Introducing Critical Theory II: Approaches and Methods in Media Studies

The two-semester lecture series aims at introducing students to major approaches, traditions and key figures, as well as critical methods, in the fields of cultural and media theory. The second part of the lecture series, "Approaches and Methods in Media Studies," will focus on media theory, visual and material culture, and methods of media analysis. The lecture will be concerned with media history and new media; aesthetics, memory and models of communication; questions of technology, materiality and embodiment; time and space; vision and visuality; mass media and society; networks and systems; hyperreality and cybernetics. We will also consider theories of single media: photography, the cinema, television, the computer and digital media.
Key thinkers are Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jean Baudrillard, Bill Brown, James Carey, Jonathan Crary, Mary Ann Doane, Richard Dyer, John Fiske, Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles, Harold Innis, Friedrich Kittler, Bruno Latour, Marshall McLuhan, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Laura Mulvey, John Durham Peters, Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, Linda Williams, and Raymond Williams.