James Hay

SpCom 438

"Theories of Screen Media"

Wednesday 2-5

This seminar is an advanced introduction to theories about screen media.  The course concentrates mostly on "new media" (personal and organizational computing and telecommunication systems that rely upon screens) and the major screen media of the twentieth century--television and cinema.  We will devote some attention at the beginning of the semester, however, to theoretical writing about early Modern observational devices (e.g., ones coming after the camera obscura), and throughout the semester we will consider theoretical writing about other objects, such as fenestration in architectural and vehicular design, virtual environments, observational technologies (remote sensing, microscopy, telescopy), and technological oddities--ones with brief and limited uses.  The course's historical breadth offers a useful way of thinking about the relation of theory and media to different contexts, and about how explanations of "media" have developed out of or against earlier kinds of reasoning.  While I have chosen the designation "screen media" in order to discuss theories about a broad range of technologies and contexts, the course is only partly interested in the screen as a defining feature of the technologies to be considered and is only partly interested in writing that has emphasized technologies' capacities for visual representation.  This is a seminar that considers the relation of technology and knowledge to particular disciplines and institutional rationalities and that emphasizes the importance of developing cross-disciplinary perspectives about media and technology.