Fall 2020 Graduate Course Offerings

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. SHARON JARVIS

CMS 081M 07535

CLASS SIZE = 15

 

This course was created in 2000, driven by graduate student input. It has taken several forms over the years. Consistent goals, however, have been to (1) introduce incoming graduate students to their cohort, other graduate students, the faculty, the department, the college and the university and (2) socialize incoming graduate students to professional expectations and issues associated with the department and careers involving research.

 

TEXTBOOKS:

There are required and supplemental readings for this class, all posted to our Canvas site. Throughout the course, we will be encouraging you to focus on the readings—including academic articles, scholarly blogs, higher education news outlets, academic list-serves, and social media accounts that seem most relevant for your interests. 

 

Restricted to first-year Communication Studies graduate students.

---

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. RENÉ DAILEY

CMS 386N 07543

CLASS SIZE = 12

 

This course is designed to provide an overview of the basic methodological designs and analytic techniques associated with social scientific approaches to communication research. More specifically, we will be examining hypothesis testing, issues in measurement, common methods of data collection, and several statistical techniques used to test empirical questions.

 

Wrench, J. S., Thomas-Maddox, C., Richmond, V. P., & McCroskey, J. C. (2019). Quantitative research methods for communication: A hands-on approach (4th ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 978-0190861063), 

 

Restricted to CMS graduate students.

---

MANAGING HEALTH INFORMATION

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. ERIN DONOVAN

CMS 386H 07540

CLASS SIZE = 12

 

The purpose of this course is for students to become familiar with research and theories that examine why and how people exchange, conceal, and otherwise interact with health-related information. We will explore the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of communicating about matters of health and illness, with a focus on implications for personal well-being, relational quality, and public health. An emphasis will be placed on contemporary scholarship from communication and allied fields that addresses disclosure, avoidance, information behavior, and uncertainty management in personal relationships and in health care settings. This course is appropriate for students from all areas with interests in interpersonal, relational, and/or health communication.

 

Course packet – will be available digitally or on paper, per student preference

 

Open to all University of Texas graduate students.

---

INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION THEORY

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. MATT MCGLONE

CMS 386K 07544

CLASS SIZE = 12

 

This survey course provides an overview of theories and research relevant to verbal and nonverbal communication in interpersonal relationships.

 

TEXTBOOK/READING PACKET:

TBD
 

Open to all Communication Studies graduate students and with instructor approval, other University of Texas graduate students.

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. SHIV GANESH

CMS 390S 07558

CLASS SIZE = 12

 

TBD

 

TEXTBOOK/READING PACKET:

TBD

 

Open to all Communication Studies graduate students and with instructor approval, other University of Texas graduate students.

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. SCOTT STROUD

CMS 390P 07559

CLASS SIZE = 12

 

This course engages two important and interrelated areas of study in rhetoric: narrative and myth. This course investigates a range of accounts that have been given concerning narrative’s rhetorical and argumentative powers. Of particular interest to us will be the theory of narrative argument offered by Walter Fisher in communication studies, although we will explore accounts of narrative from other disciplines as well. Arguments against narrative’s argumentative employment from philosophical aesthetics will also be considered. In terms of myth, the course will focus primarily on the question of how myth and mythic narrative occur in rhetorical activity. Issues to be explored include the psychological foundations of myths (particularly Jungian accounts), how mythic criticism might proceed, as well as critiques of mythic criticism from a variety of disciplines.

 

Walter R. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason, Value, and Action (University of South Carolina Press, 1989), ISBN-10: 0872496244.  Required.

Gary Saul Morson, Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN-10: 0300068751.  Required.

Laurie L. Patton & Wendy Doniger (eds.), Myth and Method (University of Virginia Press, 1996), ISBN-10: 0813916577. Required.

Alan Dundes (ed.), Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth (University of California Press, 1984), ISBN-10: 0520051920. Required.

Janice Hocker Rushing & Thomas S. Frentz, Projecting the Shadow: The Cyborg Hero in American Film (Chicago, 1995), ISBN-10: 0226731677. Required.

Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth (Columbia University Press, 1998), ISBN-10: 0231111711. Required.

Robert A. Segal (ed.), Jung on Mythology (Princeton, 1998), ISNB-10: 0691017360. Recommended.

William G. Doty, Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals, 2^nd edition (University Alabama Press, 2000), ISBN-10: 0817310061. Recommended.

Course Reader (available at Jenn’s Copies).

 

Open to all University of Texas graduate students.

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. JOSHUA BARBOUR

CMS 390S 07560

CLASS SIZE = 12
 

This course will explore the theories and methods helpful for engaged research. Topics include (a) practical theory such as action research, communication design, grounded practical theory; (b) organizational change including work on organization communication management, social justice, and technology implementation; and (c) research methods common to consulting, program evaluation, and engaged scholarship such as ethnographic interviewing, survey design, organizational shadowing, natural experiments, and case studies. The course will focus in particular on the practical problems and ethical dilemmas associated with doing research with collaborators including negotiating access, co-designing research projects, co-producing research findings, and designing findings workshops. We will explore these topics with an eye toward orthodox academic careers as well as the paths of aspiring consultants, market and organizational development researchers, technology change managers, data scientists, government and think tank researchers, and pracademics of all sorts.

 

TEXTBOOK/READING PACKET:

TBD

 

Open to all Communication Studies graduate students and with instructor approval, other University of Texas graduate students.

INSTRUCTOR:  DR. JOHANNA HARTELIUS

CMS 398T 07585

CLASS SIZE = 15

 

This course provides a space for teachers of communication to develop philosophies and approaches to teaching by reflecting on both the practice and theory of communication pedagogy. Rather than an in-depth study of particular communication pedagogies or training students as teachers for a particular course, this seminar offers a survey of the basic tools common to teaching in the humanities, as well as a cursory examination of some of the most common pedagogical theories used in communication studies.

Throughout this course, we will produce critical and reflective understandings of the practices and discourses of communication education while directly wedding that reflective understanding to our actions in our classrooms. In so doing, we will develop philosophies of communication education that can be expressed as theoretical models of pedagogy and can be demonstrated in specific pedagogical activity.  
 

TBD
 

Restricted to Communication Studies graduate students.