Media studies students take hands-on classes in creative writing and visual art, while studying the social, cultural, and political impacts of media in courses on journalism, literature, and film.
This stream fulfills five of the six course requirements for the first year of the Bachelor of Media Studies. Students who have an affinity for making art, analyzing books and films, consuming and discussing contemporary media will find this stream a good fit.
I found CAP to be a great transition into university life. The media studies stream provided a wide range of different courses so that I could experiment with different art disciplines. I found it comforting to know everyone in all of my classes and was able to form new relationships. The small class sizes also helped me engage directly with the professors.
Courses: Term One
In the first term, students will enrol in CAP 100 (fulfills the academic writing requirement), Creative Writing, and Film Studies. Through the study of film and through their own academic research and creative writing projects, students will learn how to appreciate and contribute to scholarly conversations and contemporary media.
CAP_V 100-M01 (MWF 11-12), CAP_V 100-M02 (MWF 12-1) - Instructor: Dr. Kasim Husain
Researching Empathy and Identity in Contemporary Media
CAP 100 is an introduction to reading and writing in academic research genres, with the goal of learning how to develop an original argument informed by scholarly peer-reviewed sources. As part of CAP’s Media Studies stream, the theme of the research we will take up in this section evaluates what it means that we look to media narratives to know more about ourselves and others. By examining scholarly debates over whether media can teach empathy and/or help us to know our own identities better, we will examine a critical literature that evaluates these concepts at their extremes: from the appeal of Donald Trump to the question of whether reading novels can improve human morality, from the techniques terrorists use to recruit online to the question of how non-Indigenous people can do meaningful reconciliation work, and more. Students in this course will learn to mobilize relevant academic research drawn from fields such as cultural,
literary, media studies, psychology, sociology, in order to develop, discuss, and write a research paper based on original arguments.
CAP_V 100-M04 (TTh 11-12:30) - Instructor: Dr. Katie Fitzpatrick
Mediating Gender
Gender norms are enforced and exploded, unmade and remade, every day online. At the same moment that digital feminists in South Korea are encouraging women to reject the “4Bs” – marriage, childbirth, dating, and sex – American conservatives are turning to Instagram to promote the “trad wife” lifestyle. While activists around the world are using social media to advance reproductive rights, trans rights, and racial justice, these platforms are also used to police gender expression and to foster reactionary communities. In this course, we will use the tools of social media analysis to consider how gender and gender politics are negotiated in global online communities, considering the intersections of gender with race, class, and sexuality. Through our assigned readings, we will attend to the specific material, political, and aesthetic dimensions of different platforms, asking questions like: how did Tumblr become a space of trans self-expression? Is X a viable space for Indigenous feminist activism? What forms of cultural appropriation are enabled by TikTok?
Across the course, students will learn key concepts and techniques related to media analysis. At the same time, they will learn how to read scholarly research and to write in a variety of scholarly genres. Ultimately, students will produce an original research paper addressing the intersection of gender and contemporary media.
CRWR_V 213-CAP (Th 3:30-5) - Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Moss
As media changes form, writers must adapt. The new media landscape is perpetually evolving, and we all have a hand in creating, destroying and re-building it. What potential does it hold for writers, and what limitations? In this course, you will cultivate a nuanced understanding of contemporary new media that will inform your role in shaping its future as both a writer and a digital citizen. The class considers how writing and reading are changing alongside an evolving transmedia landscape, and how new norms of audience engagement impact the way narrative is produced and received, and how AI is impacting creative process. Through multi-media lectures, discussions, guest speakers from various new media niches, in-class creative work, and writing assignments across genres, this course equips you with the critical framework and writing skills to engage meaningfully and productively with the ever-evolving faces of media. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, podcasting, blogging, trans-media, collaborative, and interactive storytelling are all on the menu. Assignments will see you confronting the necessities of writing effectively in a public, multidisciplinary, interactive context while challenging you to connect your writing with matters close to your heart.
CINE_V 100-004 (M 2-5:30) - Instructor: Dr. Alessandra Santos
This course prepares first-year students to pursue a critical study in cinema. Through introduction to the core fundamentals of film analysis, this course will equip students to discuss films in a critical and informed way. Students will become fluent in the terminology for identifying and examining film form and types, as well as key concepts in the field of film studies. The course will also briefly introduce students to critical categories in film study such as authors, stars, and genres.
Courses: Term Two
In the second term, students transition from CAP 100 to CAP 101, while being introduced to the studies of Visual Arts and Journalism. In addition, technical lab/workshop hours in visual arts class will equip students with the technical skills to create and critique visual media, while journalism class will introduce students to various journalistic skills and ethics.
