Note: This list of Recommended Courses offered at UC Berkeley is based upon available information and is not intended to be comprehensive. To suggest changes or additions, please contact:
BCNM Associate Director
Aaron Fai
afai@berkeley.edu
Graduate courses
NWMEDIA 200 001, 4 units
History and Theory of New Media
A. De Kosnik
This course provides a broad historical and theoretical background for new media production and practice. The class will map out theoretical approaches from different disciplines and allow graduate students to discuss and apply them to their own research projects.
NWMEDIA C203 001, 4 units
Critical Making
E. Paulos
Critical Making will operationalize and critique the practice of “making” through both foundational literature and hands-on studio culture. As hybrid practitioners, students will develop fluency in readily collaging and incorporating a variety of physical materials and protocols into their practice. With design research as a lens, students will envision and create future computational experiences that critically explore social and culturally relevant technological themes such as community, privacy, environment, education, economics, energy, food, biology, democracy, activism, healthcare, social justice, etc.
While no previous technical knowledge is required to take this course, class projects will involve basic programing, electronic circuitry, and digital fabrication design. While tutorials and instruction will be provided, students will be expected to develop basic skills in each of these areas in order to complete the course projects. The course will result in a final public show of student work.
NWMEDIA C265, 3 units
Interface Aesthetics
K. Ryokai
This course will cover new interface metaphors beyond desktops (e.g., for mobile devices, computationally enhanced environments, tangible user interfaces) but will also cover visual design basics (e.g., color, layout, typography, iconography) so that we have systematic and critical understanding of aesthetically engaging interfaces. Students will get a hands-on learning experience on these topics through course projects, design critiques, and discussions, in addition to lectures and readings.
NWMEDIA 290 003 / GEOG 253 001, 4 units
Special Topics in New Media: New Media Cities
E. Fraser
This course focuses on “new media cities” – real and imagined. From the early metaphors of the internet, to the technologically mediated smart city; from the city form as a media technology, to techno-imaginaries of future cities, this course asks students to engage with the significance of new media in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries, and the city as a new-media-oriented space. We will look at cities in video games; architectural design and modeling; spaces of new media art; online worlds and virtual communities; digital archives; urban simulations, and other new media contexts. Students will have the opportunity to research and imagine their own new media cities, as well as developing critical interdisciplinary awareness of new media and media studies, urban studies, cultural and digital geographies, game studies, and associated fields.
NWMEDIA 290 004, 4 units
Special Topics in New Media: Critical Spatial Visualisation - Dimension, Representation, Mapping, Digitalities
C. Wilmott
This course introduces graduate students to the basic concepts of spatial visualisation from a critical, situated and political perspective, across both theory and practice. With the proliferation of multi-dimensional in-browser tools to visualize across multiple dimensions, pathways have been opened up to push previously established limits of digital knowledge production and epistemic justice. Critical Spatial Visualization revisits the interrogations of digital epistemologies taken by scholars from Indigenous, anti-colonial, black, queer and feminist perspectives to ask if, and how, these new technologies might open up alternative possibilities for critical and situated representational practices, and what new limits have arisen?
This course is designed for graduate students interested in the practice of coding and digital representation as well as theoretical critique. Alongside discussion of theoretical texts in the field, students will co-learn 3D javascript and web development. There is no technical pre-requisite for the course - all are welcome.
NWMEDIA 290 005 / HIST 280S, 4 units
Special Topics in New Media: History of Silicon Valley
H. Zeavin
NWMEDIA 290 006 / HIST 285D, 4 units
Special Topics in New Media: Dissertation Chapter Workshop
H. Zeavin
ARCH 249, 2 units
Special Topics in the Physical Environment in Buildings: User-Centric Design and Virtual Presence in Immersive Environments
L. Caldas
The course addresses theoretical approaches as well as technical implementations and human subject experiments related to human-centric design and virtual presence in immersive environments. Based on ongoing or recent research topics developed at the XR Lab, the class will discuss the potential of immersive technologies such as virtual, augmented and mixed reality to improve access and equity across different constituents and population groups. Topics addressed may include:
• Patient-centric design in healthcare: Application of virtual reality and biometrics to the design of pediatric healthcare facilities.
