While sports are often sought for entertainment, they are more than just a game: they both mirror and shape our understandings of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, nationality and more. This class addresses these issues while also thinking about sports in global frameworks. Cross-listed with COMM 4000

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Rhetorical criticism is the study of how language works to persuade. This class surveys major thinkers to offers students a range of methods, which are then applied to address specific case studies. Cross-listed with COMM 4021.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

This class examines the U.S. prison-industrial complex and enables students to envision ways of reducing crime and improving democracy by engaging in community service. Note: This course fulfills the communication department's exit class requirement. Undergraduates with senior standing may enroll with Permission of instructor. COMM 2020 is recommended preparation for this course. Cross-listed with COMM 4040

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

Provides senior-level training in hands-on communication environments where targeted messaging seeks specific outcomes. All students complete projects for community group, media outlet or corporation they choose. Students will not receive credit for this class if they have already received credit for COMM 5640. Cross-listed with COMM 4051

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Develop marketable skills such as building websites, making interactive maps, recording podcasts, and analyzing data while also studying the cultural and ethical dimensions of these technologies. Cross-listed with COMM 3081, HIST 3260, HIST 5260

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

This course focuses on the dynamics between religion, culture, and communication and how these have led to intercultural peace, centuries of war, and/or different visions of belonging. This class addresses these dynamics to improve intercultural dialogue and conflict resolution processes, foregrounding the search for justice. Cross-listed with COMM 4152, INTS 4152, RLST 4152, INTS 5152, RLST 5152

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

This class applies qualitative research methods to human communication practices, including the processes of designing qualitative studies, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, and reporting results. Cross-listed with COMM 4221.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

Churches, schools, companies, NGOs, the government—these are all organizations. This class addresses the theories of how organizations succeed or fail and stresses functional workplace skills and practices. Cross-listed with COMM 4240

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

This class engages Principled Negotiation theory and practice and involves numerous negotiation simulations. These are skills-based exercises that emphasize communication strategies and traverse a number of different negotiation contexts. Through the simulations, both group and dyadic work is practiced. Cross-listed with COMM 4255

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Sometimes it seems like our days are full of conflict—why is that? This class studies the influence of communication on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup conflict situations, and offers communication skills for building better relationships. Cross-listed with COMM 4260.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

The age of globalization means we are all neighbors, working across national boundaries and even continents. This class examines the philosophies, processes, problems, and potentials unique to communicating across cultures to address issues of social justice and ethical intercultural practices. We will consider the important role of context in interactions across cultures and subcultures, globally, transnationally, and within the U.S. Cross-listed with COMM 4270, INTB 6270

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Our world is shaped by policies and practices that threaten life on Earth. With such high stakes for making a more livable, just, and equitable future, this course examines storytelling, naming, framing, and the other communication concepts that are essential for navigating our shared planet. Cross-listed with COMM 4282.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

This course examines AI’s impact on media and communication, emphasizing ethical and societal implications. Through readings, case studies, and hands-on AI tool use, students analyze communication practices, develop responsible strategies, and apply critical, creative, and ethical approaches across diverse professional and civic contexts. Cross-listed with COMM 4291

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Typically Offered: Fall.

This course provides a senior-level opportunity to study how China and the USA have spoken about and to each other, from the Opium War through the Cyber Wars, thus situating both nations in a world of globalizing communication and interdependence. Note: this course fulfills the communication department's exit class requirement. This course may count for the International Studies major or minor. Cross-listed with COMM 4430.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall.

This class examines the role of communication in a wide range of health contexts. Topics include cultural constructions of health and illness, public health communication campaigns, client-provider interactions, telemedicine, community-based health programs, and medical journalism. Cross-listed with COMM 4500

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

This senior seminar explores why it matters how we talk and think about medicine and health. Case studies explore contagion, contested illnesses, the body, death, and biopower. The course requires extensive discussion of readings and an original research project. Cross-listed with COMM 4550

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall.

