Category Archives: 2nd half-session courses

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements, Informational Meeting, Study Abroad

2nd 8-week ENGL/AFRO course with field-study in Benin

Following is a note from Professor David Wright regarding a great 2nd 8-week ENGL/AFRO course that he’s asked us to help publicize.   Please share this info (and the attached powerpoint) with students you think might be interested.  Thanks!

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“Slavery & Identity,” my ENGL 274/AFRO 298 class that includes two weeks field-study in Benin, is still open for enrollment.  We’ve reconfigured the course and extended the deadline. Now, it will meet as a 2nd 8-week course, with Wednesday class meetings (5 PM-7 PM) from March 18-May 6, followed by two weeks field study from May 17-31.

A few relevant points that may be of interest to your students:

– The course counts for Gen Ed credit.

– All LAS students who enroll will automatically get a $1,000 scholarship toward the estimated program fee ($3,650-$3,850).

– Other scholarship aid is available.

– The new deadline for applications is March 1. Students will be notified within a few days.

I will be holding an information session at the study abroad office Wednesday January 28 at 5 PM, in Lincoln Hall Rm. 1026. Students can also contact me directly with questions: wright3@illinois.edu.

Would you please announce my course to interested students?

I’m including the updated PPT.

Thanks so much.

david wright

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

Spring Course – MDIA 199 Security for Media Professionals

Spring 2015 2nd 8-week course:  MDIA 199 Security for Media Professionals
 
About the class:
Every month the news reports on a new data breach, government spying, or corporate espionage. The good news is the tools and techniques to keep yourself and your businesses safe are more accessible than ever.  
 
In MDIA 199 MNT (8-week) we cover topics such as disk encryption, multifactor authentication, email encryption, and anonymous web browsing.  We will also cover the concepts and structures so students can understand what is happening in this evolving and ever changing field.  
 
This is taught at the College of Media and is designed for students not focused on computer science. While the course is focused on Media Professionals we’ve had students from many majors who have found it worthwhile.
 
We will provide real world skills for students to use in their personal life and also when they enter their professional fields.
 
Best,
Julian
 
Julian Parrott, Ed.D
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services
College of Media
University of Illinois

 

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

Seats added to PS 280

The Department of Political Science just added 25 seats to an on-line version of PS 280: Introduction to International Relations (CRN 55238).  Students looking for a second-eight weeks class may enjoy this popular course. Kindly pass this information along as appropriate.

Best, Joe Hinchliffe

—
Joseph Hinchliffe, PhD
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Political Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

2nd 8 week classes available in LER

This is a reminder that LER can accept students into sections of three second-eight-weeks Global Labor Studies’ online classes. The classes begin Monday, October 20. The courses are:
LER 100 Introduction to Labor Studies
LER 110 Labor and Social Movements
LER 120 Contemporary Labor Problems
 
If you’ve questions please email LER undergraduate program coordinator Prof. Steven Ashby at skashby@illinois.edu

 

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

PS 199: Civic Careers

As the drop deadline nears, you may need to suggest substitute courses for students. Please have them consider:

PS 199: Civic Careers.  This experimental, one-credit course invites students to consider developing their own civic careers in the contemporary social and political economy. The course will emphasize the development of personal and civic objectives and skills, as well as professional development in a dynamic and fragmented local, national and global community. Topics include: taking stock of values and skills, examining contemporary civic careers, evaluating educational opportunities, preparing career narratives, networking, and selecting career opportunities  M 3:00-4:50 331 Armory  one credit hour CRN 55924

Also, as students think about summer, they may wish to consider a course meeting from May 18-31 on the Politics of National Parks.  This travel course will include exploration of national parks in Colorado.  For more information, see: https://publish.illinois.edu/pahre/colorado/

All the best,
Joe

—
Joseph Hinchliffe, PhD
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Political Science

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

2nd 8 week College of Media courses

ADV 199: Creativity Conquers the World, 3hrs
(MWF 2:00-3:50pm; freshman only)
This course explores the role of creative thinking in solving problems and seizing opportunities – in school, life and work (notably the field of advertising). Through class discussion and hands-on exercises, students will learn about theories of creativity, traits of creative people, creative culture and frameworks for sparking creative thinking. Students will develop the ability to ask the right questions, generate ideas of greater quality and quantity, and spot a Big Idea when they see one.
 