• Social VR: Understanding human interaction in multi-user shared virtual environments with simplified distributed biometrics.
• The body as Interface: Modes of interaction in immersive environments.
• Participatory design in immersive virtual environments: Leveraging augmented reality for preference-based user feedback and equitable design.
• Immersive design for climate: Selected applications of virtual and augmented reality.
ART 301, 1 unit
The Teaching of Art: Practice
A. Kazmi
MFA course utilizing aspects of pedagogical and andragogical teaching, the interactive lecture, collaborative learning, simulations, and brainstorming-freewriting, this semester-long seminar will focus on these various integrative teaching approaches, to facilitate communication in the diverse and wide-ranging arena which is fine arts today. Discussion of course aims, instructional methods, grading standards, and special problems in the teaching of art practice.
CYPLAN 238, 5 units
Development—Design Studio
B. Metcalf
Studio experience in analysis, policy advising, and project design or general plan preparation for urban communities undergoing development, with a focus on site development and project planning.
FILM 240, 4 units
Graduate Topics in Film: Epistemologies of the Global
I. Cortez
Selected topics in the study of film.
INFO 201, 3 units
Research Design and Applications for Data and Analysis
M. Rivera
This course introduces students to the data sciences landscape, focusing on learning how to apply data science techniques to uncover, enrich, and answer the questions you will encounter and originate in the industry. After an introduction to data science and an overview of the course, students will explore decision-making in organizations and big data's emerging role in guiding tactical and strategic decisions. Lectures, readings, discussions, and assignments will teach how to apply disciplined, creative methods to ask better questions, gather data, interpret results, and convey findings to various audiences in ways that change minds and behaviors.
INFO 203, 3 units
Social Issues of Information
M. Ames
This course is designed to be an introduction to the topics and issues associated with information and information technology and its role in society. Throughout the semester we will consider both the consequence and impact of technologies on social groups and on social interaction and how society defines and shapes the technologies that are produced. Students will be exposed to a broad range of applied and practical problems, theoretical issues, as well as methods used in social scientific analysis. The four sections of the course are: 1) theories of technology in society, 2) information technology in workplaces 3) automation vs. humans, and 4) networked sociability.
INFO 205, 3 units
Information Law and Policy
D. Mulligan
This course uses examples from various commercial domains—retail, health, credit, entertainment, social media, and biosensing/quantified self—to explore legal and ethical issues including freedom of expression, privacy, research ethics, consumer protection, information and cybersecurity, and copyright. The class emphasizes how existing legal and policy frameworks constrain, inform, and enable the architecture, interfaces, data practices, and consumer facing policies and documentation of such offerings; and, fosters reflection on the ethical impact of information and communication technologies and the role of information professionals in legal and ethical work.
INFO 230, 3 units
Cultural Analytics: Theories and Methods
T. Tangherlini
This course introduces Cultural Analytics, an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Data Science. Students explore how computational methods and digital archives are used to study culture across time and scale. Emphasis is placed on multiscale analysis—from close reading to distant reading—and on ethical, responsible engagement with large-scale cultural data. The course addresses challenges of data validity, the role of collaboration across disciplines, and the societal impact of cultural analytics, including its use in heritage preservation and disaster response. Students gain both technical tools and critical frameworks for studying culture in the digital age.
INFO 233, 3 units
Social Psychology and Information Technology
C. Cheshire
Discusses application of social psychological theory and research to information technologies and systems; we focus on sociological social psychology, which largely focuses on group processes, networks, and interpersonal relationships. Information technologies considered include software systems used on the internet such as social networks, email, and social games, as well as specific hardware technologies such as mobile devices, computers, wearables, and virtual/augmented reality devices. We examine human communication practices, through the lens of different social psychology theories, including: symbolic interaction, identity theories, social exchange theory, status construction theory, and social networks and social structure theory.
