These courses are offered to MIT students and affiliates. More information can be found at the MIT subjects catalogue.
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Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Lecture: TR9.30-11 (4-257) or R12-3 (16-654) or TR2-3.30 (4-145)
Offers an overview of the social, cultural, political, and economic impact of mediated communication on modern culture. Combines critical discussions with experiments working with different media. Media covered include radio, television, film, the printed word, and digital technologies. Topics include the nature and function of media, core media institutions, and media in transition. Enrollment limited.
Staff
Textbooks (Fall 2021)
() 
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Provides an introduction to the process of designing games and playful experiences. Familiarizes students with concepts, methods, techniques and tools used in the design of a wide variety of games. Focuses on aspects of the process such as rapid prototyping, play testing, and design iteration using a player-centered approach. Students work in project groups where they engage with a series of confined exercises, practice communicating design ideas, and discuss their own and others work in a constructive manner. No prior programming experience required. Limited to 15.
M. Jakobsson, S. Verrilli
()
(Subject meets with CMS.806)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Applied introduction to comics and sequential art production. Builds skills in how to develop storylines; develop and draw characters, panels, and backgrounds; prepare for print production; and comprehend the basics of sequential language, composition, and layout. Students engage with crucial personal and political issues at stake across a range of comics genres: superhero, biographical, and countercultural. Addresses not just how we create comics, but why we create comics. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.
M. Cordero
()
(Subject meets with CMS.807)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Lecture: W1-4 (4-149) Lab: R EVE (7-10 PM) (4-149)
Studies the design and analysis of invented (or constructed) worlds for narrative media, such as television, films, comics, and literary texts. Provides the practical, historical and critical tools with which to understand the function and structure of imagined worlds. Examines world-building strategies in the various media and genres in order to develop a critical and creative repertoire. Participants create their own invented worlds. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 13.
J. Diaz
No textbook information available
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with CMS.808)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Focuses on the interactions between graphic stories and media technologies from the rotary press of the late 19th century to contemporary touch screens, exploring the changing relations among narrative expression, reader experience and media form. Working with examples from Pulitzer’s Yellow Kid and McKay’s Little Nemo, through the classic comics (from DC superheroes to EC horror) and graphic novels, to interactive and non-linear texts (Cognitos Operation Ajax), examines such elements as graphic design, interface, and form as well as the circulation and economies of these various media-based texts. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
J. Paradis
()
(Same subject as 21W.763[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.809)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-2-7
Explores transmedia storytelling by investigating how science fiction stories are told across different media, such as the short story, the novel, the screenplay, moving image, and games. Students consider issues of aesthetics, authorship, and genre, while also contextualizing discussion within the broader framework of the political issues raised by film, TV, and other kinds of science fiction texts. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
H. Hendershot
()
(Subject meets with CMS.813)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Examines how the key elements of today’s films – composition, continuity editing, lighting, narrative structure – were originally created. Studies the history of cinema, from its origins in the late 19th century to the transition to sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Students view a range of films (both mainstream and experimental) from all over the world, with a particular focus on US productions. Emphasis on how color, sound, and other developments paved the way for today’s technological innovations. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
H. Hendershot
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Same subject as 21W.753[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.814)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Engages students in theory and practice of using computational techniques for developing expressive digital media works. Surveys approaches to understanding human imaginative processes, such as constructing concepts, metaphors, and narratives, and applies them to producing and understanding socially, culturally, and critically meaningful works in digital media. Readings engage a variety of theoretical perspectives from cognitive linguistics, literary and cultural theory, semiotics, digital media arts, and computer science. Students produce interactive narratives, games, and related forms of software art. Some programming and/or interactive web scripting experience (e.g., Flash, Javascript) is desirable. Students taking the graduate version complete a project requiring more in-depth theoretical engagement.
