/ Fall 24-25 /
Syllabus
Syllabus Adjusted (September War)
Course Sheet
Course Description
Race and media have developed along closely interlinked paths. From white Shirleys dominating the development of film photography to drone operators ending lives from thousands of kilometres away, the intersections of media and race have, and continue to shape how we understand the world today. What is an alien? Who declares someone to be an “illegal?” How do societies, races, and/or ethnicities come to see themselves as a collective? Why is a foreign other always demonised in the process? What is the role of media in reproducing, and breaking, how we see race? What has been the role of race in constructing the various mediums we use today? These are some of the questions we will begin to answer in this course.
We will examine a wide-range of media, from newspapers to ID cards, films, scientific photography, documentaries, telecom towers, memorials, sci-fi ideations, border walls, and migratory paths as we delineate the symbiotic relationships between race and media across the world. By the end of the course, you will be able to actively think through the entangled webs of race and media, and discuss their role in fulfilling/obstructing visions of justice across the world.