International Media and Communications Studies BA

For this year-long core research module you'll spend two hours a week in lectures and workshops to become familiar with different approaches to investigating research topics which interest you. This will include learning about and trying out first-hand a range of research methods and techniques commonly applied in ethnographic, historical and textual study, and determining their suitability for different projects. You’ll learn about the kinds of research that a range of industry professionals from diverse sectors within the media, creative, entertainment and heritage industries pursue, and have opportunities to reflect on how you could incorporate that learning into your own research. You'll also investigate the interdisciplinary nature of culture, film, media, the arts and critical digital studies and demonstrate this knowledge by choosing your own research project and methods. This module is worth is 20 credits.

This module builds on your year one language module, with continued teaching and support from the Language Centre. This module is worth 20 credits.

We're bombarded with political messages every day and in every way. They aim to influence our thinking and affect our behaviour. Some are blatant ("Hands. Face. Space.") some are more subtle ("A report launched by a thinktank today highlights..."). Some don't seem like deliberate messages at all ("Have you seen this Boris GIF. 😂").

We'll explore this world of political communication, public relations and propaganda in its widest form. In particular we'll look at:

• communicators - established institutions and power groups as well as those in opposition to them, both in formal politics and civil society
• global contexts - the political, economic, social and cultural landscapes that structure and influence political journalism and public debate.
• the public – as passive audiences, as a political imaginary, as part of a deliberative public sphere, and as actively campaigning partisans
• form - the discourses and symbolic strategies used and the influence of technology
• ethics – whether persuasive communication is good or bad for democracy, and whether free or regulated media better serve the public interest

Taking a global approach we'll explore specific practices from around the world.

And with a focus on current political communication, you'll be expected to maintain an interest in recent events and to be able to discuss up-to-date examples.

This module is worth 20 credits.

In this module you'll learn how show business is broken down into 'show' and 'business' in film, television and promotional industries and examine how creative decision-making, technology and legislation influence those industries. You'll also learn about how advertising and market research influence the design and production of media in certain regions and how film and television industries have developed in different contexts and periods. This module is worth 20 credits.

In this module you'll learn about the concepts of ‘transnational’ and ‘postnational’ media, taking into account the movement and interactions of people, finance, technology and ideas around the world. The module addresses in particular global media interactions emerging from tensions between forces of cultural homogenisation and heterogenisation. You'll also develop a foundation of theoretical knowledge to be applied to case studies in global film, television and other screen and print media. This module is worth 20 credits.

This module develops critical modes of attention to the mediation of identity. On our screens and in our headphones, we shape and reshape our selves. Media do not reflect identities but play an active role in bringing them into being. This module takes up the question of 'identity politics', enhancing students' knowledge and understanding of key identity categories that have been advanced and problematized by media scholars, such as gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, national, regional and local belonging, age, ability and disability, and more. The module also interrogates the mediated forms these identities take, considering the politics of looking and visual culture, the politics of hearing and auditory culture, and the politics of affect, emotions and embodiment. The module encourages historical as well as contemporary perspectives.

Media, TV, film and visual culture play a central role in forming our knowledge of the past. There is no memory without its representation in language or images. Using a range of case studies, you will explore how different forms of remembrance add weight to what they represent. Who remembers what, when, where, why and to what purpose? Why do screen and other media retell certain stories over and over again, and how is such remembrance linked to the erasure of other pasts? What is the relationship between national and transnational memories, when set against memories of enslavement and its visualisations? These, and other questions, will guide our approach to an interdisciplinary field of media, film and visual studies. The module will also encourage you to reflect critically on regimes of visibility and narration, and on the distinct ways that memories of certain events are communicated via different genres, institutions, and artefacts. This module is worth 20 credits.

You will explore the works and practices of Black artists that have been displayed or produced in Europe and America from the nineteenth century to the present day. This includes how methods of display, tactics of critique and attitudes towards the 'Other' have defined and influenced how Black art is viewed and produced in the Western world.

Moving through time we'll:

• examine nineteenth-century attitudes towards African objects
• explore the influences of ethnography and African material culture on artists working in the early to mid-twentieth century, such as the Surrealists
• consider artworks produced in the Harlem Renaissance by painters like Aaron Douglas and photographers like James Van Der Zee
• discover how artists like Jeff Donaldson and Faith Ringgold sought to recover African history, culture, and forms of memory in the context of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and how their work responded to the political and social pressures of this period
• look at the practices of more recent artists like Lorna Simpson, Glenn Ligon, and Kara Walker, and explore how artists have critically re-presented history’s narratives in ‘the present’ before focusing on the curatorial works of Fred Wilson

To finish we'll consider the rise of contemporary African art within European and American art markets, and the related economic and political shifts that have occurred since the colonial era. 

This module is worth 20 credits.

During this year-long module you'll:

• think about industries, audiences and surrounding debates from a social and cultural viewpoint
• learn about the way that social and cultural meaning is produced by film and television programmes​
• explore the social practices that surround the consumption of media, such as movie going and television viewing

Some of the specific questions we might look at together include:

• How do value judgements shape the way in which movies and television programmes get made
• What is "good" television?
• What challenges are public service broadcasters, like the BBC, facing and how should they address these?
• How have writers and producers attempted to use television drama to enact social change?
• What kind of TV programmes are preferred by streaming services and why?
• How might binge watching impact on the viewer's experience and social communication?