D. F. Harrell
() 
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Same subject as ES.333[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-1-8
Develops communication and media skills through the production of educational videos. Students conceive, plan, script, shoot and edit video content to teach elements of MIT’s curriculum. Each student creates a series of short videos that concisely explains and contextualizes specific problems of importance to disciplines at MIT, especially physics, math, chemistry, biology, or the humanities. The resulting videos present these problems through compelling use of illustrations, demonstrations, animations, and commentary, all from the student’s perspective. Empowers students specifically to communicate their MIT expertise to communities of learners and generally to reach broad audiences with quality, accessible online content. Limited to 12; preference to students in ESG.
D. Custer
()
(Same subject as 21W.790[J])
(Subject meets with 21W.890)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Focuses on the production of short (1- to 5-minute) digital video documentaries: a form of non-fiction filmmaking that has proliferated in recent years due to the ubiquity of palm-sized and mobile phone cameras and the rise of web-based platforms, such as YouTube. Students shoot, edit, workshop and revise a series of short videos meant to engage audiences in a topic, introduce them to new ideas, and/or persuade them. Screenings and discussions cover key principles of documentary film – narrative, style, pace, point of view, argument, character development – examining how they function and change in short format. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.
V. Bald
()
(Same subject as 21W.786[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.836)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores the history and current state of social-issue documentary. Examines how cultural and political upheaval and technological change have converged at different moments to bring about new waves of activist documentary film production. Particular focus on films and other non-fiction media of the present and recent past. Students screen and analyze a series of key films and work in groups to produce their own short documentary using digital video and computer-based editing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
V. Bald
()
(Subject meets with CMS.838)
Prereq: CMS.100 or permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: TR12-1.30 (E15-335)
Discusses emerging technologies and techniques available to media-makers (e.g., location-based technologies, transmedia storytelling, crowdsourcing, and interactivity) and their implications on the film and television documentary. Studies the development of these tools and considers the many new directions in which they may take the genre. Includes screenings, meetings with documentary makers, and an experimental component in which students can explore new approaches to documentary production. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
W. Uricchio
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.839)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Provides an overview of historical developments and current innovations in virtual reality (e.g., gear, software, and storytelling techniques) and looks into new trends in augmented, mixed and holographic reality. Includes practical instruction and a step-by-step exploration of the fundamentals of virtual reality creation – from new visual languages and grammars, to storyboarding, scripting, sound design and editing, to new and innovative ways to capture, scan and reproduce 360-degree images. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
S. Rodriguez
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Same subject as 21W.737[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.850)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Gives a broad understanding of what it means to produce journalism today. Evaluates the limitations and strengths of specific types of media, ranging from New York Times stories to Twitter feeds. Provides students with tools to effectively communicate their own work and research to non-specialist audiences. Students submit assignments via an online portal, which mimics the style and substance of an online news source. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 12.
S. Mnookin
()
(Subject meets with CMS.860)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Examines civic media in comparative, transnational and historical perspectives. Introduces various theoretical tools, research approaches, and project design methods. Students engage with multimedia texts on concepts such as citizen journalism, transmedia activism, media justice, and civic, public, radical, and tactical media. Case studies explore civic media across platforms (print, radio, broadcast, internet), contexts (from local to global, present-day to historical), and use (dialogic, contentious, hacktivist). As a final project, students develop a case study or project proposal. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20.
Staff
() 
(Subject meets with CMS.861)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Subject Cancelled
Provides an overview of social movement studies as a body of theoretical and empirical work, with an emphasis on understanding the relationship between social movements and the media. Explores multiple methods of social movement investigation, including textual and media analysis, surveys, interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and co-research. Covers recent innovations in social movement theory, as well as new data sources and tools for research and analysis. Includes short papers, a literature review, and a final research project. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.
S. Costanza-Chock
No textbook information available
() 
(Subject meets with CMS.862)
Prereq: One subject in CMS or MAS
Units: 3-0-9
Project-based studio focusing on collaborative design of civic media provides a service-learning opportunity for students interested in working with community organizations. Multidisciplinary teams create civic media projects based on real-world community needs. Covers co-design methods and best practices to include the user community in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 16.
