Mission Statement Media Studies at the University of Virginia is a newly created department that allows for the incorporation of pre-professional aspirations with that of the conventional liberal arts education. The aim of the department is to provide the opportunity for students to channel skills gained in a liberal arts education into a career in media without being a production-based program. For this reason the department does not offer traditional training in “journalism, public relations, advertising, or marketing”. The aim of this program is to study aesthetics, form, history, ethics and effects, social impact, politics, and media economics critically . The main objective of the department is to determine how the media affects and shapes our everyday lives from personal behavior to corporate decisions.
By addressing many aspects of the media, students majoring in media studies benefit from the ideals of a liberal arts education in that there is a broad range of knowledge required and gained. Students are immersed in a multimedia environment, using supplemental mediums of popular and independent films, popular television shows, political and celebrity blogs, YouTube, and GoogleDocs. Although the department is focused on the media, course work expands into other fields as well. Important to this department is the understanding of how society and culture are being affected by communication, globalization and information proliferation. Through the courses offered by the Media Studies Department and field experience, students learn about past and current issues that shape mediated users lives today.
Media’s existence and hold on society is evident to consumers the minute they wake just by turning on the television, picking up the morning paper or turning on the computer. And in this respect, Media Studies places considerable emphasis on digital media because it is important to understand not only theoretically how the media works, but also the means by which it influences society. Media Studies aims to answer how the media functions and shapes everyday life, whether that is through the Internet, films, or print media. Media Studies as a field of study looks to deepen students’ understanding of aspects of life that many times are taken for granted or remain unquestioned. The department wants students to question how media affects society, culture, behavior, attitude, politics, economics and so on based on skills acquired in other areas of learning.
History The Media Studies program began in the fall of 2000 as an interdisciplinary undergraduate major in the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Virginia. However, in June/July of 2007 the program received departmental status, which commenced the process of broadening its resources and course offerings to better meet students’ wants and needs. Ahrum Lee, an Associate Teacher in the department, says this also connotes a greater level of support from the university, including financial, administrative and infrastructural. More faculty and classes will be provided to all those involved. Dean Richard McGuire, also in the department, points that the Media Studies department will also be able to hire outstanding faculty. In the past, the Media Studies program had to share faculty with other departments, and hiring depended upon the needs and approval of these departments (i.e. History or English departments). The department is also presently able to support a minor in Media Studies, which does not require an application.
Application Process Students are admitted the Media Studies program each Spring semester. Students currently in the their second year of study at the University of may apply for the major in the Spring of their second year. It is a highly selective process in which only a minority of the students that apply are accepted. Those wishing to apply for the program must submit an application in the middle of March. They must be submitted by hand to the Media Studies office by March 15 by 4:30 PM. Decisions for those accepted are made by March 30th. Those who are accepted will begin their course of study in the Fall semester of their third year at the university.
However, for Transfer students entering as Juniors at the university for their Fall Semester, the application process is slightly different. Once a transfer has been admitted into the Undergraduate program at the University, they may submit the Media Studies Major Transfer Student Application. Since the deadline for University admission is generally March 1, a few spots are reserved for transfer students in the Spring semester when new majors are admitted. Thus, the application for transfer students for the Media Studies major is due May 15, typically two weeks after University admission letters are received.
On the application students should be expected to explain why it is they are interested in the program and purpose if once admitted i.e. career plans or goals. Students should have a GPA of 3.4 to be considered, however, as the Media Studies website points out, this is negotiable. They also must include a list of courses taken with the descriptions, grades and there is space to explain a lower GPA if applicable. Lastly on the application those wishing to apply should plan out a course of study or direction in which they intend to go intellectually. It is important that this is not a list of courses one intends to take, but a broader sense of where one wants to go academically and how you plan to achieve these goals throughout the next four semesters.
Major Requirements Declaring the Media Studies major is a selective process. Students cannot apply to the major until the spring of their second year for admission in the fall of their third year. Applicants to the program must complete Intro to Digital Media and Intro to Media Studies before they can be considered for the program, and should have a cumulative 3.4 GPA to apply. The written application involves a description of courses taken, list of grades and explanation of GPA, a list of goals to be accomplished with media studies coursework, and a statement of purpose with possible career goals. There are about 20 majors accepted each year. Following admittance into the program, majors must enroll in five core courses, three primary elective courses, two secondary elective courses, and work at an internship or production course. Core courses required for majors are Theory and Criticism of Media, the History of Media, an Independent study seminar, and a Fourth Year Seminar. Elective courses are both theory and production based; they include Language and Cinema, Cinema as an Art Form, Media Ethics, Women and Television, Mediating the American Century, Media Audiences, War and the Media, Screenwriting for Film and TV, News writing, Sex and Gender Go to the Movies, Advertising and American Modern Consumer Culture, and Video Practicum. Distinguished majors are required to write a thesis in their final semester and must take additional seminars in the fall and spring of their 4th year.
