Media 360: A Multidisciplinary Introduction to Media Studies

Explore how media from 3000 BCE to today impacts our lives From hieroglyphs to HTML, ancient poetry to audiotape, and Plato's cave to virtual reality, Media 360 offers you a multidisciplinary introduction to the most influential media formats of the last three millennia. You'll investigate diverse perspectives on how to think about media in relation to culture, history, technology, humanity, representation, identity, aesthetics, and politics. And you'll gain an understanding of the current situation of media by studying present-day cases related to surveillance, information and disinformation, data generation and data analysis. You'll also examine how media—from inscriptions, manuscripts, books, and newspapers to radio, music, film, and social networks—have defined the limits of the thinkable and even made certain ideas, objects, and practices conceivable. In addition to hearing from an array of guest speakers, you'll explore Cornell's rich holdings in media and material culture, including its reproductions of ancient sculptures and inscriptions, collections of historic keyboard instruments and early hip hop, and the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art.