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Graduate Topics in Film – The Elements of Media Studies
240 004 | CCN: 32828
Location: Dwinelle 226
Date and Time: TU 4:00pm - 6:59pm
4 Units
This is a seminar on media and its elemental constituents, contexts, and interfaces. These include air and atmospheres, oceans and water, particulate matter and dust, microbes and viruses, ice and heat, surfaces and lubrication, minerals and supply chains. Readings will range from literature on the material foundations of cloud computing, the cultural history of fire, situated environmental knowledges, the colonial affects of ice, and the transpacific genealogies of atmospheres. The course will draw from media theory, the new materialisms, the post-humanities, the environmental humanities, cultural anthropology, and affect theory, among other fields to think about the processes and operations of elemental phenomena in the current moment. At the same time, we will both survey and interrogate what is elemental—and constitutive—of the field of media studies today. The focus of the course will be on engaging a dynamic, interdisciplinary academic community as it emerges and orienting students to the social landscape of (environmental) media theory and politics.