JOUR 460:  The Media and You, 3hrs
(MW 9:00-10:50; all levels and majors)
Getting the Message Out This course will equip students and practitioners in journalism, public relations, business, agriculture and science and technology fields with practical knowledge and tools to understand and work with all forms of media to achieve their goals. The course will include a quick survey of contemporary public relations and clarify several discrete elements: publicity, advertising, branding, press agency, public affairs, issues management, lobbying, investor relations and development. This will set the stage for this course, which will focus on working with and, at times, around news media. The core issue of working with the media will encompass guidelines for good media relations, guidelines for working with the press, and understanding the ethical dimensions of the relationships that form. The course will employ case studies, real and hypothetical. The class will break into small groups for the last four or five sessions to develop a set of strategies, employing an array of media, to reach a PR goal the instructor will develop. The instructor will solicit real world opportunities for class teams to work with local/regional interests on a media and communications plan that suits the client. 
 
MACS 496:  Special Effects, 3hrs
(TR 10:00-1:20, Junior, Seniors, Grad students, Sophomores with instructors permission, all majors)
MOVIE MAGIC: VISUAL EFFECTS AND CGI This roughly chronological course will explore special effects technology, history and aesthetics. More specifically, we will use the technological history of special effects (which span cinema history) to examine representational strategies of film. Academic interest in cinematic special effects has largely been limited to discussion of genre (especially science fiction) or by theoretical interest in “the digital”. This course will take a more broad historical view, in order to question the various binaries common in discussions of special effects, especially optical vs. digital, and realism vs. fantasy. Drawing on texts by theorists and practitioners alike, we will examine how the films mobilize specific technologies, and the aesthetic frameworks they bring into play. Students will be expected to apply “close viewing” strategies to assignments, specifically to understand how specific effects techniques discussed are functioning in specific instances, both technologically and discursively. In addition, students will put these viewing and analyzing practices to work in a longer, research based final paper. The course will discuss the wide variety of films that have made extensive and creative use of special effects. We will screen films ranging from early trick films, experimentation in the silent era, studio-era process photography and optical printing, 1960s avant-garde animation, the intensified interest of special effects work in 1970s blockbusters, and into the digital era beginning in the early 1990s, to the present. 
 
MDIA 199: College of Media Orientation, 1hr
(T 12:30-1:50, open to Non Media majors, all levels)
Serves as an introduction to the College of Media and Introduces students to the multiple media perspectives represented by the College’s departments. Provides an overview of the Advertising, Agricultural Communications, Journalism, and Media and Cinema Studies curricula, areas of study, and opportunities available for careers in the field. This is not a typical freshman orientation class.
 
MDIA 390:  News Literacy, 3hrs
(TR 12:30-3:20, open to all students)
The metaphors used to describe the digital, networked, social, interactive and information-rich age in which we live – it’s a wave, a flood, even a tidal wave! – suggest a powerlessness that can be dispiriting. The promise of so much easily accessible information quickly transforms into peril as we wonder just how to make sense of all that abundance, how to find the signal amidst all the noise. This is a particular challenge for journalism, which is competing with ever-increasing numbers of players in the news and information arena who may – or, more often, may not – be providing news that is credible and reliable. Our aim is to build a better understanding of what makes news reliable and credible and, in doing so, help equip people to make smarter decisions and engage in democratic society.
 
Thank you for your assistance.
 
Heather L. Zike
Academic Advisor
College of Media

 

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

Education and Social Justice course

Please let your students know about this 2nd 8-week course offering:

Education Policy Studies (EPS) 390
Title: Education and Social Justice
Instructor: Rebecca Ginsburg, rginsbur@illinois.edu
Meeting days/time: Mondays and Wednesdays 11:00 – 1:50

Please see the attached flyer for more details, including a course description.

Ed and Social Justice_Fall 2014

Many thanks!
Adrienne Johnson
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Adrienne Johnson
Academic Advising and Skills Specialist
General Curriculum Advisor
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

2nd half-session courses, Course Announcements

Fall 2014 – HIST Second 8-Week Courses

The Department of History will be offering the following second 8-week HIST courses (meets October 20 – December 10).  Registration is now open!
 
