Institutional Learning Outcomes: Intercultural Awareness Students examine the communication and meaning of “urban" or contemporary legends, investigating them as forms of informal communication. Analyzing the channels these messages take, they further explore the social and cultural significance of how, where, when, and to whom these legends are passed and how they create and enforce taboos, norms, community values, and ideas of insider/outsider issues. Studied through the lens of communication studies, including intercultural communication theory, as well as folklore studies and discourse communities, students examine how deceptively simple modes of informal communication, including oral narratives, digital memes, and weird tales, express how humans connect, disconnect, understand what is appropriate in their communities, create `others,' caution each other, and create political and capital gain.
Institutional Learning Outcomes: Intercultural Awareness Students examine the communication and meaning of “urban" or contemporary legends, investigating them as forms of informal communication. Analyzing the channels these messages take, they further explore the social and cultural significance of how, where, when, and to whom these legends are passed and how they create and enforce taboos, norms, community values, and ideas of insider/outsider issues. Studied through the lens of communication studies, including intercultural communication theory, as well as folklore studies and discourse communities, students examine how deceptively simple modes of informal communication, including oral narratives, digital memes, and weird tales, express how humans connect, disconnect, understand what is appropriate in their communities, create `others,' caution each other, and create political and capital gain.
