BA in Media Arts + Practice

The BA in Media Arts + Practice unites critical thinking and making in order to study the relationship between culture and technology and to facilitate the critical and creative uses of media across disparate disciplines. Situated within USC's School of Cinematic Arts, the program brings together theoretical, historical and practice-based approaches within a humanities context, and offers students an intensive practice-based research experience within the School's many research labs.

• Knowledge of the history, theory and evolution of 20th and 21st century media and an understanding of their roles within contemporary culture.
• Understanding of foundational media competencies, including design and the relationship between form and content; networks and the ability to interact and participate in networked communities with sophistication; interactive argument, and the ability to use media to articulate a point or demonstrate a concept; and basic research skills, with an understanding of fair use and copyright issues in the digital context.
• Ability to apply critical theory in order to analyze, assess, critique and compare contemporary media objects and platforms.
• Ability to articulate ideas and concepts using written, oral, visual and interactive communication skills and an appreciation of emerging forms of textuality and digital scholarship that facilitate the sharing of ideas within scholarly networks.
• Develop skills necessary for successful digital authoring, including collaboration, the ability to learn new tools in a rapidly changing context and innovative entrepreneurship.
• Understanding of the legal and ethical rights and responsibilities associated in working with digital media.
• Appreciation of core cultural themes related to contemporary digital media, including access, surveillance and privacy, participation and global citizenship.
• Ability to apply digital media authoring skills in diverse contexts, including business, politics and education.
• Ability to synthesize learning in a major media-rich capstone project.

PhD in Media Arts + Practice

The PhD in Media Arts + Practice offers a rigorous and creative environment for scholarly innovation as students explore the intersection of design, media and critical thinking while defining new modes of research and scholarship for the 21st century. Core to the program is its interdisciplinary ethos; after completing foundational coursework, students design their own curricula, drawing on expertise across all divisions with the School of Cinematic Arts and across the USC campus. The iMAP program is practice-based, and as such, students are encouraged to be creative and reflective in designing, defining and articulating their research methods. Rather than writing a traditional dissertation, students complete their PhD studies through the design of a project that exemplifies innovative scholarship.

• Knowledge of the history, theory and evolution of 20th and 21st century media art, critical theory and digital scholarship in the humanities context.
• Understanding of the diverse types of practices within the broad concept of media art, including new media, electronic art, internet art, media installation, immersive media, pervasive and locative media, ambient storytelling, immersive journalism, media activism and social media.
• Understanding of arts-based research practices, and the development of the ability to articulate an appropriate research methodology for a given research question.
• Development of diverse media production skills appropriate to specific research projects, including collaboration, project planning, budgeting and scoping, and skills in visual storytelling, design fiction, audio design, tangible media and other emerging forms of media production.
• Ability to articulate ideas and concepts using written, oral, visual and interactive communication skills and an appreciation of emerging forms of textuality and digital scholarship that facilitate the sharing of ideas within scholarly networks.
• Understanding of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and the formation of new fields of inquiry and objects of study.
• Understanding of the legal and ethical rights and responsibilities associated in working with digital media.
• Appreciation of core cultural themes related to contemporary digital media, including access, surveillance and privacy, participation and global citizenship.
• Ability to unite theory and practice in the creation of a dissertation project that includes a clear and appropriate research methodology; that embodies concepts or communicates ideas through interaction with the project; and that exemplifies innovative scholarly research and communication.