Materialities and Media

How does materiality matter to our understanding of media, new and old? While several distinct mediums (photography, film, digital media) have been charged with “dematerializing” the physical world, so too have they been celebrated for granting us unanticipated access to it. And by now the “materiality of media” has become a familiar phrase, however unevenly deployed. We ourselves will focus, during the first half of this course, on distinct apprehensions of materialism (from Aristotle to Marx to Karen Barad and Giuliana Bruno); thereafter, we will engage artistic practices (print, filmic, musical, digital) to sharpen the way we might talk about the material dimensions of our media environment. We will spend some time in Special Collections and in the Smart Museum.

This course counts as a PhD Seminar for graduate students in the English Department. For permission to register for the course, please contact the instructor.

CCCT 65008 | ENGL 65008