Courses :: CULS C701: Topic: Global and Transnational Media
This course is a survey of cultural approaches to screen and mobile media in their interface with global, local and national cultures and identities.
The production, circulation and reception of film, television and digital media have been widely implicated in processes and debates on the global, local or national dynamics of culture. Look through any popular or academic journal and we will encounter an overwhelming range of explanations for how (trans)national media cultures are produced, to what effects they circulate, and the means through which local identities are (or are not) produced in relation to them. If we are intent on not simply accepting but rather interrogating the “global,” “local” or “national” contours of film and media culture, by what models do we do so? To what disciplines and lines of inquiry might we look in order to unpack their implications and effects?
The survey provided by this course will help us to understand the terrain and fault lines of this widening field such that we can emplace our own critical or active work within it. In so doing, we will address such questions as: What are the cultural implications of global, local or national media? Are they constructed through relations of domination or negotiation? How do we begin to understand the ways in which their impacts might shift in relation to particular producers, consumers and audiences, locations, mediums or identities? How can we explain their dynamics in relation to specific moments or networks of interchange?
We will thus address debates surrounding cultural globalization as they have been linked to film, television and digital media. Topics will include: (trans)national cinemas, Third cinema, global Hollywood, the culture industries, global/local media flows, television formats, diasporic audiences, mediated relations of gender and sexuality, satellite footprints, global ideals and “new” technologies, co-productions, alternative or resistant media venues, virtualities.
The syllabus will include readings by such prominent theorists as: Anderson, Higson, Armes, Morley, Robbins, Curtin, Miller, Ang, Ong, Gillespie, Hall, Parks, Appadurai, Mankekar, Abu-Lugod, Havens, Shu, Naficy, Tinic, Ginsberg, Iwabuchi, Ito, Baudrillard, Verilio.
Class will be held in seminar format. Participants will engage in the following, in the interest of encouraging a professionalized entry into the field: • lead discussion of seminar readings • write two short essays reflecting upon readings from the seminar • present to the class an overview of one academic journal of interest to you (Public Culture, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Screen, etc.) and what it offers for the study of global and (trans)national film or media • produce a final project of (your choice): a literature review based paper (its line of inquiry to be based in your own research project), a conference paper or book review (the latter to be submitted to one of the journals presented in the seminar).
