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Media History

ARHI 185 SC-01: History of Photography

  • Instructor: Lum, Julia
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • Room 101, Steele Hall
    • Media History/Art History

Photography from the nineteenth century to the present. The camera as a tool for documentation, portraiture, social comment, journalism, advertising, and as a pure vehicle for personal expression and a point of departure for allied art forms.

ARHI 186Y PO-01: Cinema Against War

  • Instructor: Jackson, Phyllis J.
    • Wednesday; 1:15-4:00PM
    • Room 110 (LeBus Court)
    • Media History/Media Theory

Advocates for human rights and justice create documentary films (weapons for mind decolonization) calling for a paradigm shift through visual narratives effectively silenced by commercial mass media and post-9/11 nationalism. [Following the 2016 US Presidential election,] this study of visual culture and theories of representation is for global villagers eager to raise their historical awareness, deconstruct the rhetoric of power elites, debunk the conceits of imperialism, and dismantle the deceits of transnational corporations. Course promotes active spectatorship, courage as the antidote to fear, and anti-war activism (see: http://costofwar.com/index.html) Requirements: your humanity and recognition of dissent as a constitutional right.

MS 045 PZ-01: Documentary Media

  • Instructor: Lerner, Jesse
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 11:00-12:15PM
    • West Hall Q116
    • Media History or Intermediate/Advanced Production

This course involves production, a historical survey of documentary practices in photography, film and video and a discussion of the ethical and ideological issues raised by the genre. Students will be expected to produce two short documentary projects in any media. Prerequisite: MS 50 or MS 49.

MS 071 PO-01: Conspiracy and Media

  • Instructor: Long, Andrew C.
    • Monday/Wednesday; 1:15-2:30PM
    • Room 08 (Crookshank Hall)
    • Media History

This course explores conspiracy narratives as modern, and perhaps post-modern cultural phenomena, that are inseparable from populist politics. Living in the digital era, we must ask if the prevalence of conspiracy narratives now is a symptom of an epochal break, or rather, an intensification of a long 20th century phenomenon.We will deal with conspiracy narratives as they function as a form of social knowledge, albeit deeply flawed in many ways, that mobilize and structure a deep and virulent tradition of semiotic references. This semiotic history is in turn grounded in popular literature and popular culture, especially visual culture, and cinema. We will read conspiracy narratives in two different ways, that is as cultural historians (materialist and historical) with reference to film (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Four Feathers, The Matrix), literature (The Secret Agent, The Crying of Lot 49) and popular culture (eGames). We will also look at conspiracy texts through four hermeneutic terms: lost cause (and Lost Cause with the objet petit a), foreclosure (forclusion), ressentiment (paranoia and castration), and information (knowledge).

MS 120 PZ-01: Social/Media

  • Instructor: Affuso, Elizabeth
    • Wednesday; 2:45-5:30OM
    • West Hall Q120
    • Media History/Media Theory

This course will consider how social media is impacting personal communication, consumption practices, and media industries. Through case studies of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, and related spaces students will theorize the role of interactivity in contemporary popular culture. This class will consider how social media impacts narrative form, political engagement, performance of self, and cultural conceptions of reading/authorship. In addition to discussing the media industry’s use of social media platforms as sites of promotion, participation, and surveillance, students will produce critical media analyses using these platforms as part of their coursework.

MS 120 SC-01: Video Games & Media Discourse

  • Instructor: Moralde. Oscar
    • Monday/Wednesday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • Room 101, Steele Hall
    • Media History/Media Theory

How does a medium become gendered or racialized? Whose voices, images, and bodies come to delimit a medium? In this course, we will investigate the role that paratextual fields such as criticism, marketing, and fandom play in shaping media culture, with video games and game cultures as a paradigmatic case study. Historical examples from games will be supplemented with theories of criticism and discourse to create a starting point for student-developed media research projects. Prerequisite: MS 049 SC, MS 050 PZ, or MS 051 SC.

MS 126 PZ-01: Media Ecologies & Energies

  • Instructor: TBA
    • Monday/Wednesday; 1:15-2:30PM
    • West Hall Q120
    • Media History/Media Theory

This course delves into the environmental impacts and planetary stakes of film and media production, distribution, and disposal. What struggles are fought over the minerals mined for batteries? How are landscapes transformed to make space for cables and data centers? What is the carbon footprint of AI? Questions like these motivate the field of environmental media studies today. Spanning topics such as media infrastructure studies, digital energetics, e-waste, techno-precarity, and multispecies justice, students will trace and analyze the ecologies of media to find out what it takes to power our contemporary media cultures.

MS 172 HM-01: Third Cinema

  • Instructor: Balseiro, Isabel
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 9:35-10:50AM
    • Room 2465 (Shanahan Center)
    • Media History/Media Theory

Emerging in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, the notion of Third Cinema takes its inspiration from the Cuban revolution and from Brazil’s Cinema Novo. Third Cinema is the art of political film making and represents an alternative cinematic practice to that offered by mainstream film industries. This course explores the aesthetics of film making from a revolutionary consciousness in three regions: Africa, Asia, and Latin America. HSA Writing Intensive: No