INFO 247, 3 units
Information Visualization and Presentation
M. Hearst
The design and presentation of digital information. Use of graphics, animation, sound, visualization software, and hypermedia in presenting information to the user. Methods of presenting complex information to enhance comprehension and analysis. Incorporation of visualization techniques into human-computer interfaces. Course must be completed for a letter grade to fulfill degree requirements.
INFO 253B, 3 units
Back-End Web Architecture
O. Segun Ashaolu
This course is a survey of web technologies that are used to build back-end systems that enable rich web applications. Utilizing technologies such as Python, Flask, Docker, RDBMS/NoSQL databases, and Spark, this class aims to cover the foundational concepts that drive the web today. This class focuses on building APIs using micro-services that power everything from content management systems to data engineering pipelines that provide insights by processing large amounts of data. The goal of this course is to provide an overview of the technical issues surrounding back-end systems today, and to provide a solid and comprehensive perspective of the web's constantly evolving landscape.
JOURN 215, 3 units
Multimedia Skills
J. Sanchez Rue
This class teaches the fundamentals of using digital video, audio, and photo equipment, as well as editing digital files. The class is designed to expose students to what it is like to report in a multimedia environment. While primarily for students taking new media publishing courses, the class will be valuable to any student who wants to better prepare for the emerging convergence of broadcast, print, and web media.
JOURN 216, 2-3 units
Multimedia Reporting
J. Sanchez Rue, J. Darren Harden
For journalists, the World Wide Web opens a powerful way to tell stories by combining text, video, audio, still photos, graphics, and interactivity. Students learn multimedia-reporting basics, how the web is changing journalism, and its relationship to democracy and community. Students use storyboarding techniques to construct nonlinear stories; they research, report, edit, and assemble two story projects.
JOURN 219 003, 1-2 units
Mini-Special Topics
TBA
A mini course is a four to ten-week intensive workshop designed to accompany and enhance other courses in the program. Workshop topics vary from semester to semester, but have included: Associate Producer, Sports Reporting, FOIA Reporting, Foreign Reporting, Bias and Journalism, Social Media, Sound Design and the Journalist as Freelancer.
JOURN 220, 3 units
Coding for Journalists
J. Sanchez Rue
This course is an introduction to programming concepts as they relate to the journalism industry. The goal of this course is to equip students with a foundational technical literacy to construct interactive online stories such as data visualizations, infographics, maps, multimedia packages, games or innumerable other types of projects students may conceive.
JOURN 222, 3 units
Interactive Narratives
TBA
This class teaches students how to develop interactive online news packages using best practices in design and web development. The course focuses on story structure and production of content and will cover the following topics: Best practices in developing interactive multimedia stories online; Design fundamentals and typography for online content; HTML and CSS for designing and constructing web projects; jQuery coding for adding interactivity to online content.
Study of the history and institutions of broadcast journalism (nine weeks), practice, techniques of reporting news for radio and television.
LDARCH 200B, 6 units
Case Studies in Landscape Design
A. DuSolier
This studio stresses the shaping and coordination of ideas from initial concept to complete design product. A product(s) of intermediate scale and complexity (such as a garden, small park, plaza, or campus courtyard) will be developed in detail including the selection of planting, selection of construction materials, and topographic design.
MECENG 292C, 3units
Advanced Special Topics in Design: Human–AI Design Methods
K. Goucher-Lambert
This course provides hands-on experience in developing innovative, customer-driven products, services, and systems through the integration of human-centered and AI-augmented design methods. Organized around four design phases (1) Identify, (2) Understand, (3) Conceptualize, and (4) Realize, students work in teams on a semester-long project that blends design research, creativity, prototyping, and communication. Each phase includes AI Expeditions, where students conduct experiments and investigations that explore the capabilities, limits, and implications of generative and analytical AI in design, and shorter AI Treks, which build focused technical and creative skills. The course emphasizes collaborative, real-world practice and critical reflection on the technical, ethical, and social implications of AI in design. Industry mentors and researchers join as coaches and guest speakers
PBHLTH 204A, 3 units
Mass Communications in Public Health
L. Elizabeth Dorfman
Examines the role of mass communication in advancing public health goals. Reviews mass media theories in general, and theories of the news media in particular. Provides an in-depth understanding of media advocacy as a strategy for using news media and paid advertising to support policy initiatives at the local, state, and federal levels. Examples are drawn from a wide range of public health issues.
