COMH - Communication Honors

This faculty-led travel course takes students abroad to produce a documentary film about local changemakers in a foreign country. Working under the guidance of UT professors and Actuality Media production managers, students use visual storytelling techniques to profile a local advocate working on an important social issue. When not working on the film, students will take excursions and experience cross-cultural encounters with local food, art, history, commerce, and natural landscapes. Upon their return to campus, students will edit their films, share them with the changemaker organizations, and host a film premiere for the wider UT community. There are no language or production prerequisites for this course and its focus on media activism, public policy, and social entrepreneurship has the potential to appeal to students majoring in Communication, Entrepreneurship, Political Science, International Business, International and Cultural Studies, Public Health, and Sociology. Locations (such as Ecuador and Morocco) vary from year to year.

Through a thematic and largely chronological approach, this class explores the revolutionary in relation to TV. The bulk of the course focuses on the people who pushed TV in new directions and the programs that directly challenged social norms. The course introduces students to the historical and ongoing revolutions in the technology of TV in addition to social, cultural and technological theory. Students will do close readings of TV “texts” and read key and classic works in the field of television studies. May be used to satisfy general distribution requirements in the humanities if not used for the major.

For Honors Program students only. This course is an exploration of the concept of "ethnicity" and how it may be expressed through literature and film. May be used to satisfy general distribution requirements in the humanities if not used for the major.