Comm 297G: Media, Governance, Power

As communication technologies and the media have become an increasingly central part of our everyday lives across almost all aspects of our lives, it becomes crucial to understand broader questions about the design, use and accountability of increasingly global communication technologies and transnational media systems. This course introduces students to the basics of political economic and critical historical approaches to the study of communication. We will approach the central questions of “Who controls communication?” in historical perspective—from the 19th century and the height of the Western Colonial Empire to the current era of globalization. This course is designed to introduce you to a set of theories about communication technologies and mass media, by considering the changing relationship between the state—the nation state, suprastate institutional actors as well as local authorities—and the market, across different societies. We will examine the history and future of “global communication” from underwater cables and the telegraph, to radio and television and finally the Internet “revolution” and the spread of mobile media. We will rely on scholarly articles and books as well as journalistic writing, fiction and documentary film to provide background, context and a range of opinions on relevant topics. In order to do well in this course, you will be expected to BOTH attend class regularly and keep up with readings.

Comm 791C: Modernity and Inequalities

This seminar explores the lived experience of plural modernities in the context of growing global inequalities. In topical debates about the impact of globalization it is accepted both by advocates and critics of neoliberalism that growing spatial, material and existential disparities are transforming the political horizons of democracy and development. The intensification of inequalities between rural and urban areas, between migrants and citizens, formal and informal workers are compounded by differences in race, caste, ethnicity and gender. At the same time, ethnographic researchers have emphasized the need to pay attention to cultural difference in studying the varied experiences of development, modernization, and struggles over citizenship and social transformation. This seminar will cover a number of interdisciplinary perspectives on new inequalities as well as a range of empirical ethnographic studies set in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In addition to weekly readings, students will be expected to write a substantive literature review OR an original research paper related to the materials covered in class. The class is open to graduate students in communication as well as graduate students in other fields with strong interests in an ethnographic approach to development, international political economy and postcolonial theory.