Courses in the Masters of Media Studies Program

Graduate classes

Our graduate program has four options for completion. Your course load and timeline varies by option. Below is the typical path through each option, for reference purposes only.

Year 1

Fall semester

• All students: COMS 600
• All students: COMS 610
• All students: One or two electives

Winter semester

• All students: COMS 605
• All students: COMS 610
• All students: One or two electives

Spring and summer semesters

• Thesis students: finish proposal
• Research creation students: finish proposal
• Major research paper students: one elective
• Course-based students: one elective

Year 2

Fall semester

• Major research paper students: two electives
• Course-based students: three electives

Winter semester

• Major research paper students: write major research paper
• Course-based students: three electives

Spring and summer semesters

• Thesis students: submit thesis
• Research creation students: submit thesis
• Course-based students: one elective

Core classes

Every student must take the following core classes to complete the program. These courses are foundational to other classes in the program.

Fall

COMS 600 Communication Theory (3 Credits)

This seminar studies and evaluates the major historical and contemporary approaches to communication theory. The following approaches are covered: Processes and Effects, Functionalism; Symbolism and Cultural Studies; Institutional Studies and Political Economy.

COMS 610 Media Studies Seminar (3 Credits)

This full-year course meets monthly to introduce students to issues of professionalization, careers in Media Studies research and practice, applying for funding, publication and dissemination of research, and presentations of ongoing faculty research and research-creation. An annual December colloquium for the presentation of second-year thesis and research-creation work is held. Required for first-year students, and recommended for continuing students.

Winter

COMS 605 Media Research Methods (3 Credits)

This seminar prepares students to critique literature from any of the major research traditions; to make basic connections between epistemology and problems of basic communication research; to be able to identify the research method most appropriate to personal areas of interest; to design a basic research project.

COMS 610 Media Studies Seminar (3 Credits)

This full-year course meets monthly to introduce students to issues of professionalization, careers in Media Studies research and practice, applying for funding, publication and dissemination of research, and presentations of ongoing faculty research and research-creation. An annual December colloquium for the presentation of second-year thesis and research-creation work is held. Required for first-year students, and recommended for continuing students.

Elective classes

Fall 2024

Game Studies: Theory & Research (Dr. Mia Consavo)

This seminar explores fundamental questions of how and why we play games, both in times of crisis (past and present) as well as during “regular” everyday life. We will focus on a number of issues including how varying contexts shape play, how games structure meaning making, barriers to play, the evolution of games, and different approaches to how to study games and leisure.

Alternative Media (Dr. Alessandra Renzi)

Alternative Media have undergone radical realignments and redefinition over the last two decades arising from new media and networking technologies and their use by global social justice movements. With the emergence of the EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994, the birth of Indymedia in the late 1990s, through Arab Spring, and Occupy Movements since 2011, one could say that alternative media are now in a continuous state of repositioning and reconstitution. Yet, historically, this has always been the case. This course will undertake a theoretical, conceptual and practical examination of alternative media by exploring various historical alternative media manifestations, including community video production, participatory and lo-fi radio, zines, tactical media, hacking, the open-source software movement, design justice and data activism. We will look at historical samplings, theorize, and explore some culturally specific examples of resistance, social activism and social movements. 

Media Research Laboratory (Dr. Antonia Hernandez)

This studio-based course incorporates theoretical, methodological, and aesthetic sources to help students inform their projects. Through a combination of hands-on exercises and critical discussions, we will explore ways to contextualize, develop, and effectively communicate creative research practices.

Winter 2025

Political Economy of Communication (Dr. Charles Acland)

This course begins by introducing students to foundational schools of thought in the political economic analysis of media and media industry studies. With a non-exclusive focus on film and television industries, we will consider the changing nature of capitalism, questions of media infrastructure, the role of the state, and the characteristics of democratic institutions. Our attention will be centred on the mechanisms that have constructed differential representation and positioning of diverse populations, along such vectors as nation, gender, and ethnicity. We will spend time with examples of media industry structures and policy documents to assess the various modes of political economic operations and their consequences for contemporary life.