This module is worth 20 credits.

A vital introduction to the first-hand study of art and architecture.

Through a series of weekly site visits you’ll explore:

• space - residential, commercial, industrial, recreational, ceremonial
• function - art galleries, streets, churches, factories, monuments, municipal buildings, museums, private estates, public parks
• identity - civic, familial, institutional, political, religious

We’ll examine how these change as a city develops and ask important questions about heritage and conservation.

The on-site study will be supported by archival material from Manuscripts and Special Collections. This might include architectural drawings, guide books, maps, newspapers, pamphlets, and photographs.

This module introduces a number of artistic and architectural practices that emerged in Southern California after 1945. Exploring their cultural and historical context, we will consider the role of Los Angeles in the development of post-1945 American art and architecture, including mid-century modernism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Light & Space Art. Central to this module is the question of whether all art made in Los Angeles can be classified as “Los Angeles Art” – that is, the extent to which the art and architecture of the region necessarily reflected the geographical location, climate, and expansive urban layout of Los Angeles. To this end, we will consider the critical reception of art of this period, investigating, amongst other critical constructs, the notions of centre and periphery, regionalism and the cultural construction of the American west that shaped much writing on California during the period.

Described variously as an era of dissent, revolution and experiment, the 1960s offers a unique vantage point from which to explore a range of issues and topics pertinent to media and cultural studies. The art of the period brings into view a volatile world where distinctions between different media were becoming blurred (as in performance art, for instance) and where inherited ideas, hierarchies and values were contested, if not exploded. Notions such as the Establishment, the underground, celebrity, obscenity, mass culture, alongside those of personal identity (gender, race, class, sexuality) were all subject to radical questioning in an era where events, such as those of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, challenged the received order of things. This module critically evaluates the idea of the 1960s, starting with its status as a fabled decade that is said to cast its shadow today. Historiographical and geographical questions structure the module.  When and, crucially, where were ‘the Sixties’? Was it primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon? Was it the 1950s until 1963? Did it end in the early 1970s, as some believe, with the Oz Trials?  These and other questions will help us to demythologise the period and begin investigating it anew.

Explore how film can be regarded as an art form through the study of avant-garde cinema in early 20th century Europe.

We’ll start by looking at what is meant by the term ‘avant-garde’, and consider the development of experimental filmmaking in the context of artistic movements such as:

• Futurism
• Cubism
• Dada
• Surrealism
• Constructivism

The focus will be on developments in Germany, France and the Soviet Union and consider key trends from abstract animation to Cinema Pur.

We’ll also explore some key concerns of non-mainstream cinema such as:

• Narrative
• Abstraction
• Reflexivity
• Spectatorship
• movement, time and space

You’ll examine how experimental film engaged with modernity, including the aesthetic and political strategies of the European avant-gardes.

By the end of the module you’ll be able to:

• contextualise the avant-garde in relation to broader artistic and historical developments
• understand the relationships between film and other media

This module is worth 20 credits.

Combine our in-depth sector knowledge with the Careers and Employability Service skills development experience to get noticed when applying for jobs and during interviews.

From constructing an outstanding CV to practicing graduate level interview skills we'll build on your existing abilities.

You'll also get something concrete to talk about through a multi-week work placement. This will be tailored as far as possible to your subject and career aspirations.

This sort of attention to detail is what makes Nottingham graduates some of the most sought after in the job market.

This module is worth 20 credits.

This module is divided into two parts, one per semester. Semester one addresses the colonial period from 1492 to 1945 (with some reference to the medieval era), and semester two focuses on independence and after.

The module examines all continents, including polar regions, and the key European colonising countries: France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Britain, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. This unique module is delivered by people with both language and cultural competency from across those cultures, giving access to deep cultural knowledge, historical documents, critical perspectives and legacies.

The history of slavery and extractivist relations is at the module's core and is given its place as one of the defining forces of globalisation. You will study a range of materials (including diaries, novels, travel narratives, histories, ethnographic ideas, political speeches and broadcasts, films, audio recordings, artworks, and music) to develop the broad perspective of a multiple process of globalisation, often too hastily presented as monocultural. In addition, you will focus on particular cultural experiences, for example, the regions of Africa, or Central America.

The structure of the course will allow sections on landmark moments and documents from each cultural sphere of influence to build into a diverse yet identifiable model of hybrid global cultures. In line with current interest in decolonisation (long established as an idea outside of English-speaking cultures), this course both maintains knowledge of imperial histories and offers models for getting beyond them, to show how previously colonised countries are not bound by that history, even if often constrained by it to some extent.

New media and digital culture are significantly transforming the ways in which our societies operate. This module critically explores the key issues behind this transformation. In doing so, the module provides a historical overview of the emergence of new media and digital culture and engages with issues and practices that have been said to differentiate new media from older forms of media and their associated forms of communication. The module equips students with core knowledge of the theoretical and practical foundations of new media and their relationship to contemporary digital culture and related communicative acts. 

Lectures and seminars develop students' understanding of the cultural, political, economic, technical and regulatory contexts from which new media and digital culture have emerged and in which they continue to operate. In order to link the various conceptual frameworks learnt to real-life experiences and situations effectively, the module provides students with opportunities to explore the interactive forms and practices that result from the use of new media and related digital practices through a range of both individual and group activities and exercises. 

Coursework assessment will replace all failed assessment components at the reassessment stage.