Spring

The ideal of the amateur author has repeatedly been invoked in different moments and for different purposes throughout the history of modern China. Non-professional writers have often been considered more “authentic”— their perceptions less hindered by conventions and more sensitive to the details of everyday life. In the socialist world, amateur writing and art was one of the strategies to contrast the division between mental and manual labor. And today, we assist to a veritable explosion made possible by digital media which fully reveals the inherent contradictions of amateur creativity. Seen by many as a means to escape oppressive labor regimes, it ends up being the most commodified form of labor of our times. This class will proceed through a series of case studies to understand the valorization of amateurism in modern Chinese culture in historical and comparative perspective. Special attention will be paid to the media environments that make it possible, and to the ways amateur writing and art depict labor. Our overall goal, in sum, will be to familiarize ourselves with some of the ways in which the relation between creativity, amateurism, and labor has been represented and theorized.

This seminar will draw on media technology studies, game studies, and feminist science studies to think about care as an operative theoretical concept that can help reframe our understandings of contemporary technology. We will be concerned with media representations of caring technologies—technologies that give care and technologies we care for and about. We will also be concerned with how care itself is mediated by technology—on whose behalf do technologies care? What does technology care about? What does it mean to care in a technogenic world? Readings and assignments will draw on video games, animations, and films, but also treat technoscientific objects as media objects: machine learning algorithms, infrastructures, sensors and medical implants are designed and calibrated to mediate flows of information and material, producing ways of seeing, knowing, and relating. We will address three primary axes of technological care: (1) imaginaries of caring and being cared for by artificial intelligence, (2) the care and maintenance of techno-social infrastructures, and (3) technologies that mediate care-giving relationships.

Since the colonial era, Americans have obsessively created recreational themed spaces that manifested historical myths and memories in the built environment. This course considers the evolution, functions, and ethics of the American desire to visit the past as a form of leisure. Starting with early themed spaces such as world’s fairs, amusement parks, and cityscapes, we examine how scholars have read cultural phenomena for their radical contemporary significance. We then apply these tools to examine how Disneyland combined, redefined, and heightened its themed space antecedents and to what ends. We will learn how to decode Disneyland’s messages about race, gender, capitalism, and the American experience that are embedded within the park’s design, architecture, attractions, shows, sounds, and smells. How did such views of the past, present, and future speak to the social, political, and economic needs and wants of Cold War Americans, and why do they continue to resonate today? How should we understand themed spaces as a lens for U.S. history as experienced by contemporary Americans? By interrogating the themed space form, we will explore the nature of historical memory, the responsibilities of public history, and the ethics of constructing a recreational past. In doing so, we will learn how to take the seemingly frivolous matters of history seriously—and the dire stakes for doing so.

This course engages with the various techniques and practices associated with sound in Japanese culture, ranging from the 18th century through the contemporary era. The media covered will include literature, language reform movements, theater, cinema (both silent and sound), recorded music, radio broadcasting, manga, video games and anime. We will also read recent sound-oriented approaches to literary and cultural studies from scholars from both Japan and elsewhere. All readings will be in English.

This course introduces recent developments and advanced approaches in critical posthumanist thought. We will explore emerging theories and practices that renegotiate the human condition through critical inquiry into posthuman desires and the complicated relationship between human and non-human ‘others,’ including animals, plants and micro-organisms, waste and toxins, artificial life, and hyperobjects. By engaging diverse viewpoints that map the stakes of a non-anthropocentric politics of culture, such as new materialism, object-oriented ontology, and speculative realism, but also eco-feminism, queer performativity, and Indigenous epistemology, we will explore emerging techniques of mediation, communication, and representation that surrender to the relational identities of a posthuman becoming. A central premise of this exploration are post-disciplinary ways of knowing that make such imaginaries visible: in addition to discussing a substantial body of contemporary scholarship from the arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences, the course includes a studio module that introduces a variety of research-creation methodologies for experimentation with curatorial, artistic, and activist practices.

This course approaches video games as cultural and political artifacts that can be studied to shed light on global political events and processes. Questions we will explore throughout the course include: How do we understand the relationship between video games and global capitalism? What can video games tell us about large-scale processes such as climate change, migration, war…? How do we understand issues of representation in gaming? What do video games have to do with international relations? We will approach video games from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, analyzing them as a form of entertainment but also as forms of art, as political objects, as reflections of social dynamics, and as channels for social critique and change. The course does not require any previous gaming knowledge nor experience, and it welcomes gamers and non-gamers interested in exploring the relationship between games and global politics.

Saddle up and ride into the untamed territories of human-AI co-creation. Much like how horses have been our trusty companions in transportation and labor, AI has become a powerful tool for us to navigate the computational era. This course presents a studio environment for performative and avant guarde approaches to experimenting with the newest interfaces and advancements in generative AI, like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion, while examining predecessors like chatbots and early forms of automation. Technology is not simply an external tool that we use, it shapes our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Giddy up, as we playfully experiment with the creative, quirky, and unquantifiable human elements in AI–making media art projects as AI, for AI, and with AI. A diversity of artistic and technical backgrounds are welcome.

This media historical course examines the loop as a narrative and non-narrative form throughout the the 20th and early 21st centuries, with examples drawn from science fiction literature, cinema, animation, electronic music, video art, and video games. Part of the course’s focus will be technological, examining the development and impact of walk cycles in cel animation, magnetic tape in analog music and analog video, and go to statements in computer programming. Another part will be sociological, examining the reverberations Einsteinian relativity in physics, Taylorist scientific management in labor, and behaviorism in psychology had within media development, industry practices, and/or the popular imagination. Taken together, the class will be a thorough investigation both into the aesthetic possibilities of the loop, and into the cultural, technological, psychological, and economic reasons it appears as a form in media construction again, and again, and again, and again, and again,

This course introduces students to the theories and processes underlying game design through the creation of analog projects. We will be designing for forms that include board games, tabletop games, and live-action games. No prior design experience is absolutely required though some background with game studies will enable more innovative work. This course will be project-based and collaborative in nature.