Program Overview

Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia Studies is a comprehensive curriculum that includes courses in film studies, television studies, journalism, video production, computer animation, and studies and practices in multimedia, interactive media, and new technologies. Participating faculty are engaged with analyzing the power and responsibility of existing and emerging media from formal, historical, economic, and ideological perspectives.

The course of study emphasizes not only the meanings of media texts but also the processes by which these meanings are constructed and disseminated. The goal is to help the undergraduate understand the study and creation of visual, print and new media within the larger contexts of human visual and verbal expression, and to shape students into sophisticated readers and producers of visual culture.

Courses consider both mainstream and alternative media and include industrial and artistic approaches, linking production techniques and aesthetics to industry, history, and politics.

The program is arranged into two sequences: 1) Film, Video, and New Media, and 2) Multimedia Journalism. As a multimedia program, the degree prepares students to navigate multiple and merged media platforms and provides students with the versatility necessary to succeed in a quickly evolving, growing and converging digital media environment; students are expected to develop strong basic writing, visualization, and analytical skills and then to become adept at writing and producing for multiple and merged media platforms.

The curriculum moves across the historical, critical, theoretical and practical terrain of print, radio, film, television and digital media, addressing convergence and remediation (the mapping of technologies onto successive interfaces). The goal of the degree program is to provide a broad liberal arts education alongside applied training in traditional and new media so that graduates are able to fully exercise the civic responsibilities of media practitioners, media handlers, and media theorists for the lively functioning of democratic institutions.