Media & Cultural Studies

General
Information		 Master's
Requirements		 PhD
Requirements		 Internal
Minor		 Professional
Organizations		 Recent
PhDs

General Information

The Media and Cultural Studies (MCS) program emphasizes the study of media in their historical, economic, social, and political context. We examine the cultural forms created and disseminated by media industries and the ways in which they resonate in everyday life, on the individual, national, and global level. Focusing primarily on sound and screen media — radio, television, film, popular music, internet — but reaching out across boundaries, MCS encourages interdisciplinary and transmedia research. MCS courses draw on a broad range of cultural theories spanning a spectrum of concerns all centrally relevant to the functioning of sound and screen media in a diverse and globalizing cultural environment. Through coursework in the Ph.D minor, graduates also can integrate study in such overlapping fields as history, ethnic studies, gender studies, sociology, and global studies.

Recent and forthcoming upper division and graduate level seminars include:

Recent and ongoing dissertation topics have examined:

  • Bollywood stars as sites of cultural mediation and negotiation
  • The media franchise as an historical site of creative, economic, and cultural collaboration
  • Popular music licensing in television series and video games
  • The impact of Western funding on media in the Palestinian Territories
  • The relationship between third wave feminism, neoliberalism, and teen girls' media
  • Cross-promotional practices within media conglomerates
  • Global media flows, the Indian-American diaspora, and participatory culture
  • Aesthetic formations in 1920s American broadcasting
  • Public broadcasting's attempts to serve multilingual, multicultural audiences via translation
  • Cultural production of the commercial web in the dot-com era
  • Sketch comedy and television's multichannel transition
  • The shaping of Internet technology in Korea and Japan
  • The history of panics over home communication
  • The conceptual and institutional trajectory of educational radio from 1921 to 1967
  • Feminism, community, and music as politics at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festiva
  • Different media industries' attempts to establish a monetizable presence on the web

In addition, a weekly graduate student/faculty colloquium gives students the opportunity to present their own work and to hear guest lecturers from a range of disciplinary perspectives, often in cooperation with other departmental areas. We also use this time also to present information and facilitate discussions of publishing, conference presentations, and the job search process.

The MCS Graduate Program is designed to train future media scholars and university faculty; students are admitted with the assumption that they will carry on to the Ph.D. Terminal MAs are rare and not encouraged. Though courses in film, video, and new media production are offered, this is not a production program. Financial support is provided primarily through teaching appointments, so students must have a level of English competency sufficient for the classroom.

Our graduates teach at major universities across the country, and indeed around the world. See our recent Ph.D. page for examples.

The study of media and culture is enhanced at Madison by the presence of significant resources that aid critical inquiry and research. In particular, the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (WCFTR), founded in 1960, is one of the leading US centers for archival documentation in film, television, radio and theater history, containing over 300 collections and thousands of films, television programs, and audio recordings.

"Good Standing" Requirement

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