• MDST 2710

    Screenwriting
     Rating

    4.67

     Difficulty

    1.00

     GPA

    3.89

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    An introduction to the art and craft of screenwriting through the writing and discussion of short scripts. Will involve study of screenplays and films, and focus on the basic elements of screenwriting, including story structure, creation of character, and formatting. Prerequisite: Media studies major or instructor permission.

  • MDST 3490

    Just Kiddin': Comedy & Humor Across Media
     Rating

    4.67

     Difficulty

    1.50

     GPA

    3.79

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course explores humorous and comedic texts and performances across a variety of media forms in America. We will begin by understanding theories of comedy and the logic of jokes alongside histories of comedians and humorous tropes and aesthetics. Examining a variety of content, we will discover how American comedy offers a rich relationship between creative expression and sociopolitical critique across different media and contexts.

  • MDST 3505

    Special Topics in Diversity and Identity in Media
     Rating

    1.67

     Difficulty

    1.50

     GPA

    3.74

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course will offer historical, comparative, and critical perspectives on issues of diversity and identity in media studies. Topics may include the relationship between media and underrepresented groups, media use in identity construction, masculinity and feminine role models in media, media power, etc.Prerequisite: MDST Major and Minors or Instructor Permission

  • MDST 2200

    Introduction to Film
     Rating

    4.33

     Difficulty

    1.79

     GPA

    3.83

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to the variety of cinematic forms and genres as well as the history and theories behind them. Class work will include lecture and discussion groups.There will be two papers of approximately 4-5 pages and an online final exam. Papers will count for approximately 75% of the final grade, the final exam approximately 25%.

  • MDST 2690

    Sports Journalism
     Rating

    5.00

     Difficulty

    2.00

     GPA

    3.76

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course will cover all manner of media as it relates to sports journalism. Students will analyze published work across various mediums, learn the tools for reporting and writing different types of coverage, including features, profiles, long-form, game stories and more. Students will write articles, interview subjects, analyze sports journalism, participate in peer reviews and hear from some of the most prominent figures in sports journalism.

  • MDST 3111

    Food Media and Popular Culture
     Rating

    3.67

     Difficulty

    2.00

     GPA

    3.92

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Media representations of food across time and place offer a lens through which we can understand the cultural politics of food production, preparation, consumption and commercialization. Studying a range of food media genres, this course explores media storytelling around food, along with the racial, ethnic, gendered, class, and trans/national complexities that characterize our food narratives. A word of advice-do not to come to our class hungry!

  • MDST 4000

    Media Theory and Methods
     Rating

    2.67

     Difficulty

    2.00

     GPA

    3.62

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    An introduction to research methods in media studies. Intended as a foundation for thesis and project work for students in the DMP program. Covers subjects such as research design, ethics, people-based methods (ethnography, surveys, interviews) and textual analysis.

  • MDST 2508

    Topics in Media Practice
     Rating

    4.67

     Difficulty

    2.25

     GPA

    3.84

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course will provide practice-based learning opportunities for students in various forms of media, including video, podcasting, film, etc.

  • MDST 3502

    Special Topics in Film Genre
     Rating

    4.72

     Difficulty

    2.33

     GPA

    3.53

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course will offer historical and critical perspectives on a selected film genre each semester. Genres might include Noir, war, romance, musicals, gangster, New Wave, etc.

  • MDST 3720

    Social Media and Global South Societies
     Rating

    2.22

     Difficulty

    2.33

     GPA

    3.74

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course studies the relationship between social media and Global South societies. Students in this course will analyze the various theories related to the effects and affordances of social media on ideological polarization, social influence, social capital, and social movements. Students will be required to look beyond positive/negative effects of social media, and conduct in-depth interrogations about issues that surround them.

  • MDST 3105

    Latina/o Media Studies
     Rating

    4.50

     Difficulty

    2.50

     GPA

    3.64

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course is designed to introduce students to critical analyses of media texts, media industries, and media audiences that help explain the social, political, economic, and cultural locations of Latinas/os in America.

