Course Description:  How many YouTube videos have you watched today? How about videos on Instagram or TikTok? What about livestreams on platforms like Twitch or Facebook? Digital video, much of it amateur or semi-professional, has come to dominate social media and the internet—accounting for everything from entertainment to political activism. YouTube, founded in 2005, began the transformation of the primarily text and image-based internet to a more video heavy experience. This class is designed around studying the history and cultural impact of YouTube, as well as social media-based video more generally. We’ll study the history of YouTube, and immerse ourselves the present culture, forms, and genres of YouTube. We’ll look at the phenomenon of ‘YouTube stars’ and the emergence of influencer culture on the platform. We’ll study the growing body of scholarship andpopular commentary and criticism of YouTube and related platforms. We’ll look at the debates around free speech and concerns over political extremism and conspiracy theories. YouTube will be our focal point through which we will examine many of the larger topics related to video-based social media platforms: entertainment, identity, journalism, education, cultural production, fandom, politics, community, marketing, and public discourse. In addition to the expected components of a writing intensive class, students will also have the opportunity to use the modality of video to enhance their scholarship: curating, remixing, and even creating original critical video pieces.

Course Description: The human body is a rich and complex communicative resource. In this class, we will examine how the body, in coordination with talk, contributes to meaning making in face-to-face interaction. We will look closely at the movements of the eyes, face, hands, head, torso, and legs, as well as the use of objects and space, for their role in the moment-by-moment
accomplishment of a range of activities: opening and closing encounters, telling stories, aligning to an interactional partner, and so on. Although we will mainly draw on interactionist studies of the body, we will also consider cognitive, cultural, developmental, and even evolutionary themes in our investigations. Class will center around the use of videotaped data to examine
embodied behaviors in interaction. Prereq: CMN 455, 456, and 457 with a C or better and a C- or better in two 500-level courses (each with a different 400-level prereq). Writing Intensive.