This course examines strategic communication practices throughout the three stages of a crisis or emergency event. Special emphasis is placed on crisis planning, emergency messaging, media relationships, image restoration, ethical responses, and organizational learning. Cross-listed with COMM 4557

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

This course blends readings, discussions, and activities about health narratives with digital media production skills to teach students how to create compelling digital stories about health-related topics. Students produce digital messages for the community group of their choosing. Cross-listed with COMM 4558.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

Examines the roles of communication in the design and impact of health messages/campaigns. We will design and assess health communication messages/campaigns in a participatory, process‐oriented way using varied communication tools. Cross-listed with COMM 4575

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Food is a source of identity, culture, and belonging. It communicates heritage and belonging. Because food provides communication channels for much of who we are as individuals, as a community, and as a society, this course analyzes food as a form of communication. Cross-listed with COMM 4601

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Queer Media Studies, a discussion-based seminar, investigates the history of a variety of LGBTQ+ media — including news, film, television, comics, games, music, and the Internet. Students engage in a variety of media projects to explore LGBTQ+ histories, queer aspects of media production, reception, and media messages. Cross-listed with COMM 4660, WGST 4660, WGST 5660

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Examines the communication processes involved in mediated political events. Topics include the stages of the campaign process, media coverage of the political campaign process, and literacy skills needed to understand political advertising. Cross-listed with COMM 4682

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Special classes for faculty-directed experiences examining communication issues and problems not generally covered in the curriculum. Cross-listed with COMM 4710 Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Repeatable. Max Credits: 15.

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

This class explores global communication dynamics by analyzing the relationships between world media, international events, economics, and geopolitics. Cross-listed with COMM 4720

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Communicating Latina/o/x Cultures centers historical and contemporary vernacular and institutional discourse sand narratives about, by, and for Latina/o/x people and communities. Drawing on theories, methods, and practices to understand the complexities of Latina/o/x cultures and lives, we will investigate how different actors and activists express and experience borders, migration, dispossession, citizenship, colonialism/coloniality, colorism, white supremacy, environmental racism(including anti-Blackness), mono- and multilingualism, self-determination struggles, power, representation, resistance, and mutual support networks for alternative worldmaking. To situate these concepts and concerns, we will explore contexts and places ranging from Colorado to the Caribbean. Cross-listed with COMM 4722, ETST 4722, and ETST 5722.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Spring.

Note: Students must submit a special processing form completely filled out and signed by the student and faculty member, describing the course expectations, assignments and outcomes, to the CLAS Graduate Academic Services Coordinator for approval. Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Repeatable. Max Credits: 9.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Students will engage in original research projects supervised and mentored by faculty. Students must work with faculty prior to registration to develop a proposal for their project and receive permission to take this course. Note: Students must submit a special processing form completely filled out and signed by the student and faculty member, describing the course expectations, assignments and outcomes, to the CLAS Graduate Academic Services Coordinator for approval. Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Repeatable. Max Credits: 6.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Applies communication or technical communication concepts and skills in supervised employment situations. Note: Students must submit a special processing form completely filled out and signed by the student and faculty member, describing the course expectations, assignments and outcomes, to the CLAS Graduate Academic Services Coordinator for approval. Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Repeatable. Max Credits: 9.

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

This course is reserved for CU Denver faculty-led study abroad experiences. The course topic will vary based on the location and course content. Students register through the Office of Global Education.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Additional Information: Global Education Study Abroad.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Designed to familiarize students with the philosophical, ideological, and methodological bases of study in communication. Note: Required of all graduate students in M.A. program in communication.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

This course offers students an introduction to the intersections of communication as a discipline, globalization as a world process, and social justice as a contested, ever-evolving goal of activists. Note: This course may count for the International Studies major or minor. See your INTS advisor for more information.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Focuses on strategies of research design and writing for undergraduate students working on theses for Latin honors. Students pick their own research topics. Cross-listed with COMM 4700

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring.

Special classes for faculty-directed experiences examining communication issues and problems not generally covered in the curriculum. Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade

Repeatable. Max Credits: 15.

Restricted to graduate and graduate non-degree majors or COMM-BA students with BMA subplan only.

Note: Students must submit a special processing form completely filled out and signed by the student and faculty member, describing the course expectations, assignments and outcomes, to the CLAS Graduate Academic Services Coordinator for approval. Repeatable.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade with IP

Repeatable. Max Credits: 6.

Additional Information: Report as Full Time.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.

Note: Students must submit a special processing form completely filled out and signed by the student and faculty member, describing the course expectations, assignments and outcomes, to the CLAS Graduate Academic Services Coordinator for approval.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade with IP

Repeatable. Max Credits: 6.

Additional Information: Report as Full Time.

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring, Summer.