Common Seminar
The Common Seminar, "Histories and Theories of New of Media," is a 4 credit required course for all NMCC students. (Please note: this course is not reserved for NMCC students only; you should enroll as soon as possible in the quarter in which it is to guarantee your place.)
The Common Seminar will be offered once in AY 2026-2027 during Winter 2027 through the School of Journalism & Communication (J610) and will be taught by Dr. Bryce Newell. It will be offered again in Spring 2027 through Comparative Literature (COLT 618) and will be taught by Dr. Kate Kelp-Stebbins.
Common Seminar Sample Syllabi:
J 610 Histories and Theories of New Media provides a theoretical and historical overview for the study of new media. Examines how the emergence of new modes of communication and interconnectivity brought about by the digital revolution have radically changed our notions of self, identity and society. Prior/Sample Syllabus for J610.
COLT 618 Histories, Theories, and Cultures of New Media considers different traditions in media theory spanning generations, regions, languages, and methodological approaches to a range of media. Prior/Sample COLT 618 Syllabus.
Methods
Methods courses are intended to allow students to explore qualitative and quantitative methods for studying new media. Students are required to take 4 credits in Methods courses.
Topics
Topics courses provide students the opportunity to take a range of experimental or topic-based courses on new media at the 500 and 600 level. Students are required to take 4 credits in Topics courses. Students are not limited to the pre-approved offerings listed below. Students may petition to substitute other relevant courses as they are developed or as considered germane to an individual student’s program in new media and culture.
Electives
Elective courses provide students with an interdisciplinary platform that can be tailored to each student's professional and scholarly interests. A minimum of 12 Elective credits are required. Students may choose Elective credits from any of the pre-approved NMCC course listings in Electives, Methods, or Topics. Pre-approved Electives include a robust portfolio of production-oriented classes as well as a range of thematic courses related to new technologies. Alternately, students may create customized study plans by pursuing the following options:
1. Students may petition to substitute other relevant courses for courses on this list if considered germane to an individual student’s program in new media and culture. For example, a course on the topic of Copyrights (Law 667) would be considered relevant to an Art History student's research on contemporary appropriation art. See NMCC Petition Guidelines.
2. Students also may petition to have non-new media courses count toward the Electives requirement if the majority of the student’s research in the course involves the production of new media content (websites, databases, blogs, digital arts, creation of new digital tools, etc.). For example, a course on Orientalism (COLT 562) in which the student created an interactive website on the topic of Edward Said could count toward the certificate in the Elective category. See NMCC Petition Guidelines.
Potential Methods Courses
Actual course offerings change year to year. Some courses may have registration restrictions; refer to Schedule of Classes for details. (For Methods courses offered this year, refer to list of current courses.) Students are not limited to the pre-approved offerings listed below and may petition to substitute other relevant courses as they are developed or as considered germane to an individual student’s program in new media and culture.
AAD 607 | Digital Ethnography This course offers critical reflection on and discussion of two interrelated streams of activity that manifest when working ethnographically with the digital: 1. conducting fieldwork in electronic, online, virtual, or otherwise digitally enabled environments, and 2. utilizing digital tools to gather, analyze, organize, and present ethnographic data in any environment.
ANTH 611 | Ethnographic Research: Epistemology, Methods, Ethics Various techniques in ethnographic research. Examines the relationships between methods, theory, and ethics.
ART 590 | Issues and Practices in Digital Arts Intensive critique, discussion, readings, and presentations.
EDLD 611 | Virtual Design and Delivery EDST 670 | Philosophy of Research Examines the philosophical assumptions that underlie various research methodologies in the human and social sciences.
EDST 671 | Qualitative Methodology I: Interpretive Inquiry Examines the history, philosophy, and basic applications of naturalistic research methods in the study of human experience
EDUC 634 | Qualitative Methodology II: Reflexive Inquiry Examines the irony and ideology of naturalistic approaches to the study of human experience
ENG 670 | Environmental Humanities: Methods & Media This seminar will examine many of these concepts by investigating new methods for humanistic study of environmental problems––methods that emerge from science studies, media studies and the digital humanities as well as ecocriticism, environmental history and cultural geography.
FLR 507 | Video Fieldwork Various theoretical approaches, conceptual issues, research strategies, and techniques used for folklore fieldwork will be examined as a framework for analyzing how folklore video is created. Topics for discussion will include proposal preparation and design, initiating fieldwork and establishing rapport, reflexivity, observation and interview techniques.