Quantitative Research Methods (Dr. Stella Chia)

This course is designed to provide conceptual and methodological skills for quantitative research with a focus on issues in the production, diffusion, use, and impact of communication and media. Students are encouraged to develop research proposals using quantitative methods—survey, experiment, or a content analysis—to study online or offline media and communication in this class.

Past special topics

Below is a list of special topics classes that have been taught in our department.

Academic Recyclage: Creation/Research (Dr. Owen Chapman)

We will use a combination of theoretical and methodological readings and consider notions of mapping, bricolage (and recycling), obsolescence and the construction of academic knowledge. Assignments involve written and creative components, explored through means that are student-led.

Games And/As Research Creation (Dr. Mia Consalvo)

This course focuses on games through the lens of research-creation. Time will be spent investigating the evolution of research-creation (also known as arts-based research and creative making) as a recognized area of practice as well as the development of games as valid forms of entertainment, art, persuasion and catalysts for change. The course then investigates how we can (1) advance research (broadly defined) through the act of making games; (2) use games as tools for doing research; and (3) creatively present research through games.

Media Of The Anthropocene (Dr. Peter Van Wyck)

Image Wars (Dr. Jeremy Stolow)

How and why do some images become passionate objects of love and hate? How are struggles over images articulated with larger political, institutional, and cultural projects? This course explores these and other instances of ‘image wars’ in historical and cross-cultural context, addressing topics such as iconoclasm, blasphemy, censorship, the colonial gaze, monuments and public memory, the visualization of suffering and atrocity, and the operation of visual instruments within contexts of surveillance, policing, or war.

Urgencies & Everyday Survival (Dr. Arseli Dokumaci)

In these times called the Anthropocene, when and where the planet's resources are rapidly diminishing, and earthly destruction continue at rampant speeds and scales, there will be more epidemics, pandemics and more large-scale crises to come, and accordingly, a more urgent need for what Tsing et. al. call, "arts of living on a damaged planet". This course focuses on these urgencies of our times. Situating these urgencies as matters of scale, it investigates macro planetary destruction and micro acts of repair; cosmic environmental degradation and everyday survival skills; massive damage, and humble desires in tandem.

Democracy And Power (Dr. Alessandra Renzi)

This graduate seminar explores contemporary capitalism(s) with an eye to the complex nature of socio-technical transformations, algorithmic finance, and climate impact. The seminar exposes MA and PhD students to up-to-date studies of extraction economies, the intersections of biopolitics, race and technology, colonial geographies and economies, borders and mobilities, logistics, risk speculation and climate adaptation, algorithmic governance, and computational infrastructures.

AI and Algorithmic Cultures (Dr. Fenwick McKelvey)

Artificial intelligences, some form of it, unlock your phone, recommend what you watch next, write the stories you read, and monitor how you communicate. We already live with AI and this course opens a dialogue between human and machine intelligences. Drawing on posthuman and histories of computing, this course plays with AI’s multiplicities to encourage critical and constructivist interventions. Students learn AIs’ history, current debates as well as the technical basics to program with pre-trained AI models. Grounded in critical making and research creation, the class encourages creativity, collaboration, and experimentation.

Quantitative Research Methods (Dr. Stella Chia)

This course is designed to provide conceptual and methodological skills for quantitative research with a focus on issues in the production, diffusion, use, and impact of communication and media. Students are encouraged to develop research proposals using quantitative methods—survey, experiment, or a content analysis—to study online or offline media and communication in this class.

Game Studies: Theory & Research (Dr. Mia Consalvo)

This seminar explores fundamental questions of how and why we play games, both in times of crisis (past and present) as well as during “regular” everyday life. We will focus on a number of issues including how varying contexts shape play, how games structure meaning making, barriers to play, the evolution of games, and different approaches to how to study games and leisure.