缅北强奸

鈥淐ommunication is not anything like a transportation of experiences, such as opinions and wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another.鈥�
- Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927)

Communication is fraught. To be fraught is to carry threat or promise. The word derives from the Middle English verb fraught, for 鈥榯o load with cargo鈥� which, in turn, derives from the Middle Dutch vrecht, for freight. Communication carries freight: a threat and a promise, a problem and a solution. This course will examine the problem/solution of communication as it has been treated in the tradition of western social and political thought, and also in challenges to this tradition. We will try to unpack the freight with which communication has been loaded, by close reading and discussion of selected primary texts.

Course requirements:
Seminar participation - 20%
Seminar presentation - 20%
Short papers (x6) - 60%

This course introduces incoming AHCS graduate students to the field of communication studies and to the expectations and requirements of the MA and PhD programs in communication studies at 缅北强奸. The course involves a review of selected materials in the field of communication studies grounded in interdisciplinary, critical, anti-oppression, and/or interpretive perspectives. Students are expected to prepare for each seminar by completing the assigned readings and related activities, actively taking part in seminar discussions and events in the department, and completing a series of writing assignments. Attendance is mandatory. The course will be augmented by specialized seminars given by the departmental faculty in their respective fields.

Instructor鈥檚 approval required.

Course description coming soon.

Objectives:
This course introduces a number of theoretical approaches to the study of nonwestern histories, cultures, institutions, etc. There are two primary objectives: to prepare students to read and analyze contemporary scholarly theory and practice; and to examine the goals and histories of various disciplines in constructing their object of study. The aim is not merely to present some of the critical impasses of various disciplinary approaches, but more importantly to discuss alternatives.

Methodology: We will discuss the reading or readings indicated in the schedule on that date, with an emphasis on analyzing these texts in terms of their aims/hypotheses, assumptions/conclusions, and modes of analysis. Students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss the readings. The readings are organized around a certain problematic. At the end of each unit, a response on that unit will be due, as marked on the schedule. In general, the response will comprise five pages: one page of critical summary for each of four different readings from that unit (which will be announced), with a fifth page presenting a more general response. There will be, in total, four of these five-page responses. Students are encouraged to use the fifth page to relate the readings to a specific research project, such that, in the course the term, student can develop a critical perspective for that project. Students are welcome to write a short paper based on that project instead of the fourth response paper.

Evaluation:
20% - Participation
80% - 4 responses, 20%

The course takes as a point of departure the recent 鈥渆nvironmental turn鈥� in Media Studies. Coming on the heels of an interdisciplinary push to expand the scope of media beyond the canonical forms of mass media and social media, this turn towards the environment has prompted scholars to think about the atmosphere, climate, ambience, technical milieus, habitats, built environments, and other territorial enclosures in relation to technological media. The literal and metaphorical concerns over the environment is also growing among Area Studies scholars, who have developed so-called 鈥渕edia ecological鈥� approaches to the study of interlocking systems and convergences across social, economic, institutional, and infrastructural dimensions of media production, circulation, and consumption. The course builds on this current situation in Media Studies and Area Studies in order to broaden the notion of 鈥渆nvironment鈥� and map out key historical moments, methodological challenges, and theoretical issues that bridge these two fields.

Instead of interpreting the relationship between media and environment in the contemporary sense of environmental sustainability, energy consumption, and digital rubbish, this course therefore uses the framework of media environment to rethink the relation between media and milieu/environment in an expanded context. Our task is to think 鈥渕edia鈥� beyond canonical forms such as radio, cinema, television, and the Internet by exploring a wide range of material objects, technics, technology, and 鈥渃ultural techniques,鈥� and their socio-historical articulations with a given milieu. This expanded approach to media also allows us to revisit and raise questions about a wide range of topics such as the ubiquity of screens in urban space, the regulatory and disciplinary functions of media, or the continuing material impact of colonial telecommunication infrastructures in the present. Since the questions of the environment, milieu, and territory are inseparable from the legacies of imperialism and colonialism that are indispensable for the studies of Asia, we will also look at biological and anthropological conceptions of 鈥渁nimal,鈥� 鈥渉uman,鈥� 鈥渞ace,鈥� 鈥渟pecies,鈥� and 鈥済enus鈥� that appear alongside discourses on environments.

