DESMA 8Media Histories
Design|Media Arts · 5 units · Undergraduate lower division (0-99)
Overview of optical media and aesthetic movements covering past two centuries: photography and industrialization/Romanticism (1850 to 1900), cinema and modernism (1900 to 1950), television and postmodernism (1950 to 2000), and digital media and unimodernism (2000 to 2050). How such movements can inform generative work and how understanding these media becomes essential in the emerging era of digital humanities.
P/NP or letter grading.
When it runs
- Winter 2026
- Winter 2027
Scheduled, not typical — from UCLA’s Schedule of Classes, which publishes Fall 2025 through Spring 2027 and nothing before it.
Requisites
UCLA lists no requisites for this course.
Requires
Everything that has to come before this course, not just the courses named in the requisite above.
Nothing — this is an entry point.
Unlocks
What this course is a requisite for, and what those courses lead to in turn.
DESMA 8
- DESMA 159Capstone Senior Project in Design Media Arts
1 course lists this as a requisite. The whole downstream is here — 1 course over 1 level. Every course here opens its own tree.