  • MDST 3409

    LGBTQ Issues in the Media
     Rating

    2.83

     Difficulty

    2.50

     GPA

    3.63

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course will explore the complex cultural dynamics of LGBTQ media visibility, along with its social, political, and psychological implications for LGBTQ audiences. It explores four domains: (1) the question of LGBT media visibility (2) the complex processes of inclusion, normalization, and assimilation in popular culture (3) media industries and the LGBT market (4) the relationship between digital media, LGBT audiences, and everyday life.

  • MDST 3510

    Topics in Media Research
     Rating

    4.10

     Difficulty

    2.57

     GPA

    3.76

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This hands-on course prepares students to read, evaluate, and design research in media studies. Drawing on critical, historical, administrative, and industrial traditions in the field, students will learn to assess the validity and anticipate the ethical requirements of various methods & data collection procedures. Following a theme selected by the instructor, the course culminates with each student proposing a new, original research study.

  • MDST 2810

    Cinema As An Art Form
     Rating

    4.00

     Difficulty

    2.88

     GPA

    3.69

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    A course in visual thinking; introduces film criticism, concentrating on classic and current American and non-American films.

  • MDST 3504

    Topics in Global Media
     Rating

    3.67

     Difficulty

    2.88

     GPA

    3.70

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course offers historical, comparative, critical, and media industry perspectives on global media. It explores how capital, geopolitics, new technologies and forms of production and consumption impact global media flows. Topics include studies of media systems, textual traditions, media circulation, globalization, the role of media technologies in international affairs, and the role of transnationalism in national and international affairs.

  • MDST 2000

    Introduction to Media Studies
     Rating

    3.24

     Difficulty

    2.97

     GPA

    3.40

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course is a survey introduction to the complex and increasingly pervasive impact of mass media in the U.S. and around the world. It 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 3050

    History of Media
     Rating

    2.95

     Difficulty

    3.00

     GPA

    3.48

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This is a hands-on introduction to global media history. The course situates technologies, industries, texts and programs in the context of social, cultural, and political changes. Students will acquire basic competencies in historical research and writing: developing research questions, evaluating secondary sources, selecting archives, querying databases, managing notes, citing sources, sharing resources, and communicating findings as a team.

  • MDST 3404

    Democratic Politics in the New Media Environment
     Rating

    3.50

     Difficulty

    3.00

     GPA

    3.60

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course examines the ways a changing media system is altering the dynamics of public discourse and democratic politics in the United States. Throughout the course we will critically analyze the ways in which scholars from a wide range of disciplines have studied the connection between media and politics, the methods they have employed, and the validity of their findings and approaches in the new media environment in which we now live. Prerequisite: MDST 2000 or instructor permission.

  • MDST 3559

    New Course in Media Studies
     Rating

    4.18

     Difficulty

    3.00

     GPA

    3.57

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies.

  • MDST 4106

    Media and the Kennedy Era
     Rating

    4.56

     Difficulty

    3.00

     GPA

    3.54

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course examines mass media 'network television, journalism, advertising, cinema' both during the Kennedy years and after to explore the impact, ideas, ideals, and iconography of this presidency. Prerequisites: MDST 2000 or permission of instructor

  • MDST 4701

    Media and Everyday Life
     Rating

    4.33

     Difficulty

    3.00

     GPA

    3.57

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course turns a critical eye towards media's relationship to everyday life. It conceptualize media, such as cell phones, television, and YouTube for example, as central forces in representing, demarcating and franchising the ordinary. We will explore the construction of ordinariness in media as well as the ways in which audiences engage with media in daily life to achieve `taken for grantedness'. Prerequisite: MDST 2000

  • MDST 2700

    News Writing
     Rating

    3.52

     Difficulty

    3.29

     GPA

    3.41

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Introductory course in news writing, emphasizing editorials, features, and reporting.

  • MDST 3704

    Games and Play
     Rating

    2.33

     Difficulty

    3.33

     GPA

    3.40

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course is an introduction to the field of Game Studies, surveying theories of play and research on contemporary videogames to non-digital, analog, and "folk games." Historic tensions and debates in game studies will form the foundation for the course, then students will engage with game studies as inherently interdisciplinary, developing novel research projects on games and play as well as interrogating their own play experiences.

  • MDST 3402

    War and the Media
     Rating

    3.07

     Difficulty

    3.40

     GPA

    3.52

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course examines media coverage of American wars from World War I to the present. Study of the evolution in media coverage of war provides an ideal vantage point for understanding the changing nature of warfare in the 20th and 21st centuries, war's impact on American society, and the ways in which political elites have attempted to mobilize public support for foreign conflicts. Prerequisite: MDST 2000 or instructor permission.

