This course helps new PhD students think about the core problems they will encounter in advanced coursework and dissertations. These problems include: finding and evaluating diverse evidence; developing appropriate archives; choosing rhetorical and argumentative strategies; the genres of academic writing. The course will be tailored to the specific research programs of the participants.

This seminar approaches theory as an act; part agency, part structure. It prepares participants to theoretically inform and ground research into media industries, cultures and technologies. Seminar participants are introduced to different approaches to and critiques of theorizing along with the media and cultural theories that offer ways of understanding the hows and whys of media as a system of mediations, meanings, practices, and political economies. The works to be studied come from, critical theory, new media theories, various traditions of cultural studies, feminist studies, semiotics and post/colonial, structural and modern studies.