Spring 2022 Course Descriptions

CMS 390R (08785) - Gender and Communication

Johanna Hartelius (j.hartelius@austin.utexas.edu)
M; 3:30 - 6:30 pm; CMA 3.130
 

DESCRIPTION: The purpose of this course is to examine gender as an aspect, effect, and implication of communication. In terms of theory and method, the course has its center of gravity in rhetoric and critical scholarship; however, the course welcomes various student backgrounds and research foci, and is designed to facilitate productive discussion. For the major research assignment, each student may choose to employ the method/approach of her/his field or academic specialty as long as the project relates to gender and communication. 

The following types of questions will drive our readings, discussions, and projects: What can we learn about gender and gender advocacy from thinkers who have made a lasting impression on Western thought (like Nietzsche and de Beauvoir)? How are gender and gender advocacy represented in public discourse and media? How do communication practices and performances in everyday life reinforce and/or challenge norms? Are we presently experiencing/witnessing a cultural paradigm shift in gender identities and gender advocacy, or are structures of power/privilege (gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.) as strong as they ever were? Weekly topics: gender in popular media; gender non-binarity; intersectional experiences and politics; the origins of masculinity ideals; feminist perspectives/methods in rhetorical/critical scholarship.

Special focus in readings and discussions will be given to:

-Prominent/enduring theoretical perspectives on gender
-Works by thinkers/theorists/activists who have shaped the concept of gender in theory and practice (but may not have marked themselves as gender-focused)
-Scholarship on gender and gender advocacy produced by National Communication Association and Rhetoric Society of America scholars from the 1990s to the present
 

Class meetings will last three hours with a break after about two hours. During the first two hours, we will discuss readings, address issues raised in students’ reading reflections, and listen to students’ Annotated Bibliography Reports. The third hour is dedicated to the development of each student’s course project; this will combine the form of office hours, a peer writing group, and a laboratory.

TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 383K (08739) - Theory Construction in Communication

M; 3:30 - 6:30; CMA 6.152
 

DESCRIPTION: The course deals with the development and advancement of theory for scientific research in communication. Being a social scientist requires a comprehensive understanding of a diverse set of methods that yield sound research and meaningful answers to important questions. At the same time, generating explanations for those observations and testing them via logically deduced hypotheses is the bread and butter of theory-driven communication science. How to evaluate, integrate, and generate theoretical explanations for communication phenomena is the focus for the course. Communication scientists animate their research with theory before collecting data, because doing so provides a longer shelf-life (enhanced sustainability) and greater impact (more heuristic value) for those data than atheoretical (or quasi-theoretical) research. Yet, an understanding of what theory is, how to assess its quality, and the process of generating conceptual explanations is often unclear, inarticulate, or otherwise under-developed in communication scholarship. My goal for this seminar is for you to have a better idea of what theory is and how to develop and critique it. The course will give you the foundation for continued theory development/construction by focusing on how to define acore constructfor your area of research.

TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 390S (08789) - Communication, Power, and Inequality

T; 6:30 - 9:30 pm; CMA 7.120
Class size = 12
 

DESCRIPTION: The concept of power registers in any number of popular discourses. We use the term to explain issues in subjects as diverse as government, religion, globalization, popular culture, gender, sexuality, management and organizational behavior, technology, and personal relationships. Small wonder then, that power has been a formative category in social theory over the last several hundred years, and a prime vector in how we understand a central issue of our times, inequality. Such range and importance shape the objectives of this course in two major ways.

First, given that one can find a treatment of power in the work of most prominent social theorists (in many ways the history of the study of power is the history of social theory itself), it becomes important to consider this history. Moreover, debates about power and control that have occurred over the last two hundred years have significantly influenced communication inquiry and, as students of communication, we need to better understand such influence. Given this heavy ideological baggage, an important objective of the seminar is to give its participants a sense of the history of the concept of power itself.

Second, the sheer diversity of perspectives, problems and polemics that are invoked when one considers power signals the inevitable ambiguity of a course simply titled ‘communication, power and inequality.’ Given such diversity, selectivity is inevitable. However, important exceptions aside, the concern with power and politics in communication studies has been a central concern of what might loosely be called ‘the critical tradition’ in several key areas of communication inquiry. Another prime objective of this seminar, then, is to provide its participants with a broad-based understanding of critical communication studies of inequality. We will meet these objectives by spending the first several class meetings examining some key classical and modern theorists of power, including Machiavelli, Marx, Weber, Gramsci and Foucault. As we do so, we will compare their ideas with the work of more contemporary scholars in communication studies. We will then move into a consideration of the highly contemporary theme of organized inequality, and take up several recent critical, journalistic and theoretical treatments of the subject both inside and outside the field of communication studies.

Seminar participants will read several books throughout the course of the semester, and these will be complemented with other readings, some of which will be mandatory; others will be assigned to individual students, in order to broaden the scope of seminar discussions and better align course content with graduate student interests. Students will complete three kinds of assessment during the course of the semester: a set of critical précis (20%), a book review(30%), and a seminar paper (50%).

TEXTBOOKS:

Readings will be made available on Canvas. A list of books to be purchased for the last seven weeks of the semester will be released along with the syllabus. Books I am considering include:
 
-Ruhi Benjamin. Race after Technology. Abolitionist Tools for the new Jim Code.
-Karma Chavez. The Borders of AIDS. Race, Quarantine and Resistance.
-Chris Ingraham. Gestures of Concern.
-Safiya Umoja Noble. Algorithms of Oppression.
-Kate Lockwood Harris. Beyond the Rapist. Title IX and Sexual Violence on U.S. Campuses.
-Suraj Yengde. Caste Matters.
-Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.
 

