MDST 3050

Professor Punathambekar was absolutely amazing! I have heard horrible reviews of this class from past Media Studies majors, so I was very nervous signing up. But I HIGHLY recommend taking this with Professor Punathambekar if he teaches it again! He really understands the importance of teaching about media from a political and social viewpoint and highlighting really important issues relevant to our current society by using historical media trends. He does not just read from a textbook, nor even assign one. Sometimes I forgot I was in a history of media class because it was a lot more about analyzing trends throughout media than just memorizing important facts about the history of media. To be fair, lecture can get a bit boring sometimes, and class discussions can too, but it was still an enjoyable class compared to the horror stories I've heard about this course. Typically in a week you have one (usually very short) reading and one film or video to watch, which is super manageable. We had occasional discussion posts, 2 short reading responses, 2 longer essays both on analyzing a media text, and a final group project. I would not have wanted to take this with any other professor and am very glad I got to take it with Punathamabekar! My TA was Sam Golter, and he was also really helpful and nice.

I wasn't a huge fan of this course. It felt kind of all over the place - we learned basically about trends in the media industry from 1950-2010. I felt like discussion was a little too broad so that I didn't actually get much out of it. At first, I was doing the readings and going to the lecture, and eventually I stopped doing the readings because the lecture pretty much repeated what was in them. I think I should have stopped going to the lectures and done the readings instead though, because I often ended up spacing out in lecture. On Thursdays, instead of reading, we had to watch a documentary, which was usually very interesting. For class on Thursdays though, we would break up into breakout rooms and answer questions he gave us which was not super productive. Usually not many people came and people didn't want to talk. I didn't go to many of them either. I felt like Prof Punathambekar, and the TA Sam, had specific things they wanted us to take away rather than letting us have our own thoughts. Prof Punathambekar actually seemed really nice, but I wouldn't say discussion was his strong point.
For assignments, we had two short reflections on a documentary or reading, and then two essays about trends in certain decades. We had to watch a TV episode from those decades and talk about it in the essay. Sam was the one who graded them, so if you have a different TA then it'll be different, but he was a really harsh grader. I never got above a 85 on an assignment. I don't think my essays were incredible, but I didn't expect them to be as low as they were.
The final was changed to a group project, which was kind of irritating (I had already decided to take credit/no credit so I would've preferred just to struggle through another essay). It was a podcast, and we had to discuss a TV show from the 2000s and its use of race. It wasn't so hard, but I'm lucky I had a good group.
I took COVID CR/NC for this class, but I think if that wasn't a choice, I would've gotten a low B. Overall, I would not recommend this course, but Media Studies majors have to take it. Definitely don't take it if you don't have to.
#tCF2020