CAP_V 101-M01 (MWF 11-12), CAP_V 101-M02 (MWF 12-1) - Instructor: Dr. Kasim Husain
Empathy and Identity in Contemporary Media
One common appeal to narrative is the emotional payoff, or catharsis, it can provide. Some even argue that reading narratives can teach us to care more about other people in a world of proliferating crises. However, scholars like Namwali Serpell have begun to question this line of argument, asking, “if witnessing suffering firsthand doesn’t spark good deeds, why do we think art about suffering will?” In this section of CAP 101 we will engage with a range of media forms, from the novel to the podcast, short story to film, in order to learn both how media affects our emotions, and also how those effects cannot be guaranteed. Each text we encounter will also prompt us to re-evaluate what we are looking for when we empathize with fictional characters or causes, and to rethink whether we can really learn authentic truths about others’ identities and cultures through the lens of representation. CAP 101 is a course that introduces the fundamentals of literary and media analysis, teaching students to pay attention to the details of the literary and cultural texts, and to develop an argument about the effects of those details that is critically informed, original, and persuasive, so we will also learn to skill and summarize relevant research in media studies.
CAP_V 101-M04 (TTh 11-12:30) - Instructor: Dr. Katie Fitzpatrick
Art after the End
What does art do in times of crisis? Does it document suffering or create hope? Does it distract us from social injustices or bring them into sharper focus? In this section, we will analyze literary works that imagine the role of the artist in post-apocalyptic or dystopian times. While discussing novels like Severance, Never Let Me Go, or Station Eleven, students will learn the foundations of literary and cultural interpretation. We will also continue to develop the research and writing skills acquired in CAP 100, extending these into new disciplinary and community contexts.
VISA_V 110-227 (M 2-3) - Instructor: Dr. Christine D'Onofrio
This visual arts course on “Foundation Studio: Digital Media” covers historical, political, theoretical, and practical issues of art and image making with a focus on photography and moving images to digital media. Media literacy and the role of artistic practice will be emphasized through class work, consisting of readings, activities and discussions about the nature of images and image-making, as well as weekly lectures on historical to contemporary artists and artworks that have made significant contributions to the dialogue of the machine’s influence on representation. In this class, students will realize lens-based and digital visual art works in an informed and critical setting.
JRNL_V 100-A_227 (MWF 10-11) - Instructor: Dr. Saranaz Barforoush
This is a first-year undergraduate course that looks at how shifts in the media landscape, the advent of new technologies, and changes in information flow are transforming the practice, profession and role of journalism. The social organization and communication features of our media-saturated world are being altered by economic, sociological and technological factors, and this course offers students an opportunity to have a better understanding of evolving media landscapes.
Sample Projects
Self-reflection paper/podcast
Students read stories from Legends of Vancouver, a collection of primarily Squamish stories retold by E. Pauline Johnson. They then visit the sites of selected stories in person to collect observations about the contemporary location, and compose either a written paper or a recorded podcast about the difference it makes to their understanding of this space to become aware of its Indigenous cultural significance. This assignment gives students the chance to practice the research method of autoethnography, as they learn how to frame their personal experience as a legitimate part of scholarly research in Indigenous studies and anthropology. They also have the option to add to skills they have already developed in their CRWR 213 course's podcast script assignment, by both scripting and recording a podcast which they may share with an audience of their peers.
Media object group discussion
Students write brief responses summarizing a contemporary media controversy or cultural object of their own choosing, and framing their critical response to it through Stuart Hall’s account of reception theory. These responses are uploaded to the course website and read by a group of their peers, to form the basis for a twenty-minute discussion in which only their fellow group members attend and participate. The assignment gives students a chance to apply course concepts to new contexts, to practice presenting their ideas in a low-stakes spoken format, and to build rapport with peers.
UBC’s Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) project
The Media Studies stream will be working with a media-focused community organization and working on a related media project in one or more courses.
Appropriation Project
Starting with the dissection and analysis of a chosen moving image source from popular culture, students appropriate the footage into a new video artwork. Sources are obtained from already circulating artifacts such as film, television, talk shows, commercials, news, cartoons, video games or Vlogs, and are used to create a new artwork by new juxtapositions in editing, alterations, or other effects that reveal, expose or changes the way one understands the meaning of the original footage.
Tumblr Literary Project
Students will spend the last month of the semester working primarily on the Tumblr Literary Project that marks the third and final writing assignment in this class. Through a series of weekly collaborative Tumblr Literary workshops, students will build a multimedia Tumblr site showcasing three original pieces of postcard fiction or creative non-fiction of a similar length. Sampling work from across the web, students will furnish the site with images, video, animation, and text that works to shed new light on and assign new meaning to their writing.
Group presentations
Students will be assigned in groups to present the history and context behind major new media and journalism events.
Tweeting and Blogging
Students will be assigned in groups to use Twitter and an in-class blogging tool to report on class presentations.