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 386L (08744) - Groups, Teams, and Communities

(CMS graduate students must register for this unique#)

Dawna Ballard (diballard@utexas.edu)
T; 3:30 - 6:30pm; CMA 7.120
Class size = 12                                  
 
DESCRIPTION: This course explicates and integrates communication scholarship across four distinct yet interrelated types of groups: small groups, identity groups, teams, and communities of practice. We begin with grounding in traditional group and team communication research and theory (that spans subfields within the communication discipline, including organizational communication, family communication, communication technology, sport communication, health communication, and more) as touchstones and central foci. We then move to scholarship regarding other social collectives and their relationship to group and team processes. This includes considering intergroup communication research and theory—concerning varied identity groups, such as racial, religious, national, gender, and occupational groups, among others—as well as the community of practice (COP) perspective, on “bottom-up” models of organizing.
 
TEXTBOOKS:

Hollingshead, A. B., & Poole, M. S. (Eds.) (2012). Research methods for studying groups and teams: A guide to approaches, tools, and technologies.

Beck, S., Poole, M. S., & Keyton, J. (Eds.) (2022). The Handbook of Group and Team Communication. New York: Emerald.  Not available in print until 2022—we may use proofs if unavailable by January 2022.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity: New York: Cambridge University Press.

Additional readings available via Canvas.

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 386P (08754) - Language in Persuasion & Social Influence

T3:30 - 6:30pm; CMA 6.152
 
DESCRIPTION: TBD
 
TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 386R.1 (08759) - Personal Relationships

Anita Vangelisti (vangelisti@austin.utexas.edu)
W; 3:30 - 6:15pm; CMA 7.120
Class size = 12
 

DESCRIPTION: This course will focus on current research and theory on communication in 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, relationship qualities, and threats to close relationships. Special emphasis will be placed on theory development and methodology for studying personal relationships. Students will conduct their own research study and complete a convention-quality research paper.

TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 386N-2 (08745) - Qualitative Methods

Jeffrey Treem (jtreem@austin.utexas.edu)
TH; 3:30 - 6:30 pm; CMA 7.120
 

DESCRIPTION: Through presentation of scholarly readings and immersion into one’s own in-depth research project, this course explores a variety of qualitative research approaches, taking into account issues of epistemology (ways of knowing), methodology (ways of examining), and representation (ways of writing and reporting). We will examine interpretive theory, and several intellectual traditions that constitute this field of research including analytic induction, grounded theory, and ethnography. We will read exemplars of qualitative research that illustrate diverse theoretical traditions as well as examine key issues such as gaining access to research sites, forms of interactions with research subjects, and research ethics. Students will carry out their own research project, engaging in 20+ hours of field research. Through this project, students will have the opportunity to collectively enact and reflect upon the central phases of qualitative research such as: planning, negotiating access, observing, interviewing, creating field texts, analyzing field texts, writing, and explicating the contribution of their work. The goal is that students will emerge from the class with first-hand qualitative research experience and a significant understanding of qualitative methods that can serve as a basis for an ongoing research program.   

TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 390R-7 (08778) - The Subject

TH; 3:30 - 6:15pm; CMA  6.152
 
DESCRIPTION: This course is a survey of contemporary theory in the humanities, from modernity to what some have described as "postmodernity."  The class is designed to introduce you to those philosophical and theoretical works that inform contemporary fetishes and debates in communication studies.  We will engage a number of foundational texts, as well as explore more recent theories that draw on these foundations.

Our focus will be on the concept of the subject (a paradigm person) and its theorization across Western intellectual thought. This anchor-point is not arbitrary, as the concern and theorization of the subject—what us a person? what is a human? how does the subject “know” the world?—can be read at the center of the history of intellectual thought.  The companion course to this seminar, “The Object,” examines theory from the point of view of objects.

In this seminar, we will “read” each author on subjectivity in relation to the fundamental categories of transcendence, a logic of liberation, and immanence, a logic of internal reconfigurations. Toward this end we will be engaging foundational work on subjectivity by Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Friederich Nietzsche, as well as newer theoretical work engaging affect theory, black feminism, performance studies, and queer theory. 

 
TEXTBOOKS:

TBD

PREREQUISITES/RULES:

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

CMS 386P.6 (08750) - Advocacy

TTH; 12:30- 2pm; RRH 2.508
 

DESCRIPTION: This course introduces you to how people successful “market” their ideas particularly within organizations. No matter how good your ideas are, unless you can also effectively sell those notions to decision-makers, those ideas don’t matter. Good ideas, in short, don’t sell themselves. In this class we focus on crucial skills that help you not only understand how people influence you but also help you successfully pitch your ideas to others. You’ll be exposed to research answering questions like:

How do you clearly and memorably communicate your ideas?
How do you build and maintain affinity and credibility as an advocate?
How do you become a more effective story-teller when persuading others?
How do you know when it is the right time to pitch an idea?
How do you build alliances to get better buy-in for your ideas?
How do you “pre-sell” ideas?
How do you successfully influence change in organizations?
How do you effectively persuade others to adopt your ideas?
How do you make yourself more impactful in meetings?

The class is designed for anyone who will face the challenge of convincing others to invest in their ideas. Advocacy matters in every profession and at every level of an organization. Creative entrepreneurs must successfully pitch their innovations, managers must, on a daily basis, effectively persuade team members and garner buy-in from leadership to adopt their ideas, sales and marketing folks constantly advocate for their products and services.

TEXTBOOKS: 

-Daly, J.A. Advocacy Championing Ideas and Influencing Others. New Haven: Yale University Press.
-Machiavelli, N. The Prince
 
PREREQUISITES/RULES:

This course is part of the MBA curriculum in McCombs. It is listed as both a Management and Communication Studies course. Grad students in CMS and other Departments (outside of McCombs) should enroll using the CMS course number.