Fall 2019 - CMNS 452 D100

Race and the Media (4)

Class Number: 3496

Delivery Method: In Person

Overview

  • Course Times + Location:

    Sep 3 – Dec 2, 2019: Tue, 11:30 a.m.–2:20 p.m.
    Burnaby

  • Prerequisites:

    75 units including one of CMNS 202 (or 262), 220, 221, 223 (or 223W), and at least two CMNS upper division courses.

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Examines the contemporary construction and maintenance of race and ethnicity, through movies, music, and the Internet. Provides grounding in scholarship on media, race, ethnicity, and identity. Explores the historical role of entertainment in racialization. Investigates contemporary issues and forms of media and race. Students who have taken CMNS 486 with subtitle "Race and the Media" cannot take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

Overview:

Media and popular culture are key sites of struggle over the representation of race and ethnicity. Film, television, news, music, video games, and other communicative media saturate our everyday lives and social institutions and act as “educators”, delivering images and narratives that inform our social identities and understandings of other social groups. For these reasons, nondominant groups have continually sought access to spaces and technologies of media production and dissemination in order to produce media texts that complicate and challenge dominant racial discourses and representations, and to more meaningfully depict the concerns of these groups.

This course uses Indigenous media as a focal point and case study to examine these issues. Through readings, discussions, screenings, and assignments, students will examine the cultural category of Indigenous media, from the history of images of “the Indian” constructed by Hollywood and anthropology that Indigenous media practitioners grapple with and contest, to the cultural and political theorization of “Indigenous media”, before investigating the different forms of Indigenous production. Students will be grounded in scholarship on Indigeneity, race, and ethnicity, and develop a critical vocabulary to discuss these topics. We will also examine how race intersects with other axes of identity in mediated representation, including gender and sexuality. Students will apply screenings and readings to their own experiences, and build on this material in the development of their own unique research projects.

Grading

  • Seminar Participation (Individual) 25%
  • Seminar Leadership (Group) 15%
  • Paper Proposal 20%
  • Final Paper 40%
  • *To be confirmed in class

NOTES:

The school expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy S10.01 with respect to Academic Integrity, and Policies S10.02, S10.03 and S10.04 as regards Student Discipline.  [Note: as of May 1, 2009 the previous T10 series of policies covering Intellectual Honesty (T10.02) and Academic Discipline (T10.03) have been replaced with the new S10 series of policies.]

REQUIREMENTS:

A minimum CMNS CGPA of 2.25 and overall CGPA of 2.00, and approval as a communication student is required for entry into most communication upper division courses.

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

Required readings will be available as PDF documents on the CMNS 452 Canvas webpage under “Files”.

Registrar Notes:

SFU’s Academic Integrity web site http://www.sfu.ca/students/academicintegrity.html is filled with information on what is meant by academic dishonesty, where you can find resources to help with your studies and the consequences of cheating.  Check out the site for more information and videos that help explain the issues in plain English.

Each student is responsible for his or her conduct as it affects the University community.  Academic dishonesty, in whatever form, is ultimately destructive of the values of the University. Furthermore, it is unfair and discouraging to the majority of students who pursue their studies honestly. Scholarly integrity is required of all members of the University. http://www.sfu.ca/policies/gazette/student/s10-01.html

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: YOUR WORK, YOUR SUCCESS