PUBPOL 290 005, 3 units
Special Topics in Public Policy: Public Policy Data Lab
D. Davenport
This course brings students together as a product team to apply data science and analytics skills to nonprofit and academic research projects. Students gain hands-on experience working with real-world data, using both foundational and advanced techniques—such as machine learning, data engineering, and online experiments—to generate actionable insights and solutions.
Graduate students with backgrounds or interests in data science, along with select advanced undergraduates, will tackle challenges in predictive modeling, data visualization, and more. Through structured problem-solving and peer collaboration, this clinic-style course equips students with valuable skills in managing stakeholder expectations, using data ethically, and translating complex analytics into practical strategies for social good.
STS C250, 3 units
Science and Technology Studies Research Seminar
H. Schmidt
This course will cover methods and approaches for students considering professionalizing in the field of STS, including a chance for students to workshop written work.
Undergraduate courses
NWMEDIA 198, 2 units
Building a Sustainable Internet
M. Brand, M. Tisopulos, S. Schaupp
When we think of the internet, we picture scrolling through social media, binge-watching Netflix, or dealing with lag while using campus wifi. But behind the scenes are the digital infrastructures that power our online lives—and their environmental impact. In this class, we'll dive into those critical systems, explore their hidden environmental costs, tackle pressing issues of social equity around who gets access, and examine how international politics impacts development and sustainability efforts. We'll also look at new technologies and policies that could make the internet more sustainable and equitable for everyone. If you're passionate about shaping a better digital future, this class is for you! We value interdisciplinary perspectives and interests ranging anywhere from environmental science, media studies, political science, engineering, to ethnic studies.
ANTHRO C146 / ART C179, 4 units
Mobile City Chronicles
G. Niemeyer
Information and data technologies are remaking human society. If left to corporate and state remodeling, de-democratization and polarization seem likely outcomes in this new world of algorithmic life. Are there alternatives? In this course, students learn to develop other possibilities that generate more civically engaged, transparent, and sovereign data streams. This is a lab-based course. Projects will address how data could operate in civic spaces to increase direct democratic agency in local lives.
ART 8, 4 units
Introduction to Visual Thinking
A. Kazmi
A first course in the language, processes, and media of visual art. Course work will be organized around weekly lectures and studio problems that will introduce students to the nature of art making and visual thinking. This course is a prerequisite for applying to the Art Practice major.
ART 163, 4 units
Social Practice: Critical Site and Context
J. Miller
Social Practice broadly refers to work produced through various forms of direct engagement with a site, social system or collaborator. Interdisciplinary in nature, such work often takes the form of guerilla interventions, performance, institutional critique, community based public art and political activity, all sharing the premise that art created in the public sphere can help alter public perception and work toward social transformation.
ART 171, 4 units
Video Projects
J. McReath
This course develops more advanced technical and conceptual skills, with focused attention on the pre- and post-production practices of writing and production design as well as image and sound editing. Class meetings include technical workshops, studio work, individual and class critique, and discussion of readings and screened course materials. Course projects vary in focus depending upon instructor; areas of emphasis may include: video in performance practices; video for sculptural installation; and social activist video.
COMPSCI 10, 4 units
The Beauty and Joy of Computing
D. Garcia
This course is an introduction to the beauty and joy of computing, including the history, social implications, great principles, and future of computing. Beautiful applications that have changed the way we look at the world, how computing empowers discovery and progress in other fields, and the relevance of computing to the student and society will be emphasized. Students will learn the joy of programming a computer using a friendly, graphical language, and will complete a substantial team programming project related to their interests.
