department of Communication. The course explores communication through its tri-part focus on relationships and identities (individuals), texts, and industries and structures (contexts). The course introduces key concepts and keywords for continuing in the major.
COMM 2500
Film and Society
Betsy Weiss
This class investigates various social issues that emerge from an examination of films produced in the United States, Europe, and the developing world. Students will consider societal forces such as class, race, gender, youth, family, prejudice, education, and homelessness. The cinematic depiction of these factors as well as the connection between cinematic language, syntax, structure, and a film’s ultimate meaning or message are explored.
Students completed an organization-wide analysis of internal communication and witnessed how it influences the function of the business.
This course examines the history and theory of visual communication and its application in a variety of cultural contexts. Topics include the transition from print to visual media, the development of visual literacy and the role of emerging technology. Students will complete applied projects using photography, video and electronic media, digital imaging, and web-based visual technology.
Students assisted a member of the community or a community organization in the creation of a digital story.
COMM 2810
Media and Criminal Justice
Betsy Weiss
This course examines the portrayal of criminal justice in film, television, literature and mass media. In addition, these media are used to illustrate perspectives relevant to criminal justice. Television, film, newspaper, and electronic/internet media intersects with crime and the criminal justice system in a number of important ways. The point of this course is to examine how the media represents, distorts, and/or filters crime and justice issues. Also, the media is used as a mechanism to explore issues (e.g., political ideology, corrections policy, causes of crime) that are central to the study of crime. Important topics such as the media’s impact on moral panics, and portrayal of female offenders will also be explored.
Students selecting the service learning option will work with female offenders merging back into the community by providing help with reading and other life skills.
COMM 3140
Cross-Cultural Communication
Vicki Mayer
This course is a critical examination of communication in intercultural, interethnic, and international contexts. Students will study an overview of models and approaches designed to explain cultural differences in communication, with emphasis on the dimensions of symbolization, acculturation, prejudice, stereotyping, and ideology. Conceptual frameworks will be applied and tested within a range of cultural populations as defined by race, ethnicity, gender, physical disability, sexuality, socio-economic class, and geographic location.
Students worked at the New Orleans Video Access Center.
The objective of this course is to learn how to analyze technologies that we encounter through a combination of materialist approaches and their application. This course will historicize and contextualize the socio-political and economic influences of technology on our everyday lives. We will focus our study on media technologies as material culture by looking their production and role in the political economy, as well as their dissemination and uses by institutions and their various publics.
Students will be working on two service learning projects that are web-based. The first, called Technotrash.org, is an open access site to crowdsource histories of people’s attachments to technology and the environmental impacts of those goods. The second site is called GlobalCitizen.org, which uses the model of a game and points in order to create social changes to end worldwide poverty.
COMM 3260
Media Analysis
Vicki Mayer
Students work to achieve a critical understanding of media industries and structures through the following goals: 1. To learn key terms and theories surrounding mass communication and media industries in their historical context; 2. To engage in a variety of research methods to answer key questions about the role and impacts of media industries in contemporary society; 3. To apply the theories and methods to a community-based case study.
As part of the course, students complete community-based research assignments focused on the history of newspapers in New Orleans. Results will be posted to Media NOLA’s website. In addition, students will analyze the Times-Picayune content before and after its shift from daily to 3 days a week service as part of a larger research analysis on the newspaper’s impact.
COMM 3280
Media Histories
Vicki Mayer
This course looks at media histories, with a focus on the different kinds of stories told about media, its contents, and contexts. The course explores historical trends, the nature of histiography (the study of history) and some fundamentals of historical research.
Students created histories of New Orleans media for the KnowLA website of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.
A service-learning, praxis-oriented course in which students develop analytical and reflective skills by critiquing and creating feminist documentation in various media. Study of history and theory of feminist documentary filmmaking and new media will be complemented with learning production and post-production skills. Weekly volunteer work will be done with an organization serving women and girls in New Orleans.
Students worked with the Guardians of the Flame Institute and learned about Mardi Gras Indian tradition, particularly from a woman's perspective. Students also worked with the youth-education component of the organization, where they assisted with events and created educational videos.
