Welcome
The Communication & Culture major offers students interdisciplinary study of the cultural foundations underlying the vast communication phenomena that we experience daily.
Courses probe the pervasive but often subtle messages embedded in visual and graphic images, everyday discourse, literary works, artistic productions, historical writing, and other symbolic systems. The major encourages students to think analytically about communication, to integrate concepts and ideas with professional practices, and to engage in original projects and research.
The Communication & Culture Program currently enrolls approximately 90 majors and 25 minors. The first class of 25 students graduated in 1998, and student interest continues to grow.
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Letter from the Program DirectorWelcome to the web site for the Communication & Culture Program, a unique interdisciplinary major at Clark University As a major, you will study the role of communication in culture. You will learn new ways of thinking about communication, and explore topics as diverse as the effects of mass media, the creation of nationalism and nationalist symbols, gender and language development, and new media technologies. As a COMM student, you will develop critical and analytical skills for understanding the role of communication in your own life and in larger society. Unlike the Communication programs at most universities, our curriculum is neither primarily technical nor skills-based. Although we offer credit for classes focused on professional practice, our goals are analytical: to understand how communications processes work, whether in an argument between friends, an exchange in a social networking site, an interpretation of a popular television show, or a political speech communicated across the world. At Clark, you might study how the dress of Asian women in London has become culturally charged and powerfully coded, how architecture communicates the values of a culture, or how images of "minorities" are circulated in advertising and film. Using the lens of cultural practice, our program studies communication at the intersection of many disciplines–including sociology, history, linguistics, urban education, psychology, anthropology, and the fine arts–drawing from both humanistic and social-scientific modes of inquiry to examine fundamental communication processes and effects. Clark’s global, international character offers many opportunities for our students to think about and to shape the impact of communication throughout the world. Preparation gained in the major provides a liberal arts orientation to how we think about and participate in communication as the 21st century unfolds. For more information about the program, please contact me at fjohnson@clarku.edu or Donna DiRado, program assistant, at 508-793-7180 or through e-mail at ddirado@clarku.edu.
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