COMPSCI 184, 4 units
Foundations of Computer Graphics
J. O'Brien
Techniques of modeling objects for the purpose of computer rendering: boundary representations, constructive solids geometry, hierarchical scene descriptions. Mathematical techniques for curve and surface representation. Basic elements of a computer graphics rendering pipeline; architecture of modern graphics display devices. Geometrical transformations such as rotation, scaling, translation, and their matrix representations. Homogeneous coordinates, projective and perspective transformations. Algorithms for clipping, hidden surface removal, rasterization, and anti-aliasing. Scan-line based and ray-based rendering algorithms. Lighting models for reflection, refraction, transparency.
COMPSCI 188, 4 units
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
S. Russell
Ideas and techniques underlying the design of intelligent computer systems. Topics include search, game playing, knowledge representation, inference, planning, reasoning under uncertainty, machine learning, robotics, perception, and language understanding.
DATA C8, 4 units
Foundations of Data Science
J. DeNero
Foundations of data science from three perspectives: inferential thinking, computational thinking, and real-world relevance. Given data arising from some real-world phenomenon, how does one analyze that data so as to understand that phenomenon? The course teaches critical concepts and skills in computer programming and statistical inference, in conjunction with hands-on analysis of real-world datasets, including economic data, document collections, geographical data, and social networks. It delves into social and legal issues surrounding data analysis, including issues of privacy and data ownership.
DESINV 23, 3 units
Creative Programming and Electronics
S. Tewari
This course teaches techniques to conceptualize, design and prototype interactive objects. Students will learn core interaction design principles and learn how to program devices with and without screens, basic circuit design and construction for sensing and actuation, and debugging. Students work individually on fundamental concepts and skills, then form teams to work on an open-ended design project that requires a synthesis of the different techniques covered. This course may be used to fulfill undergraduate technical elective requirements for some College of Engineering majors; students should refer to their Engineering Student Services advisors for more details.
EDUC W140A, 4 units
The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World
G. Hull
This course combines theory and practice in the study of literacy and development. It will introduce sociocultural educational theory and research focused especially on literacy teaching and learning, and this literature will be examined in practice through participation in after-school programs. In addition, the course will contribute to an understanding of how literacy is reflected in race, culture, and ethnicity in the United States and how these symbolic systems shift in a digital world.
FILM 20, 4 units
Film and Media Theory
J. Coppola
This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power.
FILM 35, 4 units
Digital Media Studies
J. Gaboury
This introductory course offers a comprehensive overview of digital media and its influence on culture, communication, and society. Students will explore key concepts, theories, and debates in the field of digital media studies, including topics such as social media, digital labor, online identity, algorithmic influence, and media convergence. Through interdisciplinary readings, case studies, and hands-on activities, students will learn how digital technologies shape our daily lives and influence everything from politics and entertainment to education and relationships. By the end of the course, students will have developed a foundational understanding of digital media theory and practice, as well as the tools to critically evaluate and engage with digital content across platforms.
FILM 135, 4 units
Experimental and Alternative Media Art
J. Mackris
This course is a survey of the history and aesthetics of experimental and alternative media forms and practices situating them in relation to the larger art historical, social and intellectual contexts from which they arise.
FILM 145 001, 4 units
Global Media: Global Queer Cinema
I. Cortez
This course explores how queer cinema is mutually articulated with the contested notion of the global. In what ways does queerness help us to imagine a different world order? And how might post-colonial critique, diasporic thought, and analyses of neoliberal globalization reframe the conditioning parameters for queer politics?
FILM 145 002, 4 units
Global Media: Italian Cinema and the Ecological Imagination
R. Welch
Understood, variously, as magical, dreamlike, a ghostly projection, ‘writing with light,’ moving images often appear to us as an ephemeral, immaterial form. And yet, cinematic production, distribution, and consumption have always relied upon natural resource extraction, petrochemicals, and biohazards that have lasting, material effects on the landscapes and bodies behind the scenes and projected onscreen. Cinema thus both makes and marks worlds, indelibly. This course explores a selection of films made in and around Italy beginning in the 1950s that engage the ecological imagination as they intersect with human and more-than-human worlds—from volcanoes to goat birth and death, from air pollution to toxic waste dumps. Films by: Vittorio De Seta, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gillo Pontecorvo, Alice Rohrwacher, Cecilia Mangini, Giovanna Taviani, and Michele Frammartino. Readings by: Erika Balsom, Laura Di Bianco, Nadia Bozak, Melody Jue, Elena Past, Karen Pinkus, and Monica Seger.
