Admission requirements
Only students who are admitted to the master’s programme Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology can take part in this course.
This course forms the basis of the MA specialisation Media and Material Culture.
Description / Course objectives
The course Media and Material Culture explores questions regarding the circulation of media, objects and technologies, the economic and political infrastructures and conditions thereof, their inflection within everyday lifeworlds, and the ideological understandings of diverse forms and processes that turn them into one thing in one place and something different in another. We are interested in the ways in which images, sounds, objects, and more abstract forms of circulation inform and shape forms of embodiment, sensory perception and experience, more broadly conceived. How do media form part and parcel of social movements and cultural and political practice, including that of today’s heritage politics? What role do new, allegedly democratizing media technologies play in providing access to some while excluding others? What kind of ‘worlds’ are conjured via commodity displays in such settings as museums, malls, internet sites, or city streets? Of interest, too, are the publics called forth by diverse mediations as well as the constraints—ideological, cultural, political, economic, financial, governmental, technological—that contour the possibilities and effects of such forms in particular places and times.
Timetable
Tuesday 4 October 2011, 10-13 h, room 1A21
Tuesday 11 October 2011, time and place t.b.a.
Tuesdays 18 and 25 October 2011, 10-13 h, room 1A15
Thursdays 6 – 20 October 2011, time and place t.b.a.
Thursday 27 October 2011, 10-13 h, room 1A22
Mode of instruction
Total 5 ECTS = 140 study hours (sbu):
Lectures (Tuesdays) 4 × 3 h / 12 hours (18 sbu)
Group discussions (Fridays) 1 × 3 hours (6 sbu) *
Study of literature
Museum visits (8 sbu) and museum assignment (28 sbu)
Assesment method
active student participation is expected,
weekly assignments (AQCIs) (3 total, of which one may be missed or a fail, no re-dos permitted),
two museum visits,
one museum assignment (2/3 pages),
Blackboard
Blackboard will be used to post the assignments and other course related information.
Reading list
will be announced later
Registration
Registration for the MA electives will be possble in September 2011 at the Secretariate of the Institute CA-DS (room 3A19, Pieter de la Court building) as well as on Blackboard.