Rhetoric and Media Studies Bachelor of Arts

The information on this page pertains to requirements for students who matriculated in the current academic year. Students who matriculated in a prior year should view historical catalog information here.

Program Overview

The program in Rhetoric and Media Studies considers how our use of language and symbols shapes who we and others are, what we may become, and what we do. Courses in the major bring critical attention to the nature of representations and communicative/knowledge practices and how they mediate our lives and experience, with particular attention to the contested and changing character of identity, community, public life, ethics, and morality. Students in the program learn to analyze forms of media from across political, popular, and professional cultures. The major also invites students to understand the movement of social change in a range of settings and to consider how those settings offer differing resources for them to engage in political action in their own lives.