Staff
()
(Same subject as 4.376[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.877)
Prereq: None
Units: 2-3-7
Lecture: M10-12 (1-135) Lab: W9-12 (E15-207)
Exploration of today’s extractive economies and the role that artists, media-makers, and transmedia producers play in shaping public perception, individual choices, and movement-building towards sustainability. Traces the contingent geological, material, community, and toxic histories of extracted materials used throughout our built environment, as well as civic resistance and reform that could alter extraction practices. Scaffolded workshops with artists and media producers support students’ production of creative documentary and other media projects. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
J. Paradis, J. Barry
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.875)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores how climate is construed in the contemporary media in order to gain a better understanding of how views of climate change are shaped and received in the public sphere. Studies the pathways that take us from climate science to media content, from the big data of global scale to the particulars and narratives of the human experience. Surveys a variety of media forms–reports, articles, comics, videos, films, photography, poetry and fiction–that reflect on the contemporary human challenges of dealing with a changing natural environment of our own making. Emphasizes the role of media in shaping public opinion, both in the US and globally, and its influence on public (and voter) perceptions on which a vast body of regulation and funding for environmental management is based. Students work individually and in teams to produce a selection of the media forms studied. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20.
J. Paradis
()
Prereq: One subject in Comparative Media Studies or permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Explores theoretical, historical and critical approaches to the comparative study of media. Examines media from three perspectives: the historical evolution of particular media forms (media in transition); the migration of particular narratives across different media forms (trans-media texts); and the ways in which media texts and systems cross cultural and national boundaries (global crossings). Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided.
J. Picker
()
Prereq: 21L.011 or CMS.100
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW11-12.30 (4-144)
Examines the process of making and sharing visual artifacts using a trans-cultural, trans-historical, constructionist approach. Explores the relationship between perceived reality and the narrative imagination, how an author’s choice of medium and method constrains the work, how desire is integrated into the structure of a work, and how the cultural/economic opportunity for exhibition/distribution affects the realization of a work. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. Limited to 20.
D. F. Harrell
Textbooks (Fall 2021)
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores the ways in which humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. Examines how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally. Describes the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, and the globalized travel of these technologies. Addresses questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing. Particular focus on how the sound/noise boundary is imagined, created and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples–sound art, environmental recordings, music–will be provided and invited. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. Limited to 20.
J. Picker
()
(Subject meets with CMS.895)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Addresses new digital technologies that are transforming learning across the lifespan – from reading apps for toddlers, intelligent tutors for school children, and blended learning for college students, to MOOCs for adults and interest-based learning communities for hobbyists. Focuses on how these technologies shape people’s lives and learning. Students explore how education technologies operate in complex social-technical systems, and acquire analytic tools and strategies that can be applied to other complex systems. They also refine their thinking about the opportunities, limits, and tradeoffs of educational technology. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
J. Reich
()
(Same subject as 21W.764[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.846)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Video games, digital art and literature, online texts, and source code are analyzed in the contexts of history, culture, and computing platforms. Approaches from poetics and computer science are used to understand the non-narrative digital uses of text. Students undertake critical writing and creative computer projects to encounter digital writing through practice. This involves reading and modifying computer programs; therefore previous programming experience, although not required, will be helpful. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
N. Montfort
()
(Subject meets with CMS.815)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Examines how various movements have tried over time to create games that enable players to enact social change. Students collaborate in teams to design and prototype games for social change and civic engagement. In a workshop setting, teams develop games and showcase them at an end-of-term open house. Features guest speakers from academia and industry as well as the nonprofit sector and the gaming community. Readings explore principals of game design and the social history of games. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
S. Osterweil
()
(Same subject as 21L.489[J], 21W.765[J])
(Subject meets with CMS.845)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: W2-5 (4-249)
Provides a workshop environment for understanding interactive narrative (print and digital) through critical writing, narrative theory, and creative practice. Covers important multisequential books, hypertexts, and interactive fictions. Students write critically, and give presentations, about specific works; write a short multisequential fiction; and develop a digital narrative system, which involves significant writing and either programming or the structuring of text. Programming ability helpful.