  • MDST 3000

    Theory and Criticism of Media
     Rating

    3.57

     Difficulty

    4.00

     GPA

    3.69

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course introduces students at the beginning of the major to theoretical and critical literature in the field. Topics range from the psychological and sociological experience of media, interpretation and analysis of media forms and aesthetics, theories of audience and reception, anthropological approaches to media as a cultural force, and contemporary theories of media from humanities and social sciences perspectives. The goal of the course is to provide a foundation for thinking critically about media and to give them a sense of media studies as a critical and theoretical field. Restricted to Media Studies majors.

  • MDST 4559

    New Course in Media Studies
     Rating

    4.33

     Difficulty

    4.00

     GPA

    3.61

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies.

  • MDST 3230

    Basic Multimedia Reporting
     Rating

    2.00

     Difficulty

    4.67

     GPA

    3.82

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Basic Multimedia Reporting teaches the hands on skills required for professional level news reporting, news production and short documentaries. Students may choose to specialize in Written Journalism, TV Journalism or Production. However, all students learn proficiency in research, news writing, ethics, camera use, video editing, and where requested, broadcast presentation skills.

  • MDST 2305

    Podcasting, Radio and Sound Production
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.49

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Students will learn the practical components of podcast production including: audio recording and editing, sound mixing, script writing, interview techniques, and the final production of a podcast. In addition, students will critically analyze the components of radio/podcast features. The course includes a lecture component and lab time where the instructor will consult with students about their projects.

  • MDST 2559

    New Course in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.44

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies.

  • MDST 3113

    Horror Noire: History of Black Americans in Horror
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Black horror is a primer on the quest for social justice. What can such a boundary-pushing genre teach us about paths to solidarity and democracy? What can we learn about disrupting racism, misogyny, and anti-Blackness? If horror is radical transgression, then we have much to learn from movies such as Candyman, The First Purge, Get Out, Eve¿s Bayou, Blacula, Attack the Block, Demon Knight, Tales from the Hood, Sugar Hill, and Ganja & Hess.

  • MDST 3281

    Reimagining the News
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    In this course, we will explore the obstacles confronting the news industry -- disinformation, declining trust in institutions, eroding business models, inequitable practices -- but we won't dwell on what's gone wrong. Instead, we'll focus on what can be done about it. We'll define the role of journalism in society, we'll examine emerging models of solutions-based journalism, and we'll envision new models for community-minded news-sharing.

  • MDST 3338

    New Cinema History: Nontheatrical Films
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.36

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course studies nontheatrical films such as public relations films, management films, educational films, industrial films, and government-sponsored films. We will treat film as visual evidence to explore social, cultural, political, and industrial information across historical periods. Besides learning historiographical method to study cinema, students will examine representations of sex/gender, race/ethnicity, class, and religion.

  • MDST 3388

    Friday Night Lights
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course will explore the TV show Friday Night Lights through study of its narrative, characters, themes, filming style and the media's response. Through episodic examinations, students will explore topics such as: team versus individual, the role of a coach, race and gender relations, socioeconomic and class structures identified through sport, the significance of high school football, and the media's role/influence in telling those stories.

  • MDST 3430

    Rendering AI: Cinema and Artificial Intelligence
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.50

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course examines film renderings of artificial intelligence to foster critical perspectives on AI's entanglement with human experiences (e.g., of identity, work, privacy, sex, aging, memory, death). Issues raised will include: the political economics of computational culture; the ethics of algorithmic tracking systems; the religious underpinnings of AI's promise to deliver efficient transport (of information, services, goods, passengers).

  • MDST 3501

    Special Topics in Directors and Auteurs
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.73

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course will offer historical, comparative, and critical perspectives on a selected major directors and auteurs each semester. Directors might include Hitchcock, Welles, Heckerling, Ray, Speilberg, Renoir, Truffaut, etc.

  • MDST 3508

    Advanced Topics in Media Practice
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.96

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This practice-based course will build on previous knowledge and/or experience in various forms of media, including video, podcasting, film, etc.