Though participation in media-related extra-curricular activities is not mandatory, majors and minors can gain experience working on the student-run daily paper, the Cavalier Daily, the weekly student-run magazine, the Declaration, writing and editing for various bi-annual literary magazines, and assisting with the student-produced television station WHOO TV. Local internships within the Charlottesville community are made available to students as well.
Minor Requirements There is no selective application process for a Minor in Media Studies. Minors must graduate with 18 credits in Media Studies. It is recommended, but not required that they take Intro to Digital Media and Intro to Media Studies before declaring the minor. For completion of the minor, students must also take History of Media Studies (or an equivalent), and three upper-level Media Studies elective classes (300 level or above). List of Courses Offered MDST 110 Introduction to Digital Media
This survey course is serves to introduce students to the impact of mass media nationally and globally. The operation of mass media as business and a set of texts. Audiences. A required lab section introduces students to digital media criticism and aspects of production.
MDST 201 Introduction to Media Studies
This course is a survey introduction to the complex and increasingly pervasive impact of mass media in the U.S. and around the world. Our lives, as individuals and as citizens of a developing global village, are perpetually intersected by numerous forms of mass media. Newspapers and magazines, television, Hollywood cinema, advertising, and the Internet significantly help us determine how we make sense of ourselves and of the world around us. This course provides a foundation for helping you to understand how mass media - as a business, as well as a set of texts - operates. The course also explores contextual issues - how media texts and businesses are received by audiences and by regulatory bodies
MDST 301 Theory and Criticism of Media
This course provides students with conceptual and analytical tools for understanding how and why "media matters." Students concentrate on the dominant schools of media and their development in the 20th and 21st centuries as well as their application to mass media.
MDST 350 History of Media
This course concentrates on the history of media institutions and technologies based on the viewing of narrative film. Films studied include The Lonedale Operator, The Bells Are Ringing, Dial M for Murder, Network News, The Day The Earth Caught Fire, and The Net. This course, or an equivalent is a required course for Media Studies Majors and Minors.
MDST 262 Video Practicum
This course teaches students how to produce a video, learning digital editing, field audio, lighting techniques, and videography in the process.
MDST 270 News Writing
Students study, discuss, and rewrite newspaper stories in a workshop setting. Concentration on hard news to speech stories, political coverage, and the use of narrative. Students must follow current events.
Electives
Subject to change each semester.
Note: This list changes each semester.
MDST 244 Language and Cinema
MDST 262L Video Practicum
MDST 270 News Writing
MDST 281 Cinema as an Art Form
MDST 286 Sociology of the Media
MDST 321 The Films of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock
MDST 331 Women and Television
MDST 341 Media Ethics
MDST 352 Vernaculars, Media, Texts
MDST 353 Mediating the American Century
MDST 355 Media Audiences
MDST 358 War and the Media
MDST 359 New German Cinema
MDST 363: Post-War European Cinema
MDST 366: The Films of Stanley Kubrick
MDST 367: Screening Terror
MDST 370 Intermediate Newswriting
MDST 371 Scriptwriting for Film & TV
MDST 374: Film Under Fascism
MDST 383 History of Film I
MDST 384 History of Film II
MDST 385 Issues and Controversies in Media
MDST 385 Media Industries
MDST 387 Contemporary Independent Film
MDST 399 Media Studies Colloquium
MDST 421 Advanced Topics in Global Media
MDST 422 Advertising and American Consumer Culture
MDST 430 Sex and Gender Go to the Movies
MDST 460 History of US Broadcasting
List of Faculty and Professors
Andrea Press
Department Head and Executive Director of the Virginia Film Festival. Professor Press is the author of "Women Watching Television: Gender, Class and Generation in the American Television Expderience", "Speaking of Abortion:Television and Authority in the Lives of Women". She has a M.A. and PhD in Sociology and her studies focus on "feminist media theory, social class and the media, and media audiences" .
Aniko Bodroghkozy
Undergraduate Director and author of "Groove Tube: Sixties Television and the Youth Rebellion". She is presently working on completing her second book, currently titled "Negotiating Civil Rights in Prime-Time: Television Audiences and the Civil Rights Era". In addition to her books, she has written numerous articles on American Cinema and Television as well as movements evoking social change in the post-war era. Her work has appeared in Cinema Journal, Screen, Television and New Media, and the online TV Studies journal Flow. She teaches courses in film and television history and historiography, feminist media theory, and Cultural Studies approaches to media analysis.
