Media, Technology, and Society
MCC-UE 1034
Course Description: This course is intended as a multidisciplinary introduction to the critical study of media and technology and the social, cultural, and political forces that shape and are shaped by media and technologies. We will cover a wide range of critical approaches to the study of media and technologies and develop conceptual tools to understand technologies, media, and techniques in relation to their different historical, geo-political, and social contexts. From film, TV, and videogames to computers, internet, and social media, we will study different methods and concepts that help us understand our mediated condition(s) better. We will attempt to understand the ways technology and media are defined, how aesthetic and discursive objects emerge at the intersection of technology and media, and then on the foundations of those concepts and critical terms, we will attempt to make sense of the role of media and technology in the politico-economic, sociocultural, racial, and environmental crises surrounding us today.
Learning Outcomes:
Assignments:
Unit | Date | Readings | Assignments |
Introduction | Jan 23 | Review Syllabus Introductions | |
What is Technology? | Jan 25 | “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept” by Leo Marx "The Question Concerning Technology" by Martin Heiddeger | |
Jan 30 | “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” by Langdon Winner “Technological Momentum” in Does Technology Drive History? By Thomas Hughes | ||
Feb 1 | “Morality and Technology” Bruno Latour “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” by Walter Benjamin | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) | |
What are Media? What is Mediation? | Feb 6 | Entries on "Media" and "Mediation" from Keywords by Raymond Williams “Genesis of the Media Concept” by John Guillory | |
Feb 8 | “Introduction” from Gramophone, Film, Typewriter by Friedrich Kittler “Introduction” & “Chapter 1: The Medium is the Message” from Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) | |
Feb 13 | “On Technical Mediation” by Bruno Latour Watch: Animation: Explaining Technological Mediation | ||
Media Technologies + Technological Mediation Print, Paper, Ink | Feb 15 | “Introduction” from Paper Knowledges by Lisa Gitelman “Parchment and Paper” from Empire and Communications by Harold Innis | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
Clocks, Calendars, Towers | Feb 20 | "Calendar, Clock, Tower." in Deus in Machina: Religion and Technology in Historical Perspective by John Durham Peters “Railroad Space and Railroad Time” from The Railway Journey by Wolfgang Schivelbusch | |
Books | Feb 22 | “Introduction” from The Textual Condition by Jerome McGann “Reading Childishly?: A Codicology of the Modern Self” from Comparative Textual Media by Patricia Crain | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
Painting | Feb 27 | Watch Ways of Seeing, Parts one, two, three, and four by John Berger | |
Photography | March 1 | Camera lucida: Reflections on photography, Part 1 by Roland Barthes | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
Journalism/Mass Media | March 6 | Watch: Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky And The Media “Encoding/Decoding” by Stuart Hall | |
Cinema | March 8 | “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality” by Maya Deren “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by Laura Mulvey (you can watch this for additional help: Introduction to Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema") | Mid Term Paper due March 10 11:59 PM |
Spring Break | March 13 | ||
Spring Break | March 15 | ||
Digital Mediation | March 20 | Chapter 1, “What is New Media?”from The Language of New Media Lev Manovich "Free labor: Producing Culture for The Digital Economy" by Tiziana Terranova Watch:WE UNDID YOUTUBE'S ALGORITHM We Followed YouTube's Recommendation Algorithm Down The Rabbit Hole | |
Video Games & Media Worlds | March 22 | “Gamic Action: Four Moments” from Gaming by Alexander Galloway Watch: Life 2.0 | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
Capitalism & Media + Technology | March 27 | “Big Other” by Shoshanna Zuboff “Platform Capitalism” from Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek | |
March 29 | “Commercial Content Moderation” by Sarah Roberts “Labor” in Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) | |
April 3 | “Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject” by Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias “Introduction” from Protocol by Alexander Galloway | ||
Feminist & Queer Media + Technology | April 5 | “Cyborg Manifesto” by Donna Haraway | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
April 10 | “Introduction” from Information Activism by Cait Mckinney “A Trans Historiography of Glitches and Errors” by Whit Pow | ||
April 12 | “Introduction” and “The Power Chapter” from Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein | ||
Race & Media + Technology | April 17 | "Race and/as Technology, or How to do Things to Race” by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun “Branding Blackness” from Dark Matters by Simone Browne | |
April 19 | “Introduction” and “Default Discrimination” from Race after Technology by Ruha Benjamin
| Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) | |
April 24 | “Indigenous circuits: Navajo women and the racialization of early electronic manufacture” by Lisa Nakamura “Network Thinking” from Network Sovereignty by Marisa Duarte | ||
Environments, Elements & Media + Technology | April 26 | “In Media Res” and “Understanding Media” from The Marvelous Clouds by John Durham Peters | Response Paper due Friday 11:59 midnight (optional) |
May 1 | “Introduction” from Wild Blue Media by Melody Jue “Introduction” from Program Earth by Jennifer Gabrys | ||
May 3 | “Of Mud, Media, and the Metropolis” by Shannon Mattern “Fixed Flow: Undersea Cables as Media Infrastructure” from Signal Traffic by Nicole Starosielski | ||
Futures | May 8 | “Introduction” and “Conclusion” from Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock | Final Projects due May 12 by 5 PM |