  • MDST 3662

    Disability and Media
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.82

    Last Taught

    Summer 2024

    Disability is a pervasive, yet little studied, dimension of popular media. This class considers the stereotypes, interventions, and politics of on-screen images of disability as well as the ways in which disability affects the production and reception of media texts and technologies. Thus, we will watch a range of disability media, engage with disability cultures, and consider necessary additions to media experience (such as close captioning).

  • MDST 3712

    Interactive Storytelling
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.29

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course approaches the design and creation of "interactive stories." Over the term, students will develop prototypes of multiple interactive storytelling media (interactive fiction, games, simulations, scenarios), balancing an understanding of the scholarship on interactive narrative with individualized design goals. No experience with game design or programming is required.

  • MDST 3751

    Value, Values, Valuation
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.71

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    Measuring "value" is an important feature of media industries and contemporary life more broadly. This class asks how value is determined, according to what value systems, through what systems of valuation. We will look at taste, metrics, reviews, awards, likes, retweets, and ratings, to try to understand how people answer the question, "What is valuable?"

  • MDST 3800

    Field Experience in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.95

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Provides an opportunity for students to get credit for field work, in the area of media studies. Students must put a proposal together for the project with a faculty sponsor, which must be approved by the add/drop deadlines. Restricted to Media Studies Majors.

  • MDST 3811

    History of American Broadcast News
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.26

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course traces the development of national news broadcasting in the United States from the 1920s to the present.

  • MDST 3900

    Specialized Field Experience in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course is reserved for Media Studies students interested in receiving credit for participation in student-led and UVA-affiliated enterprises that are media-related under the guidance of a faculty member or industry professional in the area of media studies. Students must put a proposal together for the project with a faculty sponsor, which must be approved by the add/drop deadlines. Restricted to Media Studies Majors.

  • MDST 3912

    Adapting Media
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.30

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    In this course, we will focus on media adaptation across multiple media (film, games, comics, books) from multiple critical, industrial, and creative perspectives. Students will engage with existing Media Studies scholarship on media adaptation, dive into adaptations first-hand through watching/reading/playing multiple media, and finally develop, individually and in groups, critical understandings of media adaptation through writing.

  • MDST 3944

    Avenger, Victim, Outsider: Women in 1990s Cinema
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course examines some of the most important American films and cinematic innovations of the 1990s and combines some crucial cultural, political, and historical events (e.g. third-wave feminism, discourse of race and ethnicity in the wake of the Rodney King case) with the representation of women across different cinematic genres. Attention will be paid to the rise of female filmmakers such as Julie Dash, Jane Campion, and Kathryn Bigelow.

  • MDST 4010

    Distinguished Majors Thesis Writing or Research Project
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Writing of a thesis or production or a project with appropriately researched documentation, under the supervision of the faculty DMP thesis readers or project supervisor.

  • MDST 4510

    Capstone Topics
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.83

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    A capstone seminar, this course offers students a supervised opportunity to pursue original research in media studies. Related to a theme selected by the instructor, the project will entail design of a research question, extensive collection and analysis of literature and data, and completion of a 15-20 page paper that provides new, critical insight or information on the subject examined.

  • MDST 4660

    Watching the Detectives
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.50

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This course examines a number of American detective films and how the portrait of the hard-boiled private eye dramatizes concerns about class, race, gender relations, urbanization, the rationalization of experience, the limits of self-knowledge, the blurring of boundaries between bodies and machines, and the collapse of distinction between private life and public life.

  • MDST 4960

    Advanced Independent Projects in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course is designed to allow students to pursue independent research and study of a topic that is not contained within the course offerings of Media Studies. This course will not fulfill the capstone requirement

  • MDST 5501

    Advanced Special Topics in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.94

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    This course will offer critical perspectives on selected contemporary issues related to new media. Topics may include media in industry, education, politics, culture, and socio-economics. This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students.

  • MDST 5559

    New Course in Media Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This course provides the opportunity to offer a new course in the subject of Media Studies. If offered, topics will be listed on the course offerings page for the particular semester.

  • MDST 7442

    Feminist Media and Cultural Studies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    4.00

    Last Taught

    Spring 2024

    Feminist Media and Cultural Studies focuses on contemporary theory, criticism and research in the field, with an orientation to critical race feminisms, trans and queer studies, and disability studies within feminist literatures and research. We examine questions of technology, social networks, gaming, surveillance, online oppressions, media activism, feminist making, and the role of emotion and affect in feminist media analysis, among others.

