Communication and Media Studies Doctoral Program (Ph.D., 3,5 - 5 Years)

Consistent with the Regulations of the Institute for Graduate Education and Research, students will register to this course until completing their theses.

In this course, we will discuss behavioral (mainstream) and critical approaches to communication theory. The major aim of the course is to familiarize students with alternative theoretical approaches to understand communication. Each week, a different communication theory will be introduced.

This is an entry-level Ph.D. seminar intended to expose students to a wide body of literature dealing with selected theoretical concepts and studies in the field of Communication and Media. The class will involve examination and analysis of research topics of the past and their implications for the present and future studies; overview of communication –related issues that need further investigation; priorities and alternative explanations of various intellectual perspectives of current issues in the field of communication.

This class will focus on alternative research methods and the methodological reasons that lead us to consider them as alternatives to the mainstream tradition. We will look at the distinction made between the “sciences” and the “humanities as well as the remapping of that distinction within the sciences in terms of the natural or physical sciences versus the social sciences differentiation. It is this notion of a difference-in-kind that also underlies the disparity and incommensurability of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The ontological underpinnings of these distinctions will force us to reconsider, for example, the conventional understandings of, and the requirement for, an “objective” knowledge. Informed by a positivist or empiricist methodology, PhD students are sometimes asked to write their dissertation in the passive voice in order to create and maintain this impression of objectivity. It is their style of writing that enables this impression of objectivity, otherwise the claim to objectivity is endangered. Noting this opens up another line of research for us; that of the literary style and the rhetoric involved in the representations of truth and reality in scientific research, and scientific discourse in general. This, in turn, points to a, perhaps, surprising but nonetheless necessary relationship between fact and fiction. Etymology shows that relation in the words themselves, for fact is the past participle of fiction (see Gayatri Spivak). To get a better understanding of the difference-within scientific research, we will study the methodological underpinnings of the alternative methods. To put it differently we will study the logos. We will see that different methods often rest on incompatible epistemological or ontological assumptions.

Ph.D Qualifying Exam

Many graduate students under-perform in their course work, exams, and eventually their theses due to poorly developed basic study skills. Taking essay writing as its basic activity, this course demonstrates how the integration of study, planning, time management, rhetorical and language skills is an essential prerequisite of good results.The course will be run on a “workshop” basis – much of the actual exercises we will be doing will occur during class time. Come expecting to participate in discussions and practical work. There will also be occasional homework assignments. All of this work is important as it will form the basis of students’ coursework mark. In the final essay students will be expected to demonstrate all the skills they have acquired during the course – preparing outlines, drafts, coherent argument, etc.