COMM 3810
Global Communication and Policy
Vivian Norris
The focus will be on international guests/filmmakers coming to the New Orleans Film Festival, as well as both the content of these films and the financing/policies behind the production and distribution of such films. The important role film festivals play will also be emphasized.
Students will volunteer at the New Orleans Film Festival.
COMM 3811
Digital Media Production for Non-Profits
Mary Blue
The goal of the service learning portion and the course in general is for students to be able to answer the following course questions: What does it mean to be media literate? What is the necessity of media literacy? What tools/skills make you media literate? Why media education? What purpose does/can it serve? Who benefits? Who loses? How do you go about it? What are the goals as a teacher and as a learner of media literacy?
Students forged relationships with elementary school students through both correspondence and engagement in the classroom space. Students also used their media knowledge to conduct a media literacy workshop for a non-profit youth group.
COMM 3820
Digital Storytelling
Mary Blue
Students will acquire an understanding of the ways in which effective communication to a specific audience is best achieved using traditional media, new media, and the physical world, and analyze, synthesize, and evaluate communication situations and/or problems.
Students completed digital media projects and presentations which were used by the 7th Ward Neighborhood Center.
This course focuses on participating in the process of organizing. Whatever students’ career goals, the knowledge they will gain from this class will help them make sense of how communication and leadership are central to the organization experience.
Platform course for the Public Service Fellows program.
COMM 4180
African Cinema
Frank Ukadike
This course will provide a critical and interdisciplinary look at the development of African cinema from its inception in the 1960s to the present.
Students were involved in dynamic engagements of African cultures, social experiences, and world views through screening of African films in select local high schools.
COMM 4770
Theories of Consumption and Production
Vicki Mayer
This course analyzes theoretical constructions of media audiences and media producers historically and in contemporary contexts. Liberal, Marxist, and feminist paradigms will be explored along with a variety of research methods used in audience and producer studies.
Students were trained by community media producers and completed projects on minority youth filmmaking, workforce development, and citizen journalism.
COMM 4810
The Interview: Cultural Conversation as Cultural Conservation
Nicholas Spitzer
Students will gain a historical and ethnographic understanding of the emergence, impact, and meaning of the interview as a performance event and dialogic form of communication based in conversation, learn to conduct pre-interview research, and conduct a cultural and historically useful interview as well as to record, transcribe, and cite it. Students will be able to write and speak critically about the role and value of intercultural communication in building public discourse.
Students worked with Sweet Home New Orleans, Hogan Jazz Archive, and American Routes.
COMM 4820
The Public Intellectual 2.0
Vicki Mayer
This seminar is about knowledge-based "Leadership" – what used to be called “the public intellectual.” We will examine how public intellectuals have been defined and studied, and in particular how public intellectuals operate in a digital age of information.
In the first half of the semester, students will be spent testing and innovating tactics for publicizing MediaNOLA, a service organization dedicated to the cultural preservation and public access to cultural history. In the second half of the semester, students will be planning a teach-in event on the social issue of personal debt, including credit card debt, payday loans, and student loan debt. We will be working on that project in conjunction with other classes and local organizers for strikedebt.org.
COMM 4820/ 4821
Media Literacy/ Media Education
Beretta Smith-Shomade
The goal of this two-semester course is to introduce students to the study of media literacy, media education, and basic media pedagogy.
Students forged relationships with elementary school students through both correspondence and engagement in the classroom space. Students also used their media knowledge to conduct a media literacy workshop for a non-profit youth group.
COMM 4820/6820
Creative Labor
Vicki Mayer
This course assumes an interest in theoretical and methodological questions related to communication studies. To deepen our responses to these questions, however, this course is engaged in community-based research in order to answer the following questions: 1. What is creative labor and its relationship to political economy? 2. Who are creative workers and what are their experiences of work? 3. How is creative work similar or different to other forms of work and employment?
Students engaged in collecting community data and oral testimonies through interpersonal interactions. The results of the data gathering project were donated to the Creative Alliance of New Orleans (CANO) and used to assess the scope of the creative labor market in New Orleans. The results of our oral testimonies are posted to MediaNOLA, an online archive of cultural production in New Orleans. These will give online user a sense of what it is like to live and work in the new creative economy in New Orleans.
