Production Workshop Topics: Community, Collaboration, Change

Level: Undergraduate

Division: The New School for Public Engagement

School: School of Media Studies

Department: Communication

Course Number: NFLM 3441

Course Format: Studio

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Media Studies
• Film & Video Production
• Civic Engagement

Description:
In this collaborative digital production course, students apply skeptical inquiry and critical thinking in organized opposition to various forms of political, economic, and social oppression. Students create new media and use it to engage the public and to effect social change. They examine the work of grassroots organizations such as the NYC Anti-Bullying Meetup Group, INCITE!, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, the Occupy movement, Common Ground, Sista II Sista, and Critical Resistance and consider how media can be used to fulfill their missions. Students work in teams with these organizations to research, conceptualize, and design an effective media challenge to a particular form of oppression. Modes of response may include documentaries, testimonials, public service announcements, multimedia installations, or Web-based media. As part of their research, students evaluate historical movements--Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Montgomery Improvement Association, the women's rights movement of the 1970s, and the Zapatista revolution in southern Mexico--to determine which media strategies worked and which didn't. Prerequisite: Integrated Media Production or an equivalent course.