Centre for the Study of the United States

Topics in American Studies: Spin! Media, Marketing and Managing the Future (USA401H1F)

This course illuminates the marketing experts, public relations advisors, and image management consultants who make it their business to manage our uncertain future. It explores the strategies they have used to manage public perception and to inform public opinion about corporations, CEOs, politicians and more.

We will put classic public relations, marketing, and advertising texts in conversation with more recent work in these fields, examining how these professions have succeeded and failed in affecting the present and future. We will track how the rise of public relations, marketing, and image management have transformed not only public life, but our collective sense of the past and future.

This course will be delivered online through mini-lectures, podcasts, clips and written materials. Students may have the opportunity to create their own podcasts, narrated power points, and other innovative reports. Class meetings and instructor-student conferences will be determined by the instructor and students, based on bandwidth and time difference.