Program Description

The Media, Society, and the Arts BA Program combines social science theory and methodology with studio training in the arts. Our students explore the complex and fascinating relationships that exist among media, society, and the arts, including how various institutions and forms of art and media relate to one another, as well as the role of the artist and media professional in today’s society.

Students who choose to emphasize visual arts forms like video, film, or photography may use these media either as methodological tools for expanding a discipline in the social sciences or as substantive areas of inquiry in their own right. Alternatively, students who choose to emphasize dance, music, or theatre arts relate these performing art forms to social inquiry.

While our students share certain coursework in common, they can also integrate their own interest in a particular form of art or media with rigorous work in the social sciences.

Program Faculty

Requirements for the Major

• Introduction to Media, Society, and the Arts
• One course in art history (visual or performing) or media history (at least 3 credits)
• Critical Perspectives on Media, Society, and the Arts
• Visual/Social Analysis: A Practicum or
  Media Ethnographies
• Two electives (at least 6 credits total)
• Two or three courses in studio art and/or media production (at least 6 credits total)
• Senior Project in Media, Society, and the Arts

Representative Elective Courses

Film and Anthropology
Performing Arts in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Drugs, Bodies, Design
Media Representations and Identity
Media Ethnographies
Global Media, Local Cultures
Theatre and Performance in Africa
Anthropology of Art and Aesthetics
Gender and Popular Culture in South Asia
Theories of Drama and Performance
Riot Grrls and Radical Women
Queer Media Convergence
Special Topics in Media, Society, and the Arts
Italian-American Literature and Popular Culture
Basic Visual Literacy
Internet as Public Art
Philosophy of Art: From Plato to Postmodernism
Computers and Culture
Mass Media and Society

Representative Alumni

• Kimberly Chandler ’04, project manager, Greater Than One, an independent, full-service digital marketing agency
• Morgan Selkirk ’05, freelance photographer; owner, ML2 Photography
• Tommie-Ann Tavares ’05, manager of administration, HBO

For more information, visit the Media, Society and the Arts site in Academic Programs.

Updated May 8, 2009