Mission

The Carsey-Wolf Center supports research, teaching, and public programming about media. Our goal is to foster informed dialogue, critical skills, historical understanding, and new forms of literacy for a global and interconnected world. Engaging media experts, students, and scholars, our research and programming are committed to broadening the ways in which we understand media.

The Center supports research in six overlapping areas that reflect the scope and depth of media studies as a field: Global Media, Media and Democracy, Information Media, Media Industries, Media and the Environment, and Storytelling and Narrative. The Pollock Theater offers a destination for innovative programming that includes topical series, events focused on film and television, and visits from contemporary mediamakers. The Carsey-Wolf Center provides an intellectual as well as a physical space in which the university and the public can interact through educational activities, research projects, and public programming.

The Center sponsors specialized media studies courses that expand the opportunities available to students at UCSB, and which complement its research initiatives. The Center also offers professional training opportunities for UCSB students at the Pollock Theater.