Anthropology of Media

How do communications media reshape ourselves and the worlds we inhabit? This course examines the influence of media on contemporary society. It focuses on identity formation and the different ways that scholars have approached the relationship between media and our taken-for-granted norms, practices, and beliefs. Readings draw from a wide range of disciplines and intellectual traditions, including cultural studies, critical media theory, critical race studies, feminist studies and communication. However, the fundamental approach is anthropological. Our aim is to understand how everyday media practices relate to larger issues of personal, social and cultural identity. To this end, the class moves back and forth between theory and ethnography so that students develop both a sense of key questions in the field and an idea about how to answer them.