J 610 | Media Effects (offered under a 'Topics' course number)
J 641 | Qualitative Research Methods Introduces qualitative research methods including traditional historical inquiry, oral history, ethnography, and participant observation. (Restricted to SOJC majors only.)
J 642 | Quantitative Research Methods Introduces and analyzes quantitative research methods in terms of design, measurement, inference, and validity. Focuses on conceptualization in communication research. (Restricted to SOJC majors only.)
J 660 | Topics in Advanced Research Methods Explores specific qualitative or quantitative communication research methods. Topics may include discourse analysis, oral history, ethnography, historical methods, legal methods, content analysis, and survey methods.
LING 593 | Corpus Linguistics Corpus-based approaches to the study of natural, human language, focusing on the use of computer-based methods to conduct empirical analyses of written and spoken language. Developing skills in computer programming for linguistic analysis.
PHIL 507 or 607 | Media Archaeology (offered under a 'Topics' course number) Introduction to critical-humanistic methods of media archaeology and media genealogy. This courses focuses on both theoretical engagement with the works of Friedrich Kittler, Cornelia Vissmann, & other leading media archaeologists as well as applied work in bringing media theory to bear on historical and contemporary objects of inquiry.
PPPM 656 | Quantitative Research Methods Develops skills in quantitative analysis. Emphasizes selecting appropriate analysis procedures and properly interpreting and reporting results.
PSY 611 | Data Analysis I Introduction to probability, hypothesis testing, and analysis of variance with applications. Includes training in the statistical analysis of data by computer. With laboratory.
PSY 612 | Data Analysis II Multiple regression and advanced topics in analysis of variance. Includes training in the statistical analysis of data by computer. With laboratory.
PSY 613 | Data Analysis III Multivariate techniques including MANOVA, factor analysis, principal components. Includes training in the statistical analysis of data by computer. With laboratory. Topics courses provide students the opportunity to take a range of experimental or topic-based courses on new media at the 500 and 600 level. Students are required to take 4 credits in Topics courses. Students are not limited to the pre-approved offerings listed below. Students may petition to substitute other relevant courses as they are developed or as considered germane to an individual student’s program in new media and culture.
Potential Topics Courses
Some courses may have registration restrictions; refer to Schedule of Classes for details. (For Topics courses offered in this academic year, refer to list of current courses.)
ARTD 510 | Art of Surveillance ARH 507 | New Media Art and Digital Discourses Theory and criticism of art engaged with new technologies from the 1990s to the present. Examines the impact of digital technologies in terms of artistic production, dissemination, and reception, as well as the implications of new technologies for contemporary society more generally.
ARH 507 | Media, Spectacle, and Surveillance in Contemporary Art
ARH 607 | Topics in Digital Humanities CHN 607 | Digital Sinology Explores how the resources and methods of the digital humanities are transforming the discipline of Sinology and how they can advance the understanding of Chinese literature.
CHN 607 | Seminar Digital Sinology
CIS 571 | Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Introduction to ideas, issues, representations and algorithms in the field of artificial intelligence. The course is organized into units covering intelligent agent architectures, problem solving, search, game playing, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning, learning and robotics. Although students are encouraged to use Java to implement programs in assignments, any programming language and existing softwares can be used for course projects.
COLT 616 | Transmedial Aesthetics Approaches to the analysis of film, photography, video, and new media. Emphasis on intersections between comparison and media theory.
EDST 615 | Technology and Education
ENG 586 | New Media and Digital Culture Study of media emerging from computer-based and digital techniques, including digital cinema, cyborgs, interactive games, multiplayer online simulations, and viral videos. Offered alternate years.
J 510 | Algorithms/Automation
J 512 | Social Media & Society
J 567 | Top Global Mobile Methods Topics focus on global media issues
J 567 | Top New Media in Asia
J 567 | The Digital World Investigates the changes in information and communication practices brought about by innovations in information technologies and to analyze their social and cultural consequences.
J 610 | New Media and Globalization
J 652 | Consumer Politics Production oriented and consumer oriented capitalism are in question. Multiple new economies are here, being built, and enacted. They are being called laissez faire, neoliberal, prosumptive, free, digital, and patriotic. How are and will they be democratic? How will they be ecological? How is communication being re-imagined to foster this transformation?
