Amahl Bishara 

25910/35910. Media and Popular Culture of the Middle East. What can we learn about the Middle East by examining practices of mediation and popular culture? We will begin this course with a brief look at the politics of U.S. media on the Middle East, and then turn to an examination of various ethnographies of Middle East media that elucidate key issues of identity, selfhood, and social organization. How do practices of media production, circulation, and consumption constitute fields of the nation, tradition, and religion in the Middle East? To what extent do media like television, music, or graffiti strengthen or contest concepts of national identity, local attachments to place, or regional solidarity? How do media like fine art or journalism help people of the Middle East imagine their places in the world? We will also analyze how smaller media can both play a role in political change and be a vehicle for self re-imagining. Students will analyze how anthropologists have studied media, view/hear key media texts, and engage in a participatory project on Middle Eastern media.

42910. Anthropology of Media. Media are profoundly transforming the ways in which people perceive and interact with their surroundings. This course introduces students to anthropological approaches to the study of the production, circulation, and reception of media, tacking between theoretical approaches and ethnographic studies with an eye towards the tricky issue of identifying methods through which to study media practices. Anthropological approaches to media have considered their effects on the transformation of space-time relations, the shaping of political identities, and the constitution of complex (social, political, economic, institutional, and/or creative) connections among people and groups. Anthropologists have analyzed the possibilities and limitations offered by media such as the voice, photography, television, radio, cassette tapes, videotapes, newspapers, advertising, and the Internet as they are mobilized in distinct settings. Focusing on research on materiality & place, the state & globalization, and religion & selfhood, we will analyze the co-determinate relationships among institutional structures, technological developments, and social and political contexts of diverse kinds of media practice.

42915. Media & Materiality