Questions to consider during this course are: How might we then use this environmental turn in media studies to rethink and revisit the histories of media, technics, and technology in and through East Asia? How might this expanded approach to media and environment resonate with, resist, or rewrite earlier methodological and theoretical concerns that bridge Area Studies and Media Studies?

Assignments and Evaluation听鈥�
1/Attendance - 10 %听
2/Participation & Weekly Response Papers - 20 %
3/ Midterm Synthesis Paper : due November 1 - 20
4/ Object Lesson: due November 6 - 10%
5/ Final Paper: due December 14 - 40 %

Special Topics in Media and Politics: 鈥淨ueer Theory and the Politics of Death鈥�
In this seminar, we will examine the various ways queer theory has addressed and complicated questions surrounding the politics and aesthetics of death. We will explore questions such as: How has queer sexuality been linked to psychoanalytic and philosophical conceptions of the 鈥渄eath drive鈥�? How and why have nonnormative or anti-normative sexualities interwoven understandings of eroticism with morbidity, self-annihilation, and violence? In what ways are non-normative genders and sexualities shaped by the regulation, management, and imagination of life and death? How is queer thinking about death troubled by the actual death of queer subjects, particularly those whose lives, under racist and colonial regimes, are always under threat? In addressing these questions, we will draw on interventions in queer theory that problematize death through an engagement with psychoanalytic and philosophical discourses, as well as with recent interventions in critical race theory, affect theory, and theories of temporality.

Course Seminar
Participation 20%
Requirements Seminar Facilitation 20%
Final Essay Proposal 20%
Final Essay 40%

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Comprehensive examination as per departmental procedure.

Dissertation proposal.

Reading programs supervised by a member of staff; topics will be chosen to suit individual interests.

This year鈥檚 iteration of the seminar on sound studies will focus primarily on recent work that deals with sound and power, and sound and technology. Sometimes these themes will be considered explicitly in relation to one another, sometimes they will be considered separately, though as will become clear, power and technology are always interrelated, it鈥檚 just a matter of perspective. What can theoretical advances from work on sound offer to the critique of power, especially in a moment of worldwide neo-fascist ferment? Conversely, how can new perspectives on power change the way we understand sound? What can scholarship on sound offer to the analysis of technology in a moment of great technological turnover, real connections between technological and social change, and a high concentration of tech industry bullshit? How does a critique of technology shape our understanding of changing sound media? Some weeks we will do whole books, some weeks we will do articles. Students will write weekly responses focused on improving their skills as academic writers in the humanities and interpretive social sciences; the final project will provide an opportunity to revise and expand one of these short papers.

Product (and % of semester grade):
I. Participation (20%, assessed cumulatively)
II. Weekly exercises (20%, due weekly)听
III. Portfolio and Extension (60%, due 23 April)听

Not available.

Not available.

Introduction: Over the last two decades, it might be argued, cities have emerged as the key context for thinking about media, culture and collective life. People now speak of 鈥渦rban cultural studies鈥� or of an 鈥渦rban humanities鈥� as interdisciplinary endeavours in which questions of media and culture are framed in terms of the key features of city life. This course deals with a variety of ways in which we might think about the relationship of cities to media. Cities 鈥渃ontain鈥� media, of course, but the relationship between the two goes beyond this. Cities are themselves media-like in the ways in which they process information, structure cultural expression and give material form to social history and social memory. At the same time, media -- as technological infrastructures, purveyors of sensory experience, instruments of governance and pretexts for sociability -- are essential components of urban life and experience. This course will examine a variety of relationships between cities, media and cultural expression.听

Marking and Assignments
Attendance and participation: 20%
Reading 鈥渉ighlights鈥� exercise: 20%
Team-Based Urban Site Analysis: 30%
Final Essay: 30%

Not available.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Preparatory work towards the Master's thesis.

Comprehensive examination as per departmental procedure.

Dissertation proposal.

Reading programs supervised by a member of staff; topics will be chosen to suit individual interests.