 
HIST 258:  20thC World to Midcentury
Humanities & the Arts AND Western Comparative Cultures Gen Ed
Section:  B
CRN:  54190
Meets:  MWF  9:00-10:50
Location:  106B3 Engineering Hall
Instructor:  David Harris, Teaching Assistant
Description:  This course examines the historical impact of events of the first half of the 20th century on contemporary and future global history. While critically evaluating events in Europe itself from World War I onward, we will also seek to broaden the discussion by looking outward to how such events had a ripple effect on issues such as global decolonization, nationalism, cultural and economic imperialism and a general shift in concepts of identity and the role of the individual in a new and vastly changed world. 
 
 
HIST 259:  20th C World from Midcentury
Humanities & the Arts AND Western Comparative Cultures Gen Ed
Section:  A
CRN:  43297
Meets:  MWF  11:00-12:50
Location:  106 David Kinley Hall
Instructor:  Zsuzsanna Magdo, Teaching Assistant
Description:  Most commonly perceived as dangerously escapist, fantastic dreams about perfect societies, utopias often evoke dismissal for lying perpetually in another time and place. Yet, as the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring or Hollywood movies about impending global apocalypse remind us, utopian desire for a better society constitutes a critical engagement with the historical present in the attempt to transform it into a plausible future. Over the course of times, utopias have led ambivalent lives, often inspiring revolutionary change and global affinities across racial, class, gender, religious and national hierarchies, while descending on occasion into worldwide wars, violence, and oppression. Hence, this course will explore utopia/dystopia in world history through a series of integrated and overarching themes: politics, revolutions, war, and everyday utopianism in society and culture. After pausing briefly on the late 19th century, when the utopian imagination went around the globe, the course will examine radical thought and politics after 1945 up to the early 1980s, when utopia’s death was hastily announced. We will trace the global roots and routes of such visions and practices across the global north (Europe and North America) and the global south (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) as they sought to remake historical presents in hope of alternative, better futures. Students will explore utopianism’s relationship to history, ideology, and global modernity; revolutionary movements, wars and the politics of exclusion; the arts; everyday practices of sexuality, nutrition and consumption; and the spaces of utopia, whether the state, the built environment, intentional communities or cyberspace. This course includes an undergraduate research component. The main assignment is a group multimedia project that will enable students to practice history as a processual and collaborative form of intellectual exercise. Published in the framework of a class e-book, such projects will allow students to involve a wider audience in thinking about utopia/dystopia and historical scholarship and will make their work portable beyond the classroom.
 
 
HIST/AAS 283:  Asian American History
Sections:  B (HIST) / B (AAS)
CRNs:  64343 (HIST) / 64344 (AAS)
Meets:  TR  3:00-5:50
Location:  TBA
Instructor:  Jeannie Shinozuka, Postdoctoral Research Associate
Humanities & the Arts AND US Minority Cultures Gen Ed
Description:  Exploration of the migrations of peoples from the Asian continent into the United States, their attempts to build family and community, and their subsequent impact on American history.
 
 
HIST 381:  Urban History
Topic:  The City in Colonial Spanish America
Section:  A
CRN:  64307
Meets:  MWF  12:00-1:50
Location:  393 Bevier Hall
Instructor:  Ryan Bean, Teaching Assistant
Description:  The aim of this course is to provide students with an understanding of colonial Latin American cities and the diverse populations who inhabited them. Focusing on a vast region from Mexico to the Andes, the common histories and regional differences of cities such as Lima, Mexico City, Cusco, Potosí, and Puebla will come to the fore as we investigate the urban world of Spanish America. In the first part of the class, we will examine the ways in which Spaniards envisioned cities and towns to function within the Empire. In particular, we will explore how imperial officials endeavored to reorder colonial space through the establishment of cities as well the mechanisms of power employed by Spaniards as they attempted to leverage power over urban populations from 1492 to 1810.
 
In contrast to the first portion of the course, the second half of the semester will focus on the Indigenous, African, Jewish, and Casta populations who inhabited colonial cities. We will analyze the ways these groups shaped and were shaped by the colonial urban experience as well as the ways they reshaped Iberian urban imaginaries through resistance and negotiation. Indeed, colonial Latin American cities were not simply constructed from above, but also from below. Our discussions of the common people who inhabited colonial cities will allow us to reflect both on their work as political and social actors and on the nature of the Spanish Empire and its power and authority in urban society. At the end of the semester, we will reflect upon the legacy of Spanish colonial cities in modern Latin America.    
 
Prior knowledge in Latin American history is a bonus but is not required.
 
 
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