N. Montfort
No textbook information availabl
()
(Subject meets with CMS.827)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Aims to help students invent and analyze new forms of computer-based art, gaming, social media, interactive narrative, and related technologies. Students participate in a range of new and ongoing projects that are designed to hone skills in research, development, design, and evaluation. Topics vary from year to year; examples include cognitive science and artificial intelligence-based approaches to the arts; social aspects of game design; computing for social empowerment; and game character, avatar, and online profile design. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
D. F. Harrell
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with CMS.828)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Studies and develops computational identity systems for games, social media, virtual worlds, and computer-based artwork. An interdisciplinary set of readings (cognitive science, computer science, art, and sociology) looks at both the underlying technology and the social/cultural aspects of identity. Includes topics such as developing improved characters, avatars, agents, social networking profiles, and online accounts. Engages students in on-going research projects. Explores how social categories are formed in digital media, including gender, class, and ethnicity, along with everyday social categories (such as those based on personality or shared media preferences). Experience required in one of the following: computer programming, graphic design, web development, interaction design, or social science research methods. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
D. F. Harrell
()
(Subject meets with CMS.831)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Explores visualization methodologies to conceive and represent systems and data, e.g., financial, media, economic, political, etc. Covers basic methods for research, cleaning, and analysis of datasets. Introduces creative methods of data presentation and storytelling. Considers the emotional, aesthetic, ethical, and practical effects of different presentation methods as well as how to develop metrics for assessing impact. Work centers on readings, visualization exercises, and a final project. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
Staff
()
(Subject meets with CMS.833)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Examines theory and practice of using computational methods in the emerging field of digital humanities. Develops an understanding of key digital humanities concepts such as data representation, digital archives, information visualization, and user interaction through the study of contemporary research in conjunction with working on real-world projects for scholarly, educational, and public needs. Students create prototypes, write design papers, and conduct user studies. Some programming and design experience is helpful but not required. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
K. Fendt
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 4.569[J], CMS.834[J])
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Explores the future of mobile interactions and pervasive computing, taking into consideration design, technological, social and business aspects. Discusses theoretical works on human-computer interaction, mobile media and interaction design, and covers research and design methods. Students work in multidisciplinary teams and participate in user-centric design projects aimed to study, imagine and prototype concepts illustrating the future of mobile applications and ubiquitous computing. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Repeatable for credit with permission of instructor. Limited to 12.
F. Casalegno, T. Nagakura
()
(Subject meets with CMS.835)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW3.30-5 (1-277)
Investigates the digital archive as an emerging platform for critical inquiry and creative engagement through analysis, conceptualization, and experimentation with user-oriented design. Readings provide theoretical, analytical, and practical perspectives on topics such as participatory digital culture, data curation, visualization, and the archive’s role in activism. Students work throughout the term to develop a group project. Students taking graduate version complete additional readings and assignments.
K. Fendt
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.855)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Investigates the museum as a participatory public space and rethinks visitor engagement and museum education in light of digital technologies, including extended reality (XR) technologies. Students develop concepts, models, and prototypes that integrate physical and digital spaces in novel ways in close collaboration with partners at local museums. Readings provide theoretical, critical, and analytical foundations for collaborative class projects. Students taking graduate version complete additional readings and assignments.
K. Fendt
(, )
(Subject meets with CMS.901)
Prereq: CMS.100
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW1-2.30 (56-167)
Addresses important, current debates in media with in-depth discussion of popular perceptions and policy implications. Students use multiple perspectives to analyze texts emanating from these debates, and present their findings through discussions and reports. Explores emerging topics (e.g., piracy and IP regimes, net neutrality, media effects, social media and social change, and changing literacies) across media forms and from various historical, transcultural, and methodological perspectives. Examines the framing of these issues, their ethical and policy implications, and strategies for repositioning the debate. Instruction and practice in written and oral communication provided. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
Staff
No textbook information availab
()
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-3-6
An advanced introduction to core theoretical and methodological issues in comparative media studies. Topics covered typically include the nature of theory, the gathering and evaluation of evidence, the relationship of media to reality, formal approaches to media analysis, the ethnographic documentation of media audiences, cultural hierarchy and taste, modes of production, models of readership and spectatorship.
