St. Cloud State University
General Education Goal Area 6
Humanities & Fine Arts
Academic Affairs Use Only:
Response Date:
Effective Date:
1.
Proposal Number:
Prepared by: Mark Mills
Phone: 308-3294
Email: mlmills@stcloudstate.edu
2.
Requesting Unit: Mass Comm
3.
Department, Course Number, Title: Mass Comm, Comm 146, American TV/Cultural Diversity
4.
New Course
5.
Will this course be flagged as a diversity course?
Already Designated as Diversity
6.
Will this course also satisfy another General Education Goal Area?
If “Yes” specify which goal area.
Existing Course
No
Diversity Proposal Accompanying This Form
No
Yes
7.
Course bulletin description, including credits and semesters to be offered:
The relationship between TV and society focusing on how American TV treats society's various cultures.
3 Cr. F, S.
8.
Indicate the clientele for whom this course is designed. Is the course for general education only, or
does it fulfill general education and other program needs for this or another department? Obtain
signatures from any affected departments.
All students; General Education only
9.
Indicate any changes that must be made in offerings or resources in your department or other
departments by offering this course.
None
10.
For new courses or courses not yet approved for General Education, indicate any other SCSU departments
or units offering instruction that relates to the content of the proposed course.
NA
11.
Courses designated as General Education are included in the assessment plan for the Goal Area(s)
for which they are approved. Courses for which assessment is not included in the annual GE
assessment report for two years will be removed from the General Education Program.
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The Requesting Unit understands and recognizes the above conditions.
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12.
Provide a concise explanation of how the following goal is a “significant focus” of the proposed course.
Goal Area 6: Humanities & Fine Arts
Expand appreciation and critical understanding of changing modes of human expression and systems of
thought in the arts and humanities, and develop abilities in the creation and performance of meaning.
Comm 146: American Television and Cultural Diversity works to expand the appreciation, critical
understanding and meaning and conveyed through the mass media and popular culture, with specific attention to
television.
This course is inherently interdisciplinary, but it includes some disciplines implicitly while others are explicitly
covered in what we do. The students themselves often explicitly mention their own disciplines when they bring
them to bear on the television programs they analyze. Before students begin their analyses, we explicitly discuss
some tools for analysis and study, especially the George Gerbner’s cultivation analysis and the problems with
using statistics to determine the impact of the mass media. In that process, we also discuss the problems with
drawing conclusions of effects and impact on the basis of an analysis of content. From there, however, they
analyze the content of television programs, often using tools that are appropriate to film studies, literary criticism,
sociology, psychology, history, political science and economics. We link some of current issues and assumptions
about race to history of slavery and manifest destiny from the 19th century and how these views became
institutionalized in our culture through minstrel shows, vaudeville and early film.
13. In order for a course to be designated as fulfilling Goal Area 6, it must address at least 5 of the 7 student learning
outcomes (SLOs) below. Check the SLOs below that are focused on in the proposed general education course.
1. Demonstrate awareness of the scope and variety of works in the arts and humanities.
2. Describe and appreciate works in the arts and humanities as expressions of individual and collective values
within an intellectual, cultural, historical and social context.
3. Interpret and respond critically to works from various cultures in the arts and humanities.
4. Explore intellectually the ideas expressed in works in the arts and humanities.
5. Engage in creative processes or interpretive performance.
6. Articulate an informed personal response to works in the arts and humanities.
7. Analyze the diverse means of communication in the arts and humanities.
14.
Discuss how each Student Learning Outcome checked above is achieved in this course. (Note: Although
descriptions of typical assignments or types of assignments may be part of this discussion, it is not
appropriate to submit copies of actual assignments.)
1. Demonstrate awareness of the scope and variety of works in the arts and humanities.
As mentioned above, the course is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing from the work in several disciplines in the
arts, humanities and social sciences. We do not cover the entire scope of arts and humanities, of course, but we
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encourage students to bring values and critical analyze from their own study to bear on the television programs
they analyze in small groups.
2. Describe and appreciate works in the arts and humanities as expressions of individual and collective values
with an intellectual, cultural, historical and social context.
Mass media and popular culture are, of course, mass produced and we spend most of the course looking at the
values that are conveyed by the people who produce the mass media messages. The issues we explore also touch
on the news media and the civil rights movement, mentioning the power of the African American press in calling
attention to the murder of Emmitt Till, the methods of preventing African Americans from voting in the South as
late as the early 1960s, the power of what Alexis de Tocqueville called the “tyranny of the majority” and the
potential power of the media and popular culture in enforcing this tyranny, in values ranging from significant
trends like voting to trivial ones like fashion.