FILM 145 003, 4 units
Global Media: Mexican Cinema
L. Madrigal
This course is interested in national cinema as an object of historical study, as a site of cultural production that translates into images and sound a scale of values and a series of political-affective ideas that change over time. Through a journey across key works from Mexico’s cinematography, from the so-called "Golden Age" (1932-1955) to the present, the course seeks to expand what we know —or think we know— about contemporary Mexico based on how its films have dealt with issues such as difference (class, gender, regional or racial), modernization, violence, inequality, love, or the nation. This survey will allow us to trace breaks and continuities through different genres: from westerns to melodramas, from political thrillers to dark comedies, from historical dramas to documentaries.
FILM 155, 4 units
Media Technologies: Histories of Big Data - From Digital Cinematography to AI
J. Coppola
“Big Data” is both our present and future. It’s allegedly the new oil, the new resource to be extracted, and key to the economic structures of government, business, and culture. This course will help you develop the critical tools to interrogate and explore the impact of data and technology on society, media, and art. While these technologies can undoubtedly improve our lives, they also continually perpetuate racial hierarchy, economic inequality, and environmental injustice. We will explore the impact (or not) of “Big Data” on questions of cinematic and visual representation, on conceptions of authorship and originality, and on labor and production. By the end of the class, students will learn practical skills like using tools of aesthetic analysis, reading a court case, and writing across different genres for diverse audiences. Students are encouraged to write on a variety of topics including digital cinematography, authorship in the age of artificial intelligence, and how audiences perform unpaid labor.
GEOG 103, 4 units
Virtual Worlds: Games, Play and Geography
E. Fraser
Through the critical study of games, play, and virtual worlds, this course examines the importance of geographical concepts to historical and current gaming contexts. Our media consumption practices are part of an increasingly ‘ludic’ culture centred on play, digital gaming, and interactive media. As video games become increasingly mainstream, how can we best contextualize the significance of play in relation geographical concepts like landscape, power, space and place, and environment and ecology? How can the geographical study of cities, architecture, worlding and identity – through games and play – help students understand more about their own digital experiences, and the centrality of geography to everyday digital life?
GEOG 127, 4 units
Geographic Film Production
J. Wanek
What makes a film geographical? How can we explore humans’ relationships to their environment through sound and image? How might we make nonfiction films which foreground place and give it actual agency and voice? How can we use documentary film practices to depict place, culture, society, gesture, movement, rhythm and flow in new and exciting ways? This is a production workshop where each student will conceptualize, shoot, and edit one short documentary film project that centralizes some aspect/s of geographic thought. This course is geared towards first time filmmakers. All film projects must fit the theme designated by the instructor, per term.
GLOBAL 110K, 3 units
Africa in Global Context
N. Schimmel
This course will provide students majoring in Global Studies with an introduction to Africa and its significance to the globe. We will address issues related to Africa that span all three concentrations of the major (Society and Culture, Development, Peace and Conflict). In particular, we will focus on the following four themes:conflict, identity, development and technology.
LEGALST 149, 4 units
Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship
B. Salama
Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly essential role in today’s global economy. New companies and startups play valuable roles in the formation of new industry, also spurring established incumbent companies towards further growth. This course is designed to explore the role of law in facilitating the development of entrepreneurial enterprises, paying special attention to the complex interaction between innovation and regulation. The purpose of this course is to provide students with a thorough foundation for understanding the role that law plays in the construction and growth of entrepreneurial enterprises.
