Course details
Name: ENFL - 251
Title: SPECIAL TOPIC: MEDIA ACTIVISM
Section: 03
Semester: Spring - 2023
Credits: 3
Description:
This course trains students in the foundations of media activism in the U.S. across music, visual culture, and digital media, while providing elemental training in writing approaches to media studies. Moreover, this course challenges students to historicize contemporary problems in the politics of media and cultural activism as they have gained renewed focus in recent reconsiderations of the U.S.’s free speech tradition. In July 2020, a letter in Harper’s Magazine warned of a growing culture of censoriousness whose features included “a vogue for public shaming.” This diagnosis, signed by well- established public intellectuals, reflected what its authors saw as a new set of political commitments that weaken norms of open debate. Elsewhere, critics of this censoriousness have reductively summarized these debates – afforded largely by new exposure to media criticism through social media technologies – by the pejorative “cancel culture.” Speaking to these concerns with a more historically situated approach, this course asks vital questions about this so-called culture of censoriousness by turning back towards media histories where forms of cultural activism have been foundational to the articulation of new imaginations around race, gender, sexuality, and class. This course seeks to consider what roles media has played in political, social, and legislative movements. How have activists turned towards media production to make their goals legible to the public? Are all forms of media activism exactly in pursuit of equity and justice? What are the limits of media activism? In asking such questions, this course considers the intersections between social identities, politics, and media representation to move beyond contemporary anxieties in public discourse. From the rise of yellow journalism in the progressive era to suffragette cinema and television’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, students will be challenged to develop their critical fluencies in examining media representation and social problems both historically and contemporaneously.
Last updated on 2022-10-25 By
Lykidis Alexios (lykidisa)
Schedule: Monday From 2:30 pm To 5:15 pm
Graduation requirements:
- Genre Study (Film)
Teaching Faculty: Reinhard Michael (reinhardm)
Is course canceled: No