ATTENTION:
Digital communicators. Documentary filmmakers. Creative visionaries. Critical media scholars. Social justice fighters. Media activists.
Impact the issues you care about
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Get the MA in Media Studies at Queens College CUNY
Media + Social Justice
MEDIA + SOCIAL JUSTICE
Impact the issues you care about with an MA in Media Studies
The MA in Media Studies is a 30-credit graduate program combining theory, practice, and real-world engagement. We are a community of activists, makers, artists, and researchers working to effect social change through media and to understand the impact of media and technology on continuing struggles for social justice. Coursework introduces theoretical and practical methodologies addressing critical issues of race and gender, digital life, urban development, economic and social justice, political activism, environmental responsibility, ethnicity, cognitive liberty, commodity capitalism, and global culture. The program culminates in a Master’s thesis, which may take the form of a scholarly research paper or a real-world capstone project highlighting engaged activist practice and/or production.
LEARNÂ + ENGAGE
Get your MA in a program that combines theory, practice, and real-world engagement
Immerse yourself in a curriculum designed to integrate with your interests
Get real-world experience with renowned NYC-based media activists
Find your place within ongoing struggles for social justice
Be part of a diverse and vibrant community of activists, media makers, and researchers
WHO WE ARE
Queens College, a mission-driven institution with a strong history of public service, offers a graduate Media Studies program, uniquely positioned at the cross-sections of critical theory and social justice activism.
We are a community of scholars, practitioners, and artists working together to engage purposefully and effectively with the world around us. The Media Studies graduate community works under the assumption that media is no longer a particular vocation but the landscape in which our society is developing. Its impact and effects are far-reaching, yet little understood - especially by those creating the content and building the platforms on which we all depend.
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THEÂ CURRICULUM
The MA program offers an evolving curriculum, directed by the lines of inquiry and developing practice of its ever-changing cadre of students. After receiving a grounding in critical theories of media, capitalism, and social justice, students choose from a wide range of elective courses both within our program and the entire CUNY graduate system - all guided by our faculty and directed toward each student’s MA thesis or capstone project. New courses and colloquia are developed to address emerging student interests. A unique weekly schedule of seminars associated with each course gives students the opportunity to engage regularly about their own studies and projects one-on-one with their professors. The program culminates in a Master’s thesis, which may take the form of a scholarly research paper or a real-world capstone project highlighting engaged practice and/or production.
JOIN US
We assess MA candidates based on their experiences and intentions, and particularly welcome applications from activists, NGO workers, independent scholars, current media professionals and artists, political, legal, and economic analysts. Our graduate students are highly-motivated individuals for an intellectual environment in which to challenge conventional understanding of the media and engage with a range of vital issues including the environment, race, gender, income inequality, and the impact of commodity capitalism.
... a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? ... It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
COURSES
Learn + Engage
MEDIA & CAPITALISM
Media + Global Capitalism
A seminar offering an intensive introduction to global capitalism and its relation to contemporary media systems. We will focus on shifts in the structures, public policies, and cultural practices of media systems, moving across successive generations of media from traditional news to digital media. The course will focus on social and political struggles over media systems in their relations with the defining features of capitalism.
MEDIA & SOCIAL JUSTICE
Media + Activist Struggles
A seminar examining political, cultural, and theoretical approaches to media as agents of historical change and social transformation within struggles over race, class, and gender. Introducing major theoretical and conceptual approaches in media studies, the course emphasizes how the digitization of society (mediated selves, networked counter-publics, digital resistance) impacts, and is impacted by, relationships of power as well as activist histories of social justice.
DIGITAL ACTIVISM LAB
Critical Theory + Media Activism
In this seminar/praxis hybrid, class discussions will focus on how technology currently both empowers and marginalizes activism within local communities. We will concentrate specifically on the production and dissemination of the digital moving image. Projects developed in the class will bring critical theory and study to bear on student experiences as they are embedded in the ongoing efforts of local activist organizations.
LEARN + ENGAGE
Explore media for social justice ...
MEDIUM
LEARN MORE
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