Course Catalog

This course introduces students to audio and video storytelling for television and digital platforms. Over one or, if they choose, two semesters, students with any level of video experience will move from the basics of field reporting and anchoring newscasts to more advanced and sophisticated levels of long-form video news. Class meetings will include the production of AUP's weekly television news webcast. A significant amount of course time will therefore be devoted to mastering news writing skills and journalistic techniques such as interviewing, news scripting, etc. The course will also examine how news stories are produced for ear and eye, including the construction of various story formats. The classes will help the student understand the role of the broadcast reporter, through the study and discussion of current issues in audio visual journalism, historical development and the organization of news operations.

This is an experimental graduate level course designed to give a limited number of students hands-on training in preparing television news stories and features. Students will spend the semester producing video for internet broadcasts. The emphasis will be on story telling, so the course is intended for students who already know how to shoot and edit video. For those with limited video experience, there will be two weekend seminars (four days) of basic video instruction available. In addition to time spent putting together projects outside the classroom, students will be expected to spend a fixed number of hours per week volunteering for the production of the website broadcasts.

Brands, their creation, their identity and their management derive from a set of disciplines and principles that have been developed over the past 60 years. These disciplines are the architectural underpinnings for successful branding and they apply equally across categories of products and services and geographically across countries. The Branding Practicum will instruct students in these disciplines and principles and ask students to apply them to the creation of a new international brand in a category of their choice. Students will analyze a chosen category, create a new brand proposition for it, develop the branding identity for the new brand including name, logo, selling proposition and more. They will also create a global marketing strategy for the brand.

The development of effective advertising is an intellectual and creative process that has evolved over the past century and includes the disciplines of research, targeting, strategy, strategy derived creative execution and evaluation. Today, the form and content of advertising is changing as the digital age opens new channels and types of messages. The Advertising Practicum will instruct students in the real world creation of effective advertising. Students will learn “the creation process” from start to finish, develop strategies and create advertising campaigns. Finally, they will compete to win an international brand’s advertising account by solving a strategic and creative challenge facing that brand just as it is done in the advertiser/ advertising agency industry worldwide. At the course’s end, students should have completed an advertising exercise that they can present to future employers as an aid to securing a job of their choice.

The NGO practicum is a course that prepares students to engage with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the field. It will introduce students to several important tools necessary to be reflective and responsible agents of social change. The course includes a series of preparatory sessions, which may include lectures, workshops, visits, and individual research assignments, followed by a period of overseas fieldwork in which students will collaborate with local NGOs to help create various project management tools or media projects.

Public relations (PR) is now an integral part of everyday life. From politicians to playgroups, it is an important tool that can mean the difference between success and failure of a project or product. Effective PR is a key requirement of most companies and organisations and this course is designed to provide students with the necessary background knowledge to allow them to begin a career in this area and/or to improve their general business communication skills. The course outlines different types, practices, and principles of public relations. It looks at key frameworks and developments in PR theory and practice, offering a straightforward combination of theory and case studies. In an increasingly global context, it is also imperative to take into account the international and intercultural perspectives of PR.

This class studies in detail the relations between media, gender and sexuality in a complex global environment. We will build on a theoretical foundation of gender in terms of embodiment, representation, consumption and institutions, and apply various methods of analysis to a range of global media. We will examine how gender enters debates around globalization, including anti-globalization movements, and how constructions of gender influence the mediation of global issues such as nationality, war and terrorism, and transnational flows of people, culture and capital.

This course examines the role of Media in the Middle East and North Africa (primarily Arab countries). It analyzes the different ways in which Media and politics intersect.
It covers the evolution of the Middle Eastern Mediascape, its relation to ideologies, to political and intellectual circles, to the emerging ruling elites, to entertainment and to financial sponsors.
The course discusses as well the emergence of Pan Arab Media outlets (from newspapers to Satellite channels), their impact on the regional media scene, and then the beginning of the digital era or the "democratization" of media with internet, social networks, smart phones, and their roles in revolutions.
Islam, its perceptions, its political impact, and the way some Islamist movements deal with or use the Media are topics to explore.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. To provide students with an understanding of important media trends in the Middle East.
2. To help students reflect on the role of Media in Middle Eastern culture and politics.
3. To assist students think through the roles that traditional and new/digital Media have played in revolutions in the region

In this class, we will explore the manner in which people in France and the United States think about and interact with their foods. In so doing we will critically examine: the historical development of nutrition and gastronomic discourses in these countries, their contemporary manifestations (in media and advertising, governmental institutions and guidelines, food production and consumption) and their role in the formation of individual, national, gender and class identities. In so doing, we will critically explore, from a cross-cultural perspective, the concepts (such as health and taste), practices (such as cooking or dieting), places (such as school cafeterias or vineyards) and people (such as nutritional scientists or restaurant chefs) involved in the elaboration, maintenance and reformulation of these discourses. Among the most important goals of this class are: to further develop students' ability to think critically about modern processes and contemporary identities using a range of theoretical approaches; to bring students to an understanding of France and the United States that goes beyond well encrusted clichés; and, to allow students to develop a new appreciation for their foods and a more profound understanding of their relationship to them. The class will include a one-week "terroir and taste" fieldtrip to the Jura Mountains. Note: the tasting of cheese, meat products and wine is an integral part of the Jura trip.

This course looks at the interface between communications and urban space. With the rapid spread of neo-liberalism and the internet, urban theorists see the city as increasingly ‘capsularized’. Across the planet, new forms of human-created environment—the theme park, the free-trade zone, the gated community—are constructed. While urban space has often been carefully designed, well crafted public-relations strategies now situate cities at local and global levels. Thus, within a framework of contemporary urban theory underpinned by case studies, students will reflect on the affective politics of the city, thinking critically about the interplay between mediated communication and urban policy, public space and built form.