These skills will be directly applied to the student's thesis work. Strict progress deadlines will be issued at the beginning of the semester, resulting in either the further enhancement of a thesis proposal or the completion of the thesis. Students will meet both individually with the instructor and with their peers, to discuss and critique the on-going progress of their theses. The course will also include on-site fieldwork and research based on the goals and objectives of individual students. Media Literacy Increasingly, educators and artists are confronting and responding to the social power of the mass media by using media analysis, criticism and production.
Media literacy is the teaching of both the 'reading' and 'writing' of the mainstream media.
The 'reading' of the media includes an understanding of the social and economic context of mass media, the aesthetic conventions and formal genres of the media, and the ability to apply a semiotic analysis to a variety of media texts. Media 'writing' is the process of production, which involves the development of both theoretical and practical approaches. Students will be exposed to a wide range of contemporary strategies of media criticism, including analyses of the representation of race, gender, class, sexuality, youth and the elderly. Media forms to be considered include cinema, television, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. The class will look at models of media literacy strategies from the U.S., Canada, Latin America and Europe.