The Communication Major

The department offers a Communication Major which seeks to produce theoretically informed graduates with the necessary practical and analytical skills for successful professional careers, including the ability to: think critically and express ideas clearly and creatively; perform close textual analysis of various forms of communication (written, visual, nonverbal); analyze historical and contemporary forces behind cultural identities and relationships; and, finally, analyze the structures and institutions that inform the relationship between media, technology, and society. The department emphasizes critical approaches that examine social inequalities and the exercise of power. To achieve these goals, the department has developed three core curriculum areas for the Communication Major:

• Texts and Representation employs close analysis of various kinds of texts to investigate the specific ways in which they produce meaning. The core incorporates critical approaches and it studies the way these texts reinforce and challenge cultural perceptions and identity formations. It draws on areas of cinema studies, rhetorical criticism and new media studies.
• Identities and Relationships examines the formation of identities and social relationships in
  different cultural and historical contexts. This core area engages people-centered methods
  such as critical ethnography, interviews, oral histories, focus groups, and digital methods,
  and pays particular attention to how intersectional and decolonial approaches allow us to
  investigate communication as a site for the enactment of power, struggle, and the formation
  of identities and difference.
• Structures and Institutions analyzes the political, economic and social forces that define the media landscape and the organization of media industries. Drawing particularly on the fields of political economy and media industry studies, core courses in this area examine the connections between communication and broader historical formations, such as the market, the state and civil society.

Major Requirements

Honors Students

Students wishing to graduate with honors in Communication must take either the graduate seminar (COMM 6210 or 6220) or another 4000-level honors course and complete an honors project/thesis. Students must register for the honors thesis with the Honors Program.

Find Communication Classes by Semester

Use the Tulane Class Schedule Search Page to find Communication classes offered in current and past semesters.

• Tulane Class Schedule Search Page
• Tulane Class Schedule Search Page Instructions