Johanna Drucker
Currently the Robertson Professor of Media Studies, Drucker was the first director and founder of the Media Studies program in 1999. She has a PhD in Ecriture and is the author of numerous books focusing on 20th-century art history, the history of writing and the alphabet, artists' books, experimental typography, and visual and concrete poetry". She has plans for a future MA in Digital Humanities at the University of Virginia.
William Fishback
Fishback currently teaches courses in beginner and intermediate newswriting, bringing to the classroom his experience in working for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He has also worked as the Chief of Public Affairs for the university as well as been the Special Advisor to University's President, John T. Casteen III. In addition to teaching, he is also the Thesis Director of Government and Foreign Affairs, the English dedpartment, and Honor's Thesis.
David Golumbia
Associate Professor of Media Studies, English and Linguistics, Professor Golumbia has a PhD in English Language and Literature and is the coordinator of the Film Studies Concentration/Minor. He has many publications, with subjects focusing on the history of language and writing, digital technologies and new media, cultural studies and contemporary world literature as well as earliest literature of American colonization.
Laura Heins
Richard Herskowitz
A renowned film progammer and director of the Virginia Film Festival, Professor Herskowitz has a MA in film studies. The concentration of his teachings are in film studies and he is currently consulting on film festivals in Durham, North Carolina and Ithaca, New York.
Brian Kelly
Kelly is an award-winning newspaper reporter, magazine editor, book author, publisher, free-lance writer, and lecturer at the University. His last job at a newspaper was a 16-year period at the Washington Star, and in the 80's he was the founding editor of Military History and World War II magazines. As of late, Kelly and his wife, Ingrid Symer, established their own publishing firm, Montpelier Publishing. Montpelier publish three historical books which sold very successfully and ultimately attracted an outside publisher for which Kelly and his wife have written six historical books for. During his work as a free-lance writer, Kelly has published non-fiction and fiction (short stories) in magazines ranging from Reader's Digest to Yankee and Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.
Walter Korte
Korte is an associate professor and Director of Film Studies as well as program advisor for the Virginia Film Festival. He has been published in many distinguished journals with the focus of his works on "Neorealism, Surrealism, and the European post-war cinema"
Richard McGuire
McGuire is an Associate Professor for the Media Studies Program and the Department of Sociology. He has also held National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in Philosophy at Boston University.
John Sullivan
Sullivan is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, but teaches courses in Mass Media and American Culture. He has a PhD in American Studies and Communication Studies. Professor Sullivan co-authored a book entitled "The C-SPAN Revolution".
Bruce Williams
Robert Kolker
Kolker has previously taught courses in film and digital studies and is the author of "A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Altman", "Film, Form and Culture", and "The Altering Eye:Contemporary International Cinema".
Bill Reifenberger
Originally a filmmaker, Reifenberger's documentaries for PBS, The History Channel, and the Discovery Channel add to the University's budding film and video programs. Some of his films include "Fulbright: The Defining Hour", "The Tuskegee Airmen", and "Lee: Beyond The Battles". Presently, Reifenberger is working on a ten-part series on American gardens and a view of the University through the camera lens and viewpoint of local photographers.
Craig Hayden
A visiting professor at UVA, Professor Hayden holds a PhD in Communication, a MA in Communication and MA in International Relations. His publications include numerous articles, chapters, reports, and manuscripts in progress.
Siva Vaidhyanathan
One of the newest additions to the university, Vaidhyanathan is the author of "Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity", "The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System", "Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies" and is currently working on "The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce, and Community -- And Why We Should Worry". He is at present an associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University, and has worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Vaidhyanathan also contributes to various periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Salon.com.
Hugh Wilson
Wilson is currently a guest professor at UVA. He is recognized for his work in film as a director, writer and producer, best known for the TV series Frank's Place and WKRP in Cincinnati as creator and executive producer. His directed works include Mickey(2004), Dudley Do-Right(1999), Blast from the Past(1999), The First Wives Club(1996), Guarding Tess(1994), Rustlers' Rhapsody(1985), and Police Academy(1984).
Internship Plan and Requirements
The Media Studies program allows and urges majors to complete an internship while they are enrolled fulltime at the University. The Media Studies majors are strongly encouraged to complete at least one semester of internship work as part of their course load. The internship may be used to fulfill the 3-credit requirement for production experience, functioning as a course such as Newswriting or Cinematography would. Majors who are interested in completing an internship for course credit must complete and submit an application to the Department Chair or the Director of Undergraduate Programs prior to beginning the internship.
The internship program requires an application as well, and students must complete a report detailing the Company or Organization name, how they will be supervised, their tasks at the internship, time commitment and contact information. Only the Chair of the Department of the Director of Undergraduate Programs may approve the internship, and mid-way through the semester the student must file a one-page report stating the student's proggress through the semester. Finally, a student and sponsor evaluation must be completed as well as a final paper.
