From TV to Tumblr, media plays a big part in our understanding of who we are. It’s a source of knowledge, a powerful influence, and a means of expression. In this course, we’ll look at how media shapes cultural perceptions of intersecting identity categories: gender, race and ethnicity, disability, class, and more. We’ll focus especially on the ways that activists, artists, fans, and everyday people have created their own media to challenge or reinterpret media constructions of their identities and to explore the complex and contradictory meanings of “identity” itself. As part of the class, you’ll practice creating and remixing media to reflect on your own relationship to culture and identity, and you will develop a proposal for a capstone project that may incorporate some of what we discuss in class.
Required text:
Anne Balsamo, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
(We will not read this text in its entirety, but Balsamo’s work embodies the goals of DCC, so you may find it useful to read beyond the selections assigned for class.)