This course is designed to introduce students to frameworks and methods for thinking critically about our screen- and data-saturated environments. Starting with the premise that studying these environments involves both reading about and working with media and data, the course consists of lectures, group discussion of assigned texts, and a weekly “collaboratory” where students will engage in hands-on activities to learn the basics of data analysis through the programming language Python. By the end of the course, students will have learned various methods and approaches for studying media, data, and culture, including: critical textual analysis of visual culture; the history and ethics of surveillance and data collection; and exploratory data analysis of social media/Twitter discourse. As we explore these approaches to the study of media, technology, and culture, we will consider the stakes of such inquiry from the standpoint of justice and equity.

How is race organized, constructed, experienced, and represented? This course examines the idea of race as a structuring element of the human world, mediated by various, overlapping institutions and ideologies. This semester, we will focus on the mediation of race through politics, policies, and policing; representation in news and popular media; cultural production, performance, and practice; and, finally, through the design of data and technology.

How do we experience and represent space? How do we locate ourselves and others in space? How do people, through their practices and their being in the world, form relationships with the locales they occupy? How do they attach meanings to spaces to create places? How do we order and control spaces and places?

In this course, students will analyze the history and theoretical discourse of media and technology, connecting these studies to contemporary trends and assessing their cultural impact. Discussion, reading, research, and writing constitute the body of the course.