Study Abroad Although not required, the Media Studies program encourgaes its majors to study abroad during the Spring semester of their Junior year or the Fall semester of their Senior year. Instead of offering specific, fixed study abroad programs pertaining solely to the Media Studies program, the department urges students to find their own communication-based program using resources such as http://iiepassport.org . Students are encouraged to look for programs which are not necessarily famous, such as Oxford University's, but for ones that cater to their field of study. The department also states that this opportunity is also open to students that have not taken a foreign language, since there are plenty of programs taught in English in different countries. Program types include: direct enrollment (for programs in English-speaking countries, or more rarely, programs taught entirely in English), island program (for programs in foreign locations but with UVA staff who have special expertise in the area) or a specially designed program which will cater to a student's knowledge and language needs. Disciplinary focuses range from single topic programs (which employ a single discipline) to interdisciplinary programs (programs which include courses in a single area --such as journalism or marketing-- but also offer varied other courses), as well as internships and field study.
Extracurricular Opportunities
The Cavalier Daily
The Cavalier Daily is one of the oldest daily college newspapers which originated in 1890 and is completely student run. Students who join the Cav Daily staff have the opportunity to work in all aspects of the news reporting process from writing, to editing, to production and distribution. The newspaper gives the students an opportunity to pursue interests in journalism. Because the Media Studies major does not offer a specific journalism program, the school newspaper is a chance to work more directly in this field.
Whoo TV
Whoo TV was the idea of two UVA students who wished to have a student run channel in which university news is broadcast. This program was enabled by a grant from the Parents and Alumni Association and has progressed from its early days of renting equipment from Clemmons Library. If students in the Media Studies field wish to be more involved with film and TV production they can participate in Whoo TV or the more recently developed Hoos News.
Photography Club
The Photography Club allows all students interested in aspects of photography to collaborate in an open atmosphere sharing ideas, thoughts and photos. There is a dark room available to all members of the club and guest speakers, trips and workshops are all planned to help foster an interest and knowledge in photography.
91.1 FM WTJU Charlottesville
Established in 1955 with the help of the Kappa Delta Pi fraternity, the Department of Speech and Drama was able to begin an educational based radio station at the University of Virginia. The aim of the radio station is to connect The University with the surrounding community and to provide an alternative to other stations with educational as well as entertaining content.
Other opportunities include magazine productions such as The Declaration, the Virginia Literary Review, and 3.7 Magazine.
Future of the Program In terms of a future for the newly created Media Studies Department the heads of the department are looking to expand the horizons into a broader range of fields. Expanding the areas of study for majors and minors always for more specificity within the program and a more direct focus by the students. Immediate plans for a new development in the department is the introduction of a minor in film studies, as there has been increased demand for such an area of study since it’s beginning states Andrea Press, head of the department . There are also hopes to create a more concrete pre-professional direction for Media Studies in creating a graduate program as well as undergraduate.
The Media Studies Department is also looking to connect further with film festivals throughout the country beginning with the Virginia Film Festival. The department is looking to broaden this aspect of having a connection with the larger community by adding a January Term course in Los Angeles in conjunction with Virginia Film Festival board members.
Overall the department is looking to cover more aspects of media and to draw professors and faculty that can expand the current curriculum and courses. With a good base, the university is looking to broaden and deepen their newly established program.
Careers and Alumni The Media Studies department is looking to create an Alumni and Professional network that is comprised of professionals who will serve as mentors and facilitators to those in the major. The purpose of this group is to provide students with a resource for media studies outside of the university by providing information, experience, internships and job offers. On the media studies website there are links to forms for internships opportunity as well as forms for sponsors to provide students currently in the major an easy way to get hands on real world experience in the field of media. Currently, major Heather Lyu is planning to travel to Venda, South Africa, to create a radio program based on reproductive and maternal health, as part of her Center for Global Health scholarship. She will be working at the University of Venda's local radio station to create the radio program and receive feedback and commentary from the residents. In a different area, major Rom Alejandro's film "Roskomos" has been submitted to a variety of well-known film festivals. It has received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Film and the Best Drama awards at the Ivy Film Festival, at Brown University, as well as the Rosebud Award at the Rosebud Film Festival.
Another form of hands-on, real world experience is the internship opportunity. It is important for those majoring in media studies to gain knowledge and skills outside of the classroom and internships provide the perfect opportunity to do so. With a major in this department students can prepare for a career in radio broadcasting, journalism, film production, public relations, advertising, and digital design. Previous majors have moved on to employment at top companies such as the Washington Post, CBS, Disney, NBC, CNN, and Turner, and recent graduates can be found at Good Housekeeping, MTV, News Hour, and have been accepted to the NYU Film Studies program.
I am teaching a Television Production class for the 1st time this fall at Charlottesville High school (CHS) and would love to connect my students with some college students. I am a '95 UVa alum.
