Syllabus
Course: Anthropology of Media
Instructor: Anand Pandian, assistant professor in the
Krieger School
Department of Anthropology
Course description: Life throughout much of the globe
today is saturated by various kinds of media: film,
television, newspapers, magazines, radio, cell phones, iPods,
advertisements, photos, graphics, Web sites, fantasy games,
medical illustrations, and so on. Anthropology of Media
examines the profound mediation of contemporary life from an
anthropological standpoint, focusing on the social worlds
fashioned and inhabited through the production, circulation,
and consumption of media artifacts.
Partial reading list:
"The Numbing of the American Mind: Culture as Anesthetic,"
Thomas de Zengotita, Harper's (2002)
"No Dead Air! The iPod and the Culture of Mobile Listening,"
Michael Bull, Leisure Studies (2005)
"Putting American Public Television Documentary in Its
Places," Barry Dornfeld, Media Worlds (2002)
"Objective Brains, Prejudicial Images," Joseph Dumit,
Science in Context (1999)
"Cool Phone: Nokia, Networks, and Identity," Gerald Goggin,
Cell Phone Culture: Mobile Technology in Everyday Life
(2006)
"None of This Is Real: Identity and Participation in
Friendster," Danah Boyd, Structures of Participation in
Digital Culture (2008)
Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores
the Virtually Human, Tom Boellstorff (2008)
—DK