3. Interpret and respond critically to works from various cultures in the arts and humanities.
The major goal of the course is to encourage independent and critical thinking. The instructor makes a major point
of the segmentation of the marketplace through demographic, psychographic and value/life styles analyses of
media audiences for marketing and advertising purposes and contends that these developments do more to divide
the nation than the promotion of diversity and multiculturalism.
4. Explore intellectually the ideas expressed in works in the arts and humanities.
Even though this is a large class, students must learn to do research and create an annotated bibliography related
to the issues they decide to explore in their groups using an assigned television show as a case study. To succeed,
students must be able to identify an academic article from a refereed journal to see how to put their exploration of
a product of popular culture into an academic perspective. They learn to succinctly communicate their ideas in
both writing and an oral presentation, usually illustrated with video examples and PowerPoint slides. They create
the bibliography as an individual project, but they do their analysis of the television program as a cooperative
learning activity. They are assigned groups, preferably with people they’ve never known outside of this class.
They also evaluate one another on their contributions to the group presentation so the members of the groups do
not necessarily receive the same grade.
5. Engage in creative processes or interpretive performance.
I’m not sure you can call a PowerPoint presentation that criticizes – we hope in a fundamental – the values
conveyed by a systematic look at a televison program may not be the highest level of creativity but we to strive
for crtical thinking and analysis. We also look for the students to work well in a group to provide the analysis and
to produce the presentations.
6. Articulate an informed personal response to works in the arts and humanities.
Critical thinking – along with listening skills and a sense of curiosity – is the most difficult thing to teach. From
the beginning, the course stresses the need for critical thinking and asks students to see the implicit messages that
come along with explicit ones. Some topics students have added to the assigned gender, class, race, gender
orientation and religious analysis are the normalization of violence, abusive relationships, bullying, alcohol and
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other substance abuse, and the sexualization of people and themes. The most rewarding student evaluations are
those that say they will never watch television the same way again.
Obviously, all of these issues involve the examination of values and the process of normalization and judgment.
We also explore changes in what is appropriation language and behavior in promoting tolerance, on the one hand,
and facilitating free speech and open discussion, on the other.
7. Analyze the diverse means of communication in the arts and humanities.
Group projects encourage cooperative learning and students are assigned with to groups for doing a group class
presentation with the expectation that they will work with people they don’t already know. Sometimes, this works
for diversity. Last semester, for example, one presentation was by an older white student, an African student and
an African-American student. Admittedly, this is rare because most of the students in this class come from the
majority culture of central Minnesota. As they analyze their television shows, they have to consider what the
programs consider normal on several themes and they are encouraged to look at how those images may affect
their own lives and how they view people from groups other than their own.
15.
List or attach the Course Outline (adequately described and including percentage of time to be allocated
to each topic). Curriculum Committees may request additional information. Topics larger than 20% need
to be broken down further. Indicate in your course outline where the Student Learning Outcomes
checked above are being met.
Introducing some basic concepts of media criticism and communication studies
10 percent
Discuss the difficulties of assuming media effects
10 percent
Discuss symbols and narratives in relationship to market segmentation and audience creation
10 percent
Cover the basic ideas of repetitive stereotypes in historical perspective
5 percent
Students work together on group presentations in which they analyze how normality and hierarchy are depicted in
television shows.
10 percent
Analyze stereotypes in mass media and popular culture, specifically
Class relationships 5
African Americans 15
American Indians 10
Asian Americans 10
LGBT people and relationships 10
Anti-Semitism 5
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St. Cloud State University
General Education Transmittal Form
Academic Affairs Use Only:
Response Date:
Effective Date:
Proposal Number
Department:
Course or Course(s):
Department or Unit Chair Signature
Date
Department forward to Academic Affairs for publication and electronically to Chair of General Education Committee, Chair
of College Curriculum Committee, College Dean
Recommendation of General Education Committee:
Approve
Remarks:
Disapprove
Chairperson
Committee
Signature
Date
Recommendation of University Curriculum Committee:
Approve
Remarks:
Disapprove
Chairperson
Committee
Signature
Date
Recommendation of Faculty Association:
Approve
Remarks:
Disapprove
FA Senate
Signature
Date
Action of Academic Vice President:
Approve
Disapprove
Signature
Entered in Curriculum Data File
12/11/2009
Remarks:
Date