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Media Theory

ARHI 178 PO-01: Black Aesth/Pol (Re)presenation

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

Course examines the visual arts (including painting, sculpture, photography, prints, textiles, mixed media, installations, performance, independent film and video) produced by people of African descent in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Emphasis on Black artists’ changing relationship to African arts and cultures, the emergence of an oppositional aesthetic tradition interrogating visual constructs of “Blackness” and “Whiteness,” gender, sexuality and class as a means of revisioning representational pratices. Course provides a social-historical frame for the interpretation and analysis of form, content and the production of historically situated cultural criticism. Letter grade only.

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.

ART 181M SC-01: Topics in Studio Art Theory: Ecofeminsim and Eco Art

  • Instructor: Macko, Nancy
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • Room 221, Lang Art Building
    • Media Theory

This course will explore the history, theory and concepts that set the stage for the contemporary eco art practices of today. We will study the philosophy of ecofeminism that defines the international environmental art movement and trace the evolution of eco art from its roots in ecology. Throughout the course students will have the opportunity to learn from this legacy and to apply this knowledge to their interests and practices as makers, curators, writers, and historians. Course meets Fine Arts and Gender Women’s Studies general education requirements.

LIT 138 CM-01: Film and Mass Culture

  • Instructor: Morrison, James E.
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 11:00AM-12:15PM
    • RN Room 15 (Roberts North)
    • Media Theory

This course will examine film as art and as medium in the context of the rise of 20th-century “mass culture.” We will take up such topics as the role of film in producing the ideas of “mass culture”; the cinematic representation of the “masses;” film as an instrument of the standardization of culture and as a mode of resistance to it; film and modernism; film and postmodernism; representations of fascism in cinema; and “subculture” considered as an effect of mass culture.

LIT 139 CM-01: Film Theory

  • Instructor: Morrison, James E.
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • RN Room 15 (Roberts North)
    • Media Theory

This course investigates the major film theories from the beginnings of cinema to the present. We begin with a study of classical film theory (1900-1960) that attempts to define the essence of the form, its relation to reality, and its status as mass medium and/or art. We then move on to more recent work that examines film from ideological, sociological, or psychological perspectives, or considers the changing nature of cinema in the digital age.

MS 120 HM-01: Animal Media Studies

  • Instructor: Mayeri, Rachel
    • Tuesday/Thursday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • Room 2425 (Shanahan Center)
    • Media Theory

This course will examine representations of animals in film – wildlife documentaries, animated features, critter cams, scientific data, and video art – to address fundamental questions about human and animal nature and culture. Animal Studies is an interdisciplinary field in which scholars from philosophy, biology, media studies, and literature consider the subjective lives of animals, the representations of animals in media and literature, and the shifting boundary line between human and animal. In readings, screenings, and discussions, we will consider the cultural and material lives of humans and animals through the lenses of science, art, literature, and film. HSA Writing Intensive: No

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 150 PO-01: Seriality

  • Instructor: Engley, Ryan
    • Monday/Wednesday; 2:45-4:00PM
    • Room 207 (Crookshank Hall)
    • Media Theory

Serial media is ubiquitous. The method of distributing installments of a larger narrative over time has seen increasing prominence in a variety of media forms, ever since the birth of mass media and the serial novel in the mid-19th century. From the early film serials of The Perils of Pauline and Flash Gordon to Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from the popular radio serials of The Shadow and The Lone Ranger to true crime podcasts Serial and My Favorite Murder, from the development of the traditional network television series to the ‘binge model’ of Netflix, serial narrative has enabled complex longform storytelling and engaged and enraged audiences. But to study seriality is not just to observe an industry strategy for releasing narrative. Nor is it sufficient to simply acknowledge how seriality ensnares author, text, and audience. The study of seriality involves excavating and articulating a comprehensive theory. Looking to psychoanalysis, existentialism, radical feminism, and Black Marxism, with supplemental examination of narrative, audience, and authorship studies, this course will aim to understand seriality as a textual, social, psychical, and political form. Prerequisites: one of MS 049 PO, MS 050 PO, MS 051 PO, MS 092 PO or equivalents. Letter grade only.

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