This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium "specificity" or the key technological/material, formal and aesthetic features of different media and modes of address and representation that define them. Also considered is the relationship of individual media to time and space, how individual media construct their audiences or spectators, and the kinds of looking or viewing they enable or encourage. The course will discuss the ideological effects of various media, particularly around questions of racial and sexual difference, national identity, capitalism, and power.

This course introduces students to foundational theories and methods in the scholarly study of audiovisual and other forms of media, including print media, television, film, video, and digital media. We will explore how different media shape social formations and systems of communication, and influence cultural idea of gender, race, class, and identity, in relation to their historical and political context. One of the key focuses of this course will be on how media inform the very production of subjectivity—our sense of who we are and how we participate in society. This course will take you beyond everyday ways of thinking about media and into the complex territory of 20th and 21st-century intellectual history. Focusing on both form and meaning, we will consider the unique technological, material, formal, and aesthetic characteristics that define different media and their modes of representation.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills