Graduate Courses

Communication 200: Theories in Communication Science. Exploration of theoretical and methodological approaches that bridge major areas of current interdisciplinary communication science research.

Communication 205: Professional Pathways. Designed to expose doctoral students to a range of career pathways. Each class meeting will focus on one possible career path and feature a guest speaker who works in that particular industry.

Communication 210: Communication Speaker Series. Designed for graduate students in social and natural sciences. Weekly speaker presentations in communication sciences. Focus on interdisciplinary approaches to psychological, political, and computational communication.

Communication 215: Communication Research Laboratory. Research group meeting, one hour. Limited to graduate students. Designed for graduate students in social and natural sciences. Discussion of current research issues and preliminary findings. Opportunities for feedback on current and proposed research activity.

Communication 220: Research Methods in Communication Science. Study of how communication science research is conducted with focus on quantitative methodology. Students gain understanding of tools used to conduct research, and experience with these tools through formulating own research ideas and projects.

Communication 230: Communication and Cognition. Exploration of how cognitive processes underlie multiple aspects of communication, including its evolutionary and biological underpinnings, its relevance for broad types of communication (e.g., interpersonal and mass media), and its integrative capacity across multiple areas of social science research.

Communication 231: Advances in the Science of Interpersonal Human Communication. Examination of quantitative approaches to interpersonal communication processes. Topics include measuring human interactive behavior, experimentation and observational research contexts, and testing theories of human interactive behavior using computational models.

Communication 232: Infant Communication. Covers topics in development of interpersonal communication during infancy including neural and social mechanisms, role of culture, clinical issues, and research methodology.

Communication 233: Evolution, Sex/Gender, and Communication. Exploration of deep evolutionary foundations of sex and gender, and their modern manifestations. Topics covered may include evolutionary mismatches between ancestral past and modern present, sex/gender and mass media, navigating world of shifting gender norms, and how sex/gender influences interpersonal relationships and sexuality.

Communication 234: Social Vision. Exploration of nascent field of social vision, with emphasis on how observers utilize visible cues in face and body to form impressions of other people and how these perceptions are moderated by existing knowledge structures and motivations.

Communication 235: Evolution of Vocal Communication. Examination of current research in evolutionary approaches to vocal communication. Topics include introduction to acoustic phonetics, animal signaling, and social communication.

Communication 236: Humans and Machines.  Examination of communication in human-machine interactions, exploring idea that well-established psychological processes play critical roles in interactions with non-social objects. Examination of social psychology of perception across distinct sensory modalities (shape, motion, voice, touch). Study of social psychological processes between humans and non-human entities (objects, computers, robots).

Communication 237: Prediction and Conjecture in Communicative Behavior. Examination of range of domain-specific communicative conjectures in advertising, entertainment, education, and television news.

Communication 250: Political Communication. Consideration of determinants of media content and degree to which Americans’ political opinions and actions are influenced by that content. Specific topics include history of news media, recent media trends, theories of attitude formation and change, media bias, role of sources in construction of news, economics of news production and consumption, ways in which media shape public perceptions of political world, campaign communication, and general role of mass media in democratic process.

Communication 251: Presidential Communication. Examination of one vital source of presidency’s burgeoning power: president’s unmatched communication power. Study of historical evolution of president’s communication environment, resources, and strategies. Exploration of how presidential campaign communication has evolved over time, and implications of this evolution for how presidents govern.

Communication 252: Political Parties and Strategic Partisan Communication. Examination of theories about how political parties operate in countries around world. Covers topics including normative role of parties in modern democracies, reasons why parties exist, party competition, electoral systems, variation in number and types of parties across countries, party identification, voting, and internal party dynamics.

Communication 253: Affective Political Communication. This course considers the role that affect plays in the production and consumption of political news, and in political communication, behavior and psychology.

Communication 254: Media & Politics. Mass media play a critical role in domestic and international politics, and are a central component of modern representative democracy. This course reviews major questions in the study of mass media and politics, in the US and cross-nationally.

Communication 270: Computational Communication. New computational methods developed and applied for communication research along with massive datasets and computing infrastructure enable large-scale quantitative analyses on human communication and activities at scale. Introduction to state-of-art methods in computational social science and how they can apply in communication research.

Communication 271: Networks. Covers theory and applications from scientific study of networks. Students learn to use network analysis and visualization software and collect and analyze original network data.

Communication 272: Cognitive Artificial Intelligence. Examination of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human communication with a focus on models of communication and cognition.

Communication 273: Big Data Analysis with Machine Learning. Introduction to advanced machine learning methods that can apply to large-scale datasets in text, audio, and visual data modalities. Students learn how to develop, train, and validate machine learning models and apply methods to their own research.

Communication 596: Directed Individual Study or Research. Tutorial, to be arranged. Limited to Communication graduate students. Directed study on variable topics in consultation with faculty member.

Communication 597: Preparation for PhD Qualifying Examination. Tutorial, to be arranged. Limited to Communication PhD graduate students. Reading and preparation for PhD qualifying examination. Mandatory and supplemental reading lists approved by student advisory committee. May be repeated for credit as necessary with consent of adviser. S/U grading.

Communication 599: Research for PhD Dissertation. Tutorial, to be arranged. Preparation: successful completion of qualifying examinations. Limited to Communication PhD graduate students. May be repeated for credit. S/U grading.