JPN 507 | Stories in the Digital Age: The Future of the Book
JPN 507 | The Future of the Book: New Publishing Trends and Literary Forms
JPN 510 | Digital Age Stories
JPN 510 | Tokyo Cyberpunk
LAW 610 | Cybercrime
LIB 607 | Data Management
LIB 607 | Issues in Digital Scholarship This course will help graduate students navigate the many forms of digital scholarship as practiced today, as well as help students imagine new forms of digital scholarship appropriate to their research and/or their chosen academic discipline. PHIL 507 | The Politics of Information: History, Theory and Critique Features a number of approaches to an emerging theme of inquiry gaining importance across a range of contemporary disciplinary formations including: new media studies, science and technology studies, the history and philosophy of technology and science, and political philosophy and social theory.
PHIL 607 | Net Theory: Public and Private on/in the Internet PHIL 607 | Seminar: Data Genealogy
PS 510 | Technology and its Discontents
SOC 510 | Digital Social Life
Potential Elective Courses
Some courses may have registration restrictions; refer to Schedule of Classes for details. (For Electives offered this year, refer to current courses.)
Any pre-approved Methods or Topics Courses
AAD 510 | Studying Media Boundaries
AAD 510 | Media Publics AAD 510 | Media Management Praxis
AAD 607 | Comparative Technologies in Arts Administration
ARTD 507 | The Cinema Effect
ARTD 510 | Data Visualization
ARTD 510 | Art of Surveillance
ARTD 512 | Experiment Animation
ARTD 513 | Emerging Technologies
ARTD 516 | Programming for Artists
ARTD 571 | 3-D Computer Imaging
ARTD 571 | 3-D Computer Animation
ARTD 578 | Multimedia Design II
CIS 510 | Intro to Gaming Programming
CIS 553 | Data Mining
CIS 572 | Machine Learning
COLT 560 | Deleuze and Guattari
EALL 607 | East Asian Cinema
EDST 522/615 | Technology Education
EDUC 640 | Applied Statistics Design
EDUC 640 | Regression
ENG 581 | Theories of the Moving Image
ENG 585 | Television Studies
ENG 596 | Feminist Film Critique
ENG 695 | Queer TV Studies
ENG 695 | Film Studies Media
FLR 585 | Film and Folklore
FLR 684 | Folklore Fieldwork
GEOG 607 | Geography of Science & Technology
J 512 | Issues in Communication Studies: Digital Freedom
J 512 | Issues in Communication Studies: Political Economy of Media
J 512 | Issues in Communication Studies: Citizen Media
J 512 | Top Comedy in Media
J 512 | Top How to Watch TV
J 536 | Top Magazine Design
J 536 | Flux Magazine Design
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Interactive Media
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Digital Strategy
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Design for Media
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Digital Production
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Digital Publishing
J 560 | Topics in Brand Development: Digital Social Brand
J 563 | Social Media Content
J 563 | Topics in Specialized Reporting: Digital Urban Journalism
J 566 | Topics in Advanced Photojournalism: Digital Storytelling
J 566 | Topics in Advanced Photojournalism: Multimedia Storytelling
J 580 | Social Media Strategy for Public Relations
J 596 | Top Philosophy of Communication
J 610 | Sex, Media, and Regulation
J 610 | Ecofeminism & Media
J 617 | Strategic Communication Theory and Research
J 641 | Qualitative Methods
J 646 | Political Economy of Communication
J 652 | Communication and Politics
JPN 510 | Japanese Cinema Studies
LA 517 | Computer Aided Landscape Architecture Design
LAW 610 | Trademark Law
LAW 610 | IP Licensing
LAW 667 | Copyrights
MUS 546 | Computer Music Applications
MUS 547 | Digital Audio and Sound Design
MUS 548 | Interactive Media Performance
MUS 549 | Creativity in Technology
MUS 570 | History of Electronic
Music MUS 576 | Digital Audio Workstation Tech I
MUS 577 | Digital Audio Workstation Tech II
MUS 578 | Digital Audio Workstation Tech III
MUS 582 | Audio Record Technique III
MUS 645 | Advanced Electronic Composition
PPPM 507 | Mobile
GIS PPPM 536 | Applied GIS and Social Planning
PSY 610 | Structural Equation Modeling