Synopses & Reviews
Communications, philosophy, film and video, digital culture: media studies straddles an astounding array of fields and disciplines and produces a vocabulary that is in equal parts rigorous and intuitive.
Critical Terms for Media Studies defines, and at times, redefines, what this new and hybrid area aims to do, illuminating the key concepts behind its liveliest debates and most dynamic topics.
Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this exciting collection of essays explores our most critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. Edited by two outstanding scholars in the field, W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, the volume features works by a team of distinguished contributors. These essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, are organized into three interrelated groups: and#8220;Aestheticsand#8221; engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, and#8220;Technologyand#8221; offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and and#8220;Societyand#8221; opens up language describing the systems that allow a medium to function.
A compelling reference work for the twenty-first century and the media that form our experience within it, Critical Terms for Media Studies will engage and deepen any readerand#8217;s knowledge of one of our most important new fields.
About the Author
W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of nine books published by the University of Chicago Press, including What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Mark B. N. and#160;Hansen is professor of literature and arts of the moving image at Duke University. He is the author of New Philosophy for New Media, among other titles.
Table of Contents
Introduction W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen
Aesthetics
1. Art Johanna Drucker
2. Body Bernadette Wegenstein
3. Image W. J. T. Mitchell
4. Materiality Bill Brown
5. Memory Bernard Stiegler, with an introduction by Mark B. N. Hansen
6. Senses Caroline Jones
7. Time and Space W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen
Technology
8. Biomedia Eugene Thacker
9. Communication Bruce Clarke
10. Cybernetics N. Katherine Hayles
11. Information Bruce Clarke
12. New Media Mark B. N. Hansen
13. Hardware/Software/Wetware Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
14. Technology John Johnston
Society
15. Exchange David Graeber
16. Language Cary Wolfe
17. Law Peter Goodrich
18. Mass Media John Durham Peters
19. Networks Alexander R. Galloway
20. Systems David Wellbery
21. Writing Lydia H. Liu
Contributors
Index