W. Uricchio
()
Prereq: CMS.790
Units: 3-3-6
An advanced introduction to core theoretical and methodological issues in comparative media studies. Topics covered typically include globalization, propaganda and persuasion, social and political effects of media change, political economy and the institutional analysis of media ownership, online communities, privacy and intellectual property, and the role of news and information within democratic cultures.
H. Hendershot
()
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: T2-5 (24-112)
Centers on historical eras in which the form and function of media technologies were radically transformed. Includes consideration of the “Gutenberg Revolution,” the rise of modern mass media, and the “digital revolution,” among other case studies of media transformation and cultural change. Readings in cultural and social history and historiographic method.
E. Schiappa
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.307)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Lecture: W1-4 (4-149) Lab: R EVE (7-10 PM) (4-149)
Studies the design and analysis of invented (or constructed) worlds for narrative media, such as television, films, comics, and literary texts. Provides the practical, historical and critical tools with which to understand the function and structure of imagined worlds. Examines world-building strategies in the various media and genres in order to develop a critical and creative repertoire. Participants create their own invented worlds. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 13.
J. Diaz
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.313)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-3-6
Examines how the key elements of today’s films – composition, continuity editing, lighting, narrative structure – were originally created. Studies the history of cinema, from its origins in the late 19th century to the transition to sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Students view a range of films (both mainstream and experimental) from all over the world, with a particular focus on US productions. Emphasis on how color, sound, and other developments paved the way for today’s technological innovations. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
H. Hendershot
(, )
(Subject meets with 21L.706)
Prereq: Permission of instructor
Units: 3-3-6
Lecture: W EVE (7-10 PM) (1-277) Lab: T EVE (7-10 PM) (1-150)
Intensive study of films from particular periods, genres, or directors, or films focusing on specific formal or theoretical problems. Previous topics include The Contemporary Horror Film, Film Remixes, Film Narrative, Heroic Cinema, and Color in Film. Students taking graduate version complete different assignments. May be repeated for credit with permission of instructor if content differs. Limited to 12.
P. Donaldson, E. Brinkema
No textbook information available
()
(Subject meets with CMS.633)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Examines theory and practice of using computational methods in the emerging field of digital humanities. Develops an understanding of key digital humanities concepts such as data representation, digital archives, information visualization, and user interaction through the study of contemporary research in conjunction with working on real-world projects for scholarly, educational, and public needs. Students create prototypes, write design papers, and conduct user studies. Some programming and design experience is helpful but not required. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
K. Fendt
()
(Subject meets with CMS.635)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Lecture: MW3.30-5 (1-277)
Investigates the digital archive as an emerging platform for critical inquiry and creative engagement through analysis, conceptualization, and experimentation with user-oriented design. Readings provide theoretical, analytical, and practical perspectives on topics such as participatory digital culture, data curation, visualization, and the archive’s role in activism. Students work throughout the term to develop a group project. Students taking graduate version complete additional readings and assignments.
K. Fendt
No textbook information available
()
Not offered regularly; consult department
(Subject meets with 21W.787)
Prereq: None
Units: 3-0-9
Examines films from the 1950s onward that document music subcultures and moments of social upheaval. Combines screening films about free jazz, glam rock, punk, reggae, hip-hop, and other genres with an examination of critical/scholarly writings to illuminate the connections between film, popular music, and processes of social change. Students critique each film in terms of the social, political, and cultural world it documents, and the historical context and effects of the film’s reception. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 18.
V. Bald
()
(Subject meets with CMS.338)
Prereq: CMS.100 or permission of instructor
Units: 3-0-9
TBA.
Discusses emerging technologies and techniques available to media-makers (e.g., location-based technologies, transmedia storytelling, crowdsourcing, and interactivity) and their implications on the film and television documentary. Studies the development of these tools and considers the many new directions in which they may take the genre. Includes screenings, meetings with documentary makers, and an experimental component in which students can explore new approaches to documentary production. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
W. Uricchio
No textbook information available