  • MDST 7600

    Data and Democracy
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This graduate seminar will explore the ways that large-scale data collection, algorithmic processes, and artificial intelligence enhance or detract from the core values and practices of democracy. The course will cover the basics of data science, surveillance, algorithms, and artificial intelligence.

  • MDST 7701

    Media and Everyday Life
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.86

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    Media and Everyday Life turns a critical eye towards media's relationship to the everyday. We will conceptualize media as central forces in re-presenting, demarcating and franchising the ordinary. This course is designed to examine how media is produced as ordinary and universally intelligible (production), how it represents the everyday (texts), and how audiences phenomenologically engage with media in everyday life (reception and use).

  • MDST 8000

    Media, Culture & Technology
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.92

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This is a core course that surveys key texts in Media Studies. The course takes a historical approach to the development of the field, but also surveys the various developments in the social sciences, the humanities, and film studies relevant to the interdisciplinary study of media.

  • MDST 8001

    Histories of Media Technologies
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.93

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    In this course, students learn about the development of media technologies and infrastructures: how and why they were built, how they were shaped by regulation, and the social and political concerns driving both technological development and regulation. Students will read and assess primary and secondary literature, gaining an understanding of historiographical methods and employing those methods to produce original historical research.

  • MDST 8003

    Methods of Media Research
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.86

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    This class teaches students the logics, ethics, and techniques of qualitative research in media studies.

  • MDST 8004

    Master's Thesis Development
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Students meet as a cohort to translate their intellectual interests into a specific thesis project through iterative development, critique, and refinement of their research questions and proposed methods. Students will read and critique published work, gaining a sense of best practices in research design. This course is heavily reliant on peer feedback and collaboration. The culmination of this class is a thesis proposal.

  • MDST 8005

    Master's Thesis Writing
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    3.92

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    In this course, students form a writing community to foster accountability and confidence in conducting, writing, and sharing original research. Instruction will address developing a regular writing habit, writing for different audiences, communicating in visual and multimedia formats, and the practices of placing work in academic journals, policy venues, or popular online and print publications. This course is heavily reliant on peer feedback.

  • MDST 8212

    Social Studies of Media and Technology
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    4.00

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This seminar introduces graduate students to the Social Studies of Media and Technology (a sub-field of Science and Technology Studies (STS)) and its major ideas and texts. We will address how it differs from other fields and the advantages and limits of our unique interdisciplinary approach.

  • MDST 8600

    Media Studies Pedagogy
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Focuses on strategies for teaching media (screenings, using media in class, production). Uses pedagogical strategies like backwards course design, universal design for learning, and enhancing diversity. Covers FERPA, Title IX, and other university policies. Assignments include designing, presenting, feedback on lesson plans, assignments, and syllabus design.

  • MDST 8900

    Graduate Independent Study
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    A single semester of independent study under faculty supervision for MA or PhD students doing intensive research on a subject not covered in available courses. Requires approval by a Media Studies faculty member who has agreed to supervise a guided course of reading and research.

  • MDST 8991

    Introduction to Digital Humanities
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    Introducing the history, theory, and methods of Digital Humanities. Students will learn the interdisciplinary origins of DH, debate contemporary issues, and explore opportunities at UVA. The course will cover a range of specializations including humanities computing and critical code studies, data visualization, mapping and spatial analyses, and digital archives and preservation. This course is a requirement for the Graduate Certificate in DH.

  • MDST 8998

    Non-Topical Research
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Fall 2024

    This is a variable credit course that gives students the opportunity to do supervised or unsupervised research toward their degree. These hours fulfill enrollment credits but do not count toward graded credit requirements.

  • MDST 9000

    Colloquium
     Rating

     Difficulty

     GPA

    Last Taught

    Spring 2025

    The graduate colloquium builds an intellectual community and offers professionalization opportunities. Students learn the field, norms of scholarship, and the variety of research topics and approaches through presentations by faculty and visiting faculty. Advanced students will have the opportunity to present and hone research projects, course plans and lectures, and receive feedback on teaching and application materials, formal research talks, and interview practices.