Courses - Summer 2021

From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, "Thinking Media" offers a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. Featuring an array of guests from across Cornell, including faculty from Communication, Comparative Literature, English, German Studies, Information Science, Music, and Performing & Media Arts, the course will present diverse perspectives on how to think with, against, and about media in relation to the public sphere and private life, archaeology and science fiction, ethics and aesthetics, identity and difference, labor and play, knowledge and power, expression and surveillance, and the generation and analysis of data.

This course examines the video essay and its corresponding or emerging forms in videographic criticism, the essay film, and written essays, including personal narrative, creative nonfiction, and hybrid texts. Students explore source material and develop media competencies that encompass video, sound, image and text in order to critically analyze content that explores dimensions of culture. In addition, students collaborate on lo-fi and more developed video projects that explore the formal dimensions of narrative and criticism. While maintaining a focus on the video essay as a form of critique, students address broader concerns about how video essays reflect their role as producers and consumers of media forms.