Media, Culture and Communication (MCC-UH)

Students will look at the media in Morocco today and understand the current situation by studying the developments that took place over the last decade. What are the ethics of reporting on a revolution and its aftermath? What critical frameworks shape our understanding of the roles played by media and social media in the unfolding of such events? This course in foreign reporting takes as a central case study the state of the media in Morocco and the broader region following the Arab Spring. During the two first weeks of the course, the students will learn techniques of feature writing and journalism ethics. During the third week, they will remotely research and write about a topic of their choosing on Morocco. The content of the readings is heavily based on human rights and politics in Morocco. Students will read and discuss long-form readings on the Middle East and more specifically on Morocco as well as daily news reading on Morocco. A longtime foreign correspondent with the National Public Radio will skype with the class to talk about their experience internationally and in Morocco.

Memory and Visual Culture: In recent decades, the world has witnessed a "memory boom," marked by the building of numerous memorials and memory museums, as well as high-profile debates about memory. This course examines the intersections of visual culture, commemoration, nationalism, and social movements with the politics of human rights and memory on a global scale. We will study the contestations over memorialization and artistic engagements with the memory of traumatic events, with a particular focus on the politics of memory in Argentina regarding state terrorism from 1976-1983. We will compare memory projects in Argentina with examples of memorialization in other contexts such as 9/11 in the United States, the Holocaust in Germany, and state terrorism in Chile, Peru, and throughout Latin America. By examining how art, photography, digital media, and design have shaped cultural memory in these contexts, we will investigate the aesthetics of memory, the role of pedagogy in memorial museums, the spatialization of memory, the digitalization of memory, the role of human rights, and the use of memory into political action. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Accurate accounts of the past are made possible in large part due to the existence of primary documents deposited in public and private archives. In this class we will explore the vast array of materials housed in a range of public repositories and how they help illuminate the history of the UAE. Students will review primary material to consider how archives are used by documentary filmmakers, historians and other scholars and their role in shaping history and the identity of the UAE. We will visit a variety of sites, including the UAE National Archives and Qasr Al Hosn in Abu Dhabi, and the Peace Memorial Museum, National Film Library and Archive and the National Archive in Zanzibar. Students will also be introduced to the growing number of online databases and consider the future of history given the challenge of preserving information in the Digital Age. Each student will embark on a preliminary archival research project that delves into an under-explored aspect of UAE history. The class will culminate in a class presentation on a research project on a UAE figure.

'You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.' - James Baldwin. Comprehensive news coverage of Africa is scant. The sparse coverage is often a variation of an incomplete portrait that has dominated the Western media for the last 50 years: tales of starvation, political instability and disease are mainstays. There is often little historical or political context this coverage. Even with the Internet and global access to African journalism, the stereotypical portraits of a 'dark continent' persists. But in recent years, a cadre of African writers have begun to change that narrative. These writers, worldly and comfortable on global streets, have churned out works that center a nuanced portrait of contemporary life in African cities today. They have been able to have some success in their literature in ways that contemporary journalism from this region has never been able to. This course will provide students with an understanding of contemporary issues in African cities, as well as how literature is tackling these issues.