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The Craft of Writing – Mediaphilia/Mediaphobia Today
R1A - 001 | CCN: 15139
Renée Pastel and Chi Li
4 Units
Do new media technologies bring us together or isolate us from one another? This course attempts to address this question from a variety of standpoints, including economic, cultural, and political. How can such media be seen as symptoms of a broader narcissism within our society, or conversely as an ideal democratizing force? We will examine films, television shows, websites and other forms of new media with an eye to the variety of reactions to contemporary media, beginning with the binary of mediaphilia/mediaphobia and then expanding to other responses. Potential texts will address general media theory, technologies of the self, digital race and gender, computers and the Internet, big data, and social networking sites and apps.
This course fulfills the first part of the Reading and Composition requirement, introducing students to college level analytical writing, reading, and viewing. Students will learn how to write persuasively by critically engaging with a variety of texts–films, television shows, new media–and by constructing strong interpretive arguments about them.