English 284 - Coming to Terms: Media

Spring
2020
01
4.00
Pooja Rangan
TTH 10:00AM-11:20AM
Amherst College
ENGL-284-01-1920S
CONV 207
prangan@amherst.edu
ENGL-284-01,FAMS-216-01

(Offered as ENGL 284 and FAMS 216) Media are not just audiovisual texts but also technological infrastructures, economic enterprises, ideological apparatuses, and artistic practices. This course provides an introduction to the analysis of modern media forms through a consideration of significant critical and analytical terms, together with a selection of media texts (ranging across print, photography, cinema, television, and digital media) for illustration and discussion. The key terms for discussion will reflect the complexity of how we define “media.” Topics may include: mass reproduction, authenticity and aura; print, time, and national consciousness; advertising, glamor, and myth; photography, indifference, and atrocity; cinema, race, gender, and spectatorship; television, liveness, and celebrity; digital media, buffering, and virality. Classes will combine lecture and conversation, and assignments will include several short critical essays and a midterm and final exam.

Limited to 35 students. Spring semester. Professor Rangan.

https://www.amherst.edu/course_scheduler
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.