Stefan Kleinhenz | Collegian
Students will have the opportunity to minor in media studies beginning this fall. The new minor will replace the rhetoric and public address department’s mass communications minor, offering a broader study of media. Media studies will be included in the 2022-2023 course catalog.
“I want students to think critically about their media environments, to learn the analytic tools for making sense of a world that is increasingly complex and mediated,” Stoneman said. “I also hope that they will be inspired to find ways — with or against or alongside technology — to fortify and sustain the integrity of the human being and to extend the power of the individual in harmony with an equally strengthened community.”
The coursework for the minor covers media history, theory, and criticism. Theoretical courses include classes like Media Ecology, Propaganda, Social Control, and Conservative Critics of Technology. Media criticism courses study narrative film, documentary, and television. Though most of the coursework contains a historical element, specific history classes like History of Broadcasting will be offered, Stoneman said.
“When I joined the faculty, we had a few media courses on the books,” said Ethan Stoneman, assistant professor of Rhetoric and Public Address. “I wanted to expand those offerings into something that would be more broadly serviceable to Hillsdale students.”
Stoneman suggested the idea of the minor. The provost and the promotion and tenure committee asked Stoneman to submit a plan to address his “dream department” as part of his tenure application.
After producing a plan, the RPA department proposed the changes to the faculty, which were well-received and passed, according to Department Chairman Kirstin Kiledal.
Stoneman said he received input from Kiledal, Lecturer in RPA Brita Stoneman, Dean of the Humanities Stephen Smith, and Senior Advisor to the Provost Mark Maier.
Kiledal said since the minor is not in the 2021-2022 course catalog, an estimate of the number of media studies minors is not yet available. However, specialized media studies courses this semester have included approximately 25 students.
Kiledal explained the need to rename the former mass communications minor.
“The changes to the minor reflect developmental changes within the field, growth in academic rigor, reduction in the number of credit hours for the minor, and significant areas of faculty knowledge and interest,” she said.
Students could minor in media studies for many reasons, according to Kiledal.
“Some are interested in careers in or overlapping media generally, or in journalism and some seek contemporary study and outlets in critical methods and analysis skills across the spectrum of communication,” she said.
In the fall 2022 semester, the media studies minor will offer courses in Media and Culture, Propaganda and Social Control, Media Theory & Criticism, and Film: History and Form. No prerequisites are required for any of the classes.
“The minor really is something special,” Stoneman said. “There’s not another program of study anywhere else that’s quite like it. That’s because we developed it with the Hillsdale student body in mind.”
Junior Carson Brown said he took his first media studies course, Media Ecology, at the beginning of his sophomore year.
“I found it to be one of my first classes that truly connected all of the humanities together in a comprehensive manner,” he said. “I decided to pick up the media studies minor because it felt like one of the few classes I had taken that gave me a practical look at the way I live from the liberal arts perspective I came to Hillsdale for.”
