Program Description

The BA program in media, society, and the arts 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 Studies
• Media Institutions and Forms
• Visual/Social Analysis: A Practicum or
  Media Ethnographies
• Critical Perspectives on Media, Society, and the Arts
• Two electives (at least 6 credits total)
• One course in art history (visual or performing) or media history (at least 3 credits)
• 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

Anthropology of Music and Sound
Computers and Culture
Film and Anthropology
Gender and Popular Culture in South Asia
Genres of Affect
Global Media, Local Cultures
Informal Economies
Internet as Public Art
Introduction to Ethnomusicology
Italian-American Literature and Popular Culture
Language, Culture, and Society
Locative Media: Place and Mobility
Los Angeles/Mumbai: Cinema City Cross-Culturally
Material Culture
Media Representations and Identity
Museum Anthropology
Outsider Art
Performing Arts in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Philosophy of Art: From Plato to Postmodernism
Queer Media Convergence
Riot Grrls and Radical Women
Special Topics in Media, Society, and the Arts
Theatre and Performance in Africa
Theories of Drama and Performance

Representative Alumni

• Kimberly Chandler ’04, project manager, Built by the Factory, and Greater Than One, full-service interactive marketing agencies in New York City
• Morgan Selkirk ’05, freelance photographer; owner, ML2 Photography, Philadelphia, Penn.
• Tommie-Ann Tavares ’05, manager of administration, HBO Inc.

For more information, please visit the media, society, and the arts program site.

Updated Dec. 13, 2012

Updates
Please direct updates for this page to the managing editor in the Office of the Provost and Academic Affairs. Because internal and external links may change or expire from time to time, please report any changed or broken links to the managing editor as well.