Literary Dimensions & Visual Culture Program Seminar

Part of a larger project about the function of the media concept in the American culture industries, this talk examines the origins of Media Studies in the American Academy in the 1970s and 80s—and its incorporation of Cultural, Communications, Film and Literary studies at the turn of the millennium. It argues, ultimately, that "media" has replaced "text" as the governing metaphor for what it is that humanists study. But where "texts" circulated as objects of study with internal philosophical coherence, media's coherence forms instead around its institutional flexibility—its responsiveness to various "crises of the humanities."

This talk is supported by the Literary Dimensions Seminar Series and the Caltech Visual Culture Program Series.