Different media forms (writing, images, film/video, audio, etc.) afford the author different types of expression. A personal story told through a photo essay carries different weight and different limits than the same story told in writing or through sound alone. In this program, students will build working knowledge across several media, using each to ask what it can do that the others cannot.

Students will also consider what media forms work well to express their stories and to reveal the sources of their stories. One of the most powerful things a person can do is learn to connect their own life to the larger forces that shaped it, to see how history, politics, and social structure show up in the most personal corners of experience. This course starts there, and asks: what happens when you try to write, film, or record that connection?

Through analysis and individual creative projects, we will explore how individual experience and perspective is not a limitation but a starting point for serious, socially engaged thinking and communicating which in turn can guide efforts towards making the world a better place.

The program will meet Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:30-8:30. Students will also be expected to spend two hours per week on asynchronous instructional activities.

Anticipated Credit Equivalencies:

4 - Introduction to Media Studies

4 - Introduction to Sociology