SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

CMNS 486-4

Professor Zoë Druick Burnaby, Day

604-291-5398; CC 6228 Fall 2004

MEDIATIONS OF REALITY

Proposal and preliminary bibliography due no later than Nov. 10 (5%)

Research paper (approx. 3500 words) due December 1 (40%)

The purpose of this essay is to allow you to explore the ideas of the course in greater detail and according to your interests. All of the topics ask you to bring semiotic theory together with media texts and to think about semiosis as the basis of communication and community. The final paper should be formatted in accepted academic style and use a consistent and recognized citation practice.

Please craft your paper idea into a preliminary proposal of between 300 and 500 words in which you outline your thesis and the direction you think your argument will take. You must include a preliminary bibliography at this stage. The proposal is due by November 10. Late proposals will not be accepted, but early ones are welcomed.

Suggested essay topics

1. Research one of the theorists we have read and present aspects of his or her work in greater detail. You may also choose to take a comparative approach to the way a topic is handled differently by two or more theorists.

2. Choose a concept that interests you, such as “cognitive mapping” or “intertexuality,” and research its development and use.

3. Using examples, explore some of the challenges that visual signs pose for semiotics.

4. Discuss the fraught relationship between reality and fiction in the case of a) history,

b) reality TV, and/or c) mockumentary.

5. Consider the production of social identities (race, gender, class, sexuality, youth) as sites of signification in one or more texts.

6. Given the current movement in media culture towards a surveillance aesthetic, discuss the ways the media is processing the new omnipresence of video cameras in our lives.

7. Using horror or fantasy film examples, discuss Barbara Creed’s argument about maternal abjection and monstrousness.

8. Combine and modify any of the topics into your own research topic.