MEDIAST 10, 4 units
Introduction to Media Studies
J. Jackson
The objective of this class is to enhance students' knowledge of media's industrial and cultural functions by introducing them to key perspectives and methods of study that stress a) how media systems have and continue to develop in the United States and across the globe as well as b) how we use and make meaning with media as part of our everyday lived experiences. To consider media's social, economic, political, and cultural impact, the course will investigate a number of ways of understanding its production, form, reception, and influence, being careful to recognize how these approaches relate to each other and to a wide array of diverse case studies in television, film, recorded music, print, video games, and online.
MEDIAST 111C, 4 units
Audio-Visual Media History
M. Berry
This course covers the modern global history of audiovisual media forms, with a focus on interactions between new media technologies and emerging modern power structures. We will examine how and why historical agents responded to, made use of, and tried to regulate emerging representational technologies such as painting, printed images and etchings, maps, the theater, panoramas, photography, the telephone, phonography, radio, television, MP3s, JPGs, and digital video. Lectures will consider the impact of specific media technologies on the historical representation and mobilization of religion, race, class, and nationality, as well as the branding and advertisement of consumer commodities.
MEDIAST 112, 4 units
Media Theories and Processes
M. Berry
This course will familiarize you with the often-contentious history of media theory. At issue among scholars working within different theoretical and research traditions are core disagreements about what should be studied (institutions, texts, audiences, and/or technologies) and how media should be studied (for applied, “practical” purposes or with an eye that is critical of power and institutional structures). Course readings and lectures stress an understanding of these various research traditions by focusing on the cultural, historical, political, and social contexts surrounding them, the research models and methods used, and the findings and conclusions reached.
MEDIAST 113, 4 units
Media and Democracy
M. Rani JHA
An interdisciplinary examination of the role and power of media for civic engagement and state-public interactions.
MEDIAST 114, 4 units
Media and Globalization
I. Kivelin Davis
This course offers an introduction to media and globalization. We will examine global media industries (film, television, music, news, advertising, diplomacy, new media, etc.), and explore content produced within these industries through specific case studies. Topics include Bollywood, Hallyu, television format sales, non western news, media imperialism, the globalization of popular cultures, diasporic communities, and global representation. The class reviews theories and histories of media globalization before turning to case studies to learn about the political and cultural roles of media in globalization processes.
MEDIAST 168, 4 units
Cybernetics and Cybercultures: The Psychosocial Impact of Digital Media
M. Berry
How have the realities and representations of digital media affected how we think, feel, and interact? What impulses, events, and personalities gave rise to the relentless digitization of information, choice, and even life itself?
SOCIOL 160, 4 units
Sociology of Culture
J. Bakehorn
This survey course studies human meaning systems, particularly as manifested in art, literature, music, and other media. It includes study of the production, reception, and aesthetic experience of cultural forms.
SOCIOL 166, 4 units
Society and Technology
L. Huang
This course studies the interaction between society and technologies in a comparative and multicultural perspective. Some topics covered include the relationship between technology and human society; technology, culture and values; technology in the new global economy; development and inequality; electronic democracy; how technology has transformed work and employment; and the challenges of technological progress and the role that society plays in addressing these challenges.
SOCIOL 167, 4 units
Virtual Communities/Social Media
J. Klett
With the advent of virtual communities and online social networks, old questions about the meaning of human social behavior have taken on renewed significance. Using a variety of online social media simultaneously, and drawing upon theoretical literature in a variety of disciplines, this course delves into discourse about community across disciplines. This course will enable students to establish both theoretical and experiential foundations for making decisions and judgments regarding the relations between mediated communication and human community.
THEATER 100, 3 units
From Imagination to Innovation: Activating creativity for transformational change
L. Wymore
This is a project-based class in collaborative innovation where students experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the class involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.
UGBA 190T 001, 003, 2 units
Special Topics in Innovation and Design
L. Wymore, D. Rochlin, M. Somma
Advanced study in the fields of innovation and design that will address current and emerging issues. Topics will vary with each offering and will be announced at the beginning of each term.
For more information or to suggest changes or additions, please contact
BCNM Associate Director
Aaron Fai:
afai@berkeley.edu