Communication

Program | Faculty | Master's | Doctoral | Courses

Web site: www.umass.edu/communication/

The Department of Communication offers programs leading to the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. The Ph.D. degree requires a minimum of 60 credits beyond the Bachelor's degree plus a research tool (minimum 6 credits) and credits for the dissertation (total, 66 credits). Plans of study conforming to specific program requirements are prepared individually in consultation with faculty advisers.

Applicants to the graduate program should meet all requirements for admission to the Graduate School and should have a good undergraduate background in communication or expect to take additional coursework without graduate credit or, in some cases, with credit. Applicants are encouraged to submit writing samples directly to the department.

The department holds the position that social realities are constituted, maintained, and changed by the process of communication. Although communication is the latest social science discipline to emerge, it has an ancient heritage. Its emergence is connected with both the search for new perspectives on contemporary problems and the profusion of technologies of communication. This department represents communication as a discipline with a unique perspective informed by its own units of analysis and observation, its own traditions of research, and its own theories and applications. In short, this department studies communication as the primary social process.

The central goals of the curriculum are: to develop competence in observing, describing, and criticizing communication practices; to develop understanding of the history of communication and its policies, institutions, and culture; and to develop knowledge of communication theory, philosophy, and research. These goals are incorporated into studies of face-to-face and mediated communication, from dyads to large social groups.

Some foci of work being done in the department include: technologies of communication and the nature of social institutions; communication and the constitution of personal identities and interpersonal relationships; communication and the production of cultural politics; the reproduction of cultural identities in conversation; teaching and learning as communication processes; the history of ideas concerning communication; and legal and institutional regulation of communication processes.