What is media studies? What’s at stake in our ways of reading and engaging media? This seminar will introduce approaches to studying media, pairing theoretical texts with films, videos, and other media objects. Each week we will take up a theme within media studies– attention and ways of looking, the culture industry, simulacra & spectacle, reception theory, the materiality of media, circulation & new media, archives & memory, art & the internet, media infrastructures, AI, and counter-media practices. Throughout the course, we will experiment with collaborative methods of watching, reading, and critically attending to the media around us.
