From popular culture and social media to the workplace, contemporary human life across most of the globe is media saturated. In this class we examine media production and circulation as cultural practices, comparing media formats in different contexts and locations. We analyze the role of media in identity formation, understandings of the self, national formation, constructing race and ethnicity, circulating information, fomenting social change, and meditating human romantic relationships. Over the semester, students not only read, talk, and write about media, they also actively engage different media in several short research projects.
