Undergraduate Course Descriptions

How does the environment factor into the production, design, and use of media technologies and infrastructures? How does media shape the way we think about the natural environment? How do we make our media sustainable in an era of climate change? This interdisciplinary course explores the relationship between humans, media technologies, and the environment. Students will learn how the more-than-human world shapes communication technologies, from beacon fires and carrier pigeons to telegraph cables, radio, fiber optics, and satellites. We will begin the course by highlighting the role of media infrastructures in today’s global ecological crisis. We will then trace our steps backward, from the endpoint of e-waste, through the applications and impacts of media on and in the environment, to the elements and minerals that are the foundation of media technologies. Classes will combine short lectures, student-led discussions of the readings, local field trips, and demonstrations of multimodal scholarship, critical art practice, and activism that interrogate the concerns of each week’s theme. These alternative ways of thinking, organizing, and doing will enable students to consider the role of media in the Anthropocene, the current geological epoch defined by human impact.