/ Spring 24-25 /
Syllabus
Course Outline
Course Description
What does it mean to study media historically? The answer lies in examining media not just as a series of technological developments but also as the practices, networks, and communities that form around them. This class will introduce students to the field and to the practice of media history. While the study of the media often focuses on the new and the innovative—from now until the future—this course is an opportunity to dig into the past to consider how media have shaped societies and how societies have, in turn, determined what media are and what they’re allowed to do. We will ask how, at various historical moments, different media have arranged or facilitated communication, imagination, and conceptions of identity and belonging. Such a question requires that we contextualize media as structures that grow out of specific technological, economic, cultural, and political circumstances. Looking at case studies spanning from China to the Middle East to North America, we will attempt to construct a global history of media, attending to the particularities of the individual contexts we study. Our aim as media historians will be to look for larger patterns to determine how and why certain media formed the way they did. Ultimately, this course will seek to convince you that media are always a thing of the past.