CMS 4820: Course Info.

Course Number, Title, Description

MALS 5800
Seminar in Communication and Media Studies topics. May be repeated when topics vary.
CMS 4820 Media, Rhetoric, and Social Movements
Considers the roles played by media and rhetoric in shaping the nature, development and impact of one or more social movements. Examines how communication and media have facilitated or hindered protest and reform in the United States and the world. Rotating topics. Students may repeat the class up to four times when different topics are offered without departmental approval.

Credit Hours

3 credit hours (3-0-3)

Learning Outcomes

The course goals align with program outcomes 1-5 of the Communication and Media Studies (CMS) program. Through successful completion of the readings, screenings, class discussions, and assignments, students demonstrate high-level reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. More specifically, by successfully completing the course assignments,

  1. Students will recognize popular music as important venue of the African American public sphere.
  2. Students will recognize key leaders of the Black Power movements of the 1960s and Seventies
  3. Students will recognize the tenets of 1960s and Seventies Black Nationalism as expressed in music, including political, economic, and cultural nationalism.
  4. Students will recognize Hip Hop as a practice and technology of cultural conservation and transmission.
  5. Students will recognize more recent appeals to Black Nationalism, e.g. those made by activists, “vernacular historians,” and musicians.
  6. Students will evaluate contemporary appeals to Black Nationalism.