COMM 126 - Visual Research Methods

Prerequisites
COMM 002 and COMM 125, or permission of the chair.

This course introduces students to analytical and interpretative methods for understanding visual and media culture within a communication and cultural studies context. Students will explore the ways in which a variety of media - comics, art, television, video, cinema, and the Internet - can serve as the basis for qualitative, rhetorical, and textual forms of research practice. At the completion of the course, students will have demonstrated a working knowledge of a range of research methods and will have applied their knowledge to images from several different media. As a culminating experience, students will produce a paper or project that makes use of a particular approach to interpreting visual and media-based research materials. Each class session will present students with a specific visual research method and will apply this method to various forms of media. In addition, the basic technical skills of media pre-production, production, postproduction, and analysis will be taught with the objective of understanding the role of rigorous research and theoretical grounding in the production process.

Course credits: 1