Media Studies

Professor Mark Andrejevic, department chair
Intercollegiate Steering Committee: Andrejevic, Ma (PZ), Mayeri (HM), Morrison (CM), Tran (SC)

Professors Andrejevic, Juhasz (PZ), Ma (PZ), Morrison (CM), Macko¹ (SC), Tran (SC)
Associate Professors Friedlander³, Lerner (PZ), Mayeri (HM)
Assistant Professors Hall, Talmor¹ (PZ)
Lecturers Connelly, Volcic
Intercollegiate Media Studies Production Director, Hutin
Intercollegiate Media Studies Academic Director, Affuso
Nancy Jugan, academic coordinator

The Media Studies Department offers an intercollegiate major jointly with Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps colleges (Intercollegiate Media Studies [IMS]). Media Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field that emphasizes the cultural and historical importance of media and focuses on the production, circulation and reception of texts and representations, which are analyzed in terms of aesthetics, meanings and uses. IMS at the Claremont Colleges is one of the first undergraduate programs in the United States to combine theory, history and practice, integrating critical studies and media production.

IMS provides rigorous interdisciplinary training, enabling our students to learn how to analyze diverse media forms and the power relations that undergird them and to ethically express their knowledge through critical scholarship, community engagement and creative media practice. The IMS major draws from anthropology, art history, cinema and film studies, communications, cultural studies, English, gender and feminist studies, performance studies, photography, postcolonial and transnational studies, queer studies, sound studies and the visual arts. Media studies also understands critical scholarship as a form of media practice, seeking to confront not only the ways that the media constructs the contemporary cultural environment but also the ways in which we, as producers and consumers, are all constituted by the same cultural formations that we seek to challenge. Above all, the major seeks to explore media from a perspective that eliminates traditional boundaries among disciplines and between media theory and media production, thus illuminating new ways of seeing, thinking and communicating in the world. The major prepares students for graduate work and careers in teaching, art, entertainment, digital media and the non-profit sector.

IMS offers abundant opportunities for hands-on learning in the form of independent multi-modal research projects, off-campus internships throughout the Los Angeles region, as well as creative projects in the form of video art, documentary, photography and digital imaging, media installation and performance, web-based and interactive media and community-based and activist media. IMS combines the rich resources of the Claremont Colleges to support student research and production, namely the Mosbacher/Gartrell Center for Media Experimentation and Activism, which houses a professional standard post-production facility, classrooms, staff and faculty offices, an art gallery, a screening room, a video studio, an animation and special project studio, as well as other student work spaces. Other resources include the Honnold Library media collection, Pomona College’s Brian Stonehill Media Studies Library, Scripps College’s Lang and Steele Media Labs, Harvey Mudd College’s gallery in the Shanahan Center and media art project space in Parsons Engineering Building, the media collection housed at Pitzer College’s Audio/Visual Services and the intercollegiate alumni group Claremont Entertainment Media (CEM).

Faculty affiliated with the IMS Program include: Mark Allen, William Alves (HM), Isabel Balseiro (HM), Dipa Basu (PZ), Ken Gonzales-Day (SC), Laura Harris (PZ), Phyllis Jackson, Minju Kim (CM), Konstantine Klioutchkine, Marianne de Laet (HM), Ntongela Masilela (PZ), John Peavoy (SC), Frances Pohl, Nathalie Rachlin (SC), Arden Reed, Larissa Rudova, John Seery, Elizabeth Sweedyk (HM), Lynn Thomas, Valorie Thomas, Salvador Velazco (CM).

• Media Studies Major
    
• Media Studies Minor
    
• Media Studies Courses
    

Read more about our learning objectives:
www.pomona.edu/administration/academic-dean/learning-objectives