Media Studies is an intercollegiate major offered jointly by Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps Colleges, together forming Intercollegiate Media Studies (IMS). Media Studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field that emphasizes the cultural and historical importance of media and focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of texts and representations, which are analyzed in terms of aesthetics, meanings, and uses. IMS at the Claremont Colleges is one of the first undergraduate programs in the United States to combine theory, history, and practice, integrating critical studies and media production.
IMS provides rigorous interdisciplinary training, enabling our students to learn how to analyze diverse media forms and the power relations that undergird them, and to ethically express their knowledge through critical scholarship, community-engagement, and creative media practice. The IMS major draws from anthropology, art history, cinema and film studies, communications, cultural studies, English, gender and feminist studies, performance studies, photography, postcolonial and transnational studies, queer studies, sound studies, and the visual arts. The major prepares students for graduate work and careers in teaching, art, entertainment, digital media, and the non-profit sector.
IMS offers abundant opportunities for hands-on learning in the form of independent multi-modal research projects, off-campus internships throughout the Los Angeles region, as well as creative projects in the form of video art, documentary, photography and digital imaging, media installation and performance, web-based and interactive media, and community-based and activist media. IMS combines the rich resources of the Claremont Colleges to support student research and production, namely the Mosbacher/Gartrell Center for Media Experimentation and Activism, which houses a professional standard post-production facility, classrooms, staff and faculty offices, an art gallery, a screening room, a video studio, an animation and special project studio, as well as other student work spaces. Other resources include the Honnold Library media collection, Pomona College’s Brian Stonehill Media Studies Library, Scripps College’s Lang and Steele Media Labs, Harvey Mudd College’s gallery in the Shanahan Center and media art project space in Parsons Engineering Building, the media collection housed at Pitzer College’s Audio/Visual Services, and the intercollegiate alumni group Claremont Entertainment Media (CEM).
Faculty affiliated with the IMS Program include: Ken Gonzales-Day, Nathalie Rachlin (SC); Mark Allen, Maria Donapetry, Leo Flynn, Phyllis Jackson, Frances Pohl, Arden Reed, Larissa Rudova, Monique Saigal, John Seery, Konstantine Klioutchkine, Lynn Thomas, Valorie Thomas (PO); William Alves, Isabel Balseiro, Marianne de Laet, Elizabeth Sweedyk (HM); Dipa Basu, Laura Harris, Ntongela Masilela (PZ); Minju Kim, Salvador Velazco (CM).