Undergraduate Seminar (398-0-81)

Topic

Shame and Media

Instructors

Heather Jaber

Meeting Info

Northwestern Qatar Room 2-227: Mon, Wed 11:30AM - 12:45PM (AST)

Overview of class

How are shame and media inseparable? This course charts the relationship between shame and media to show how communication is tied to embodiment, exposure, and power. It gives students tools to understand shame as a mediated concept and media as inseparable from embodied logics of exposure. It traces histories of media technology's relationship to the establishment of a private and public as well as political, economic, and social logics of shame. By tracing these histories, the course complicates contemporary debates about issues like the rise of so-called "cancel culture," "call-out culture," and "trolling," giving students the tools to historicize and critically assess major social debates. The course theorizes shame as an index of power relations which depend on gender, race, class, and other matrices of identity and subjectivity. It takes a transnational and historical approach to shame and media, exploring case studies which contribute to more complex understandings of media and culture. By engaging with interdisciplinary literature the course offers a humanistic approach to communication. Students will examine concepts like emotion, exposure, embodiment, private, public, and scandal. They will apply these concepts across contexts to develop a critical understanding of communication's embodied dimension and its connection to power.

Registration Requirements

Prerequisites: None

Open for cross-registration

Open to sophomores and above

Satisfies Media and Politics Minor

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Registration is reserved for sophomore, juniors, and seniors only.