Spring, 2008 Course Description
06870 CMS 384K Communication and Ethnography
Dr. Madeline Maxwell
Tuesday 3:30-6:30 PM CMA A3.130
Language and communication are central to the methods, the final reports, and the data collected in a broad range of approaches -for example, observation and participant-observation, field notes, surveys, interviews of various kinds, textual analyses, and experimental interventions. How researchers engage with language and communication shapes the rigor and authenticity of their work. For ethnography, more than most research methods, language and communication are the final presentation of the study, so we will also consider communication in the writing of final papers, as well as the implications of performance ethnography, film ethnography, literary ethnography, and some other variations.
1. We will begin by situating the approaches to the study of ethnography, language and communication used in this course in relation to other research traditions and disciplines and discuss the prospects and problems for integrating these approaches in participants’ own work. A major tool of the class will be your own work. You will need to plunge into some setting or group or issue immediately and take field notes throughout the class so that you can apply what we are learning to your topic.
2. Micro-analysis. We start with Goffman, Gumperz, and Hymes as key influences on both what researchers do and what they are trying to learn. Key issues in these approaches are questions about identity in general and ethnicity and group membership in particular. Implications for data collection will be illustrated – observation vs. audio recordings vs. video recordings, interviews vs. observations, different levels of transcription and the analytic process of different kinds of interviews.
3. Multimodal analysis. We focus here on both theoretical claims for why researchers use multimodal approaches - ethnomethodology, ethnography, social and geo-semiotics, and cognitive psychology – and methods for organizing multimodal analysis. Issues of representation are huge, and we spend some time on the functions, conventions and ethical implications of different kinds of transcription and the role transcriptions play in the analytic process.
4. One of the distinguishing features of ethnography is that it includes as objects of study data from beyond the immediate event. That is, ethnography does not restrict itself to just what it sees or experiences in a slice of time and space. If anything and everything can find its way into a claim about data, how does what goes beyond the event rise to the status of data? 'Beyond the event can refer to multiple sites and nested sites (is a study conducted in Austin about "Americans" – a study in Tarrytown about "Austin"?). How much and how can one use history? Issues of power are often related as much to historical or larger social structures as to immediate events. How does one "find" these data and analyze them appropriately? How can the researcher use various kinds of texts and artifacts? Different perspectives on power (Fairclough, Bourdieu, Foucault) turn out to be key influences on how the researcher approaches an analysis.
Graded Assignments: (1.) lead a discussion on some reading, preparing discussion questions and illustrations. (2.) lead an interactive workshop on how he/she is analyzing some data, guiding the class through the theoretical, methodological & ethical issues implicated in the work. (3.) present an ethnography focusing on communication one week after the last class day. This paper must contain data from the field, description. of method, analysis, theory, and references. The emphasis is on analysis of data.
06875 CMS 386L Group Communication Process
Dr. Dawna Ballard
Thursday 3:30-6:30 PM CMA A3.130
This course focuses on the major concepts and theories of communicative processes in task-oriented groups and teams. It also expands beyond the traditional "small group" context to examine "communities of practice" as an important group/team context. To this end, we consider both the important theoretical underpinnings of this research tradition as well as the practical implications of working with groups and teams in organizations, especially cultivating communities of practice. Readings will cover theory and research related to communication problems, dynamics, and practices in group and team settings. Variable topics include group/team development, decision-making, knowledge-management, and trends in group communication research.
06880 CMS 386N Qualitative Research Methods
Dr. Loril Gossett
Wednesday 3:00-6:00 PM CMA A3.130
This course is designed to explore a variety of qualitative research approaches utilized in the communication studies discipline. We will read exemplars of research that illustrate particular epistemological and theoretical traditions (ethnography, discourse analysis, cultural studies, participant observation, etc) and discuss issues of ethics, writing style, and standards for interpretive “validity.” Students will also participate in a field research project that will build upon the methods discussed in class
06885 CMS 386P Advocacy
Dr. John Daly
Tuesday, Thursday 12:30-2:00 PM UTC 4.102
This course focuses on research and theory related to the very practical issue of how one "sells" ideas and themselves. Integrating topics in persuasion and marketing, the course reviews relevant theories and research on strategic interpersonal communication. This course is restricted to Communication Studies majors only.
07890 CMS 386R Communication in Relationships
Dr. Anita Vangelisti
Thursday 3:30-6:30 PM CMA A3.108
The course will focus on current research and theory in the area of Personal Relationships. Readings will cover such topics as the development of romantic relationships, relationships across the lifespan, the influence of individual differences on personal relationships, relationship processes, and threats to close relationships. Special emphasis will be placed on theory development and methodology for studying personal relationships.
06895 CMS 390N Politics and Media
Dr. Sharon Jarvis
Monday 3:00-6:00 PM CMA A3.108
This course studies the opportunities for political life in a country that receives much of its information from television and, increasingly, from the “new media” as well. There are two sets of objectives for our time together.
Intellectually, we will ask a series of questions, including: What roles do the media play in the American body politic? How is news produced and what sets of actors contribute to this production? How does the construction and distribution of news create and constrain opportunities for democratic politics? How have developments in information technologies affected the dissemination of news and understandings of politics? and What are some of the most compelling questions for future research in this field?
Professionally, we will engage in a series of tasks to prepare ourselves for future careers in research and university life. To this end, all students will (1) produce a research paper on the topic of politics and the media, (2) write critical reviews of peer research, and (3) present research projects at the end of the seminar. Throughout this course we will focus on professional opportunities and obligations, and seminar time will be devoted to the steps of conducting and presenting research, as well as preparing it for publication.
06900 CMS 390R Engaging Postmodern Rhetoric
Dr. Dana Cloud
Tuesday 3:30-6:30 PM CMA A3.108
This course surveys major theorists of "postmodernity" whose work has influenced rhetorical theory and criticism. These may include Michel Foucault (History of Sexuality, others), Frederick Jameson (Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism), David Harvey (Condition of Postmodernity, The Limits to Capital), Michael Hardt and Toni Negri (Empire and Multitude), Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (Hegemony and Socialist Strategy), Laclau (On Populist Reason), Gayatri Spivak (In Other Worlds), Judith Butler (Undoing Gender), Slavoj Zizek (The Ticklish Subject, The Parallax View), Butler, Laclau & Zizek (Contingency, Hegemony, Universality), Alain Badiou (Being and Event), Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus, Difference and Repetition), and no doubt others. We will read parts or all of these major works and corresponding rhetorical theory that has incorporated this material. Finally, we will consider critics of the “posts” including Terry Eagleton (After Theory) and critics of particular authors, and the debates in rhetorical and cultural studies over the political and critical stakes of the postmodern turn. Students will be required to explore the possibilities and limits of a theory of their choice through a grounded rhetorical case study.
06897 CMS 390P Rhetoric and the German Tradition
Dr. John Rodden
Thursday 7-10 PM and 3 additional hours per week to be arranged (course last meeting day will be Thursday, March 6, 2008) PAR 305
This course combines rhetorical analysis, the history of ideas, and cultural history, as it surveys the German intellectual tradition stretching from the Enlightenment to the post-modern era. We begin with German Idealism, in the works of Kant and Hegel, and proceed to look at diverse schools and movements that are indebted to those thinkers and developed in the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. Separate units will be devoted to German phenomenology and existentialism; postwar West German formalism, psychoanalysis in both its classical and revisionist forms; and Marxism and neo-Marxism, including the work of the Frankfurt School. We will examine the rhetorical strategies, modes of argumentation, and immediate audience of the authors covered.
