Upcoming Courses

Fall 2026
RHCS 101-01: Key Terms in Communication(M/W) 9:00-10:15 am
RHCS 101-02: Key Terms in Communication (M/W) 10:00-11:45 am
RHCS 101-03: Key Terms in Communication (M/W) 1:30-2:45 pm
RHCS 246-01: Data and Society (T/R) 10:30-11:45 am
RHCS 246-02: Data and Society (T/R) 1:30-2:45 pm
RHCS 246-03 Data and Society (T/R) 9:00-10:15 am
RHCS 255-01: Media, Culture and Identity (M/W) 10:30-11:45 am
RHCS 255-02: Media, Culture and Identity (M/W) 12:00-1:15 pm
RHCS 271-01: Digital Humanities (M/W) 3:00-4:15 pm
RHCS 273-01: Performance Studies (T/R) 10:30-11:45 am
RHCS 275-01: Vision and Visuality (T/R) 12:00-1:15 pm
RHCS 350-01: Rhetoric in a Globalized World (T/R) 1:30-2:45 pm
RHCS 412-01: Global Media and Africa (M/W) 10:30-11:45 am
RHCS 412-02: Media and the Environment (T/R) 12:00-1:15 pm
RHCS 412-03: Oral Histories(M/W) 1:30-2:45 pm

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
RHCS 412-01: Global Media and Africa... Dr. Suglo
This course offers an introduction to media, culture, and society in postcolonial Africa.  It considers diverse media forms and cultures across the continent, to examine ways in which media interconnect with globalization, colonialism and imperialism, development, and social change. The course is designed to train students to do critical comparative analyses of media across nations. Suggested readings, activities, and assignments are designed to help students situate media technologies, forms, and artifacts in relation to broader political, economic, social, and cultural contexts. At the end of the course, students will be able to contextualize media across national borders paying attention to the ways in which media shapes or is shaped by social, political, religious, and economic factors. 
 
RHCS 412-02: Media and Environment…Dr. Weisner 
This class introduces the emergence of “the environment” as an object of concern in the cultural production of contemporary industrialized societies. We will discuss how framings of ecological crisis, moral claims about environmental action, and representations of nature have come to saturate everyday media, often in unexpected and subtle ways. The class will cover some of the major environmental tropes, framings, and metaphors which appear in mainstream Western media production, as well as their historic origins. However, we will also discuss media and perspectives from around the world that go beyond the often-dominant focus on wilderness preservation or the overly simplistic story of a conflict between humans and nature. In working to understand how environmental cultures develop in relation to media cultures, we will also look at entanglements between media technologies and environments— contemplating the screens, data, and media infrastructures that allow us to learn about places we’ve never visited or environmental issues that exceed our perceptual capacity, and grappling with the immense environmental toll of producing and powering mediated experiences.

RHCS 412-03: Oral Histories…Dr. Barracks
This course explores how place-based stories shape identity, memory, and power. Drawing on Black performance studies and experimental media arts, we examine oral history and podcasting as forms that amplify voices often marginalized or excluded from written archives—and we question what counts as scholarship.
Centering Black rhetorical and oral traditions—from testimony and family histories to hip-hop and spoken word—we consider how cultural memory and knowledge are preserved, circulated, and reclaimed. Students will study rhetorical meaning-making and community-based knowledge practices while using storytelling, performance, and experimental media to learn theories and creative techniques for resisting the erasure of cultural histories. Through readings, site visits, and media analysis, students will explore expansive definitions of what knowledge is, how it is produced, and how it returns to the communities that shape it.