Theoretical Synthesis

Term: Fall only

Credits: 0-4

FTE: 3 credits of equivalency for Fall only(international students must register for additional 9 credits to maintain full-time status)

The course focuses on a series of intensive exercises designed to develop students’ ability to synthesize and represent key theories and concepts in the study of media, culture, and communication. The class focuses on synthesis as an essential skill for research, writing, and teaching. Students will be re-reading texts they have read before rather than encountering new texts, in the process consolidating their understanding. Students will practice extracting key arguments from texts and putting these arguments together by constructing topical groupings, syllabi, and charts/maps of conceptual fields. Each exercise will push students to locate or construct connections and contrasts, drawing out relationships—logical, epistemological, historical, and methodological—between various concepts, theories, schools of thought, and disciplines. This will build students’ skills for future research, community/ public scholarship, and/or teaching.

This course works toward the goal of developing a portfolio of public scholarship that students could use after graduation. At the end of the course, students will be expected to submit a portfolio consisting of:

1) Annotated Bibliographies

2) Conceptual Maps/Charts

3) New Syllabi

4) Short Essays on Chosen Areas of Study

Application Process

1-page (double spaced) essay explaining the following:

• • What you have learned in your studies in MCC so far

  • What you hope to do after you graduate

  • Why you would like to take this seminar