In this course we will examine how media and communication technologies both drive and depict the complex set of processes known as globalization. We will explore case studies from sixteenth century maps to twenty-first century supply chains, as well as Huallywood, Hollywood, Bollywood, and Nollywood films. In the process, we will grapple with major questions and tensions that have defined the modern era. Why have human societies become more closely connected over the past few centuries than at any prior time in human history? How has this interdependence changed the ways that we understand ourselves and one another? What new visions and freedoms has it created? Why has it made us more unequal than ever before?

By the end of the semester, students will have gained skills necessary for analyzing media that are produced and consumed across national and linguistic borders. You will have earned familiarity with a number of key analytical and historical categories that will prepare you for advanced coursework in the humanities and social sciences. And you will have applied and developed course concepts and skills through both creative and critical projects.

Above all, you will have learned new ways of thinking. Today, when the words on this page can reach you after traveling, as data packets, through undersea cables or outer space satellites, all media are global. At the same time, increasingly ubiquitous networked computation has turned almost everything on earth into a medium of data. Throughout this course, we will seek to unsettle what we think we know about who, and where, we are–gaining insights into how our lives connect to others, past and present, near and far.