The Modern Culture and Media concentration combines the study of contemporary theories of representation and cultural production with the analysis of diverse texts – visual and verbal, literary and historical, archival and imaginative – in the period broadly designated as “modern” (18th to 21st centuries). Since the appearance of modern means of textual production and reproduction (print, film, video, sound recording, digital practices, etc.), traditional artistic and literary forms have changed significantly and new forms have been developed. MCM pursues teaching and research premised on the centrality of these changes to the analysis of modern culture. We may study the modern media or on the canonical texts of the humanities, but we examine all texts as elements in cultural systems that influence and organize textual production and reception at any moment in history. Our work always aims at better understanding ourselves as participants in and products of an international, mass-mediated culture.
Track I
Track I concentrators may choose to study a particular historical moment, a medium, or a mode of textual production, in combination with theoretical studies that examine the categories of cultural analysis: for example, the distinction between high and low culture. Possible focus areas include but are not limited to film, post-coloniality, the novel, and theories of ideology. Productive work in some modern medium or textual mode is encouraged for all concentrators. MCM’s approach to production recognizes the inextricable link between theory and practice, and the possibility of a fruitful complicity between them. Production, in the sense defined here, is a theoretically informed sphere or practice, one within which acknowledged forms of cultural creation are tested and extended in close complementarity with the analyses conducted elsewhere in MCM.
Track I consists of 11 MCM courses. Courses from other departments may count toward the fulfillment of a focus area, but they cannot substitute for the 11 required MCM courses.
Track I Concentration Requirements:
Other Requirements:
Honors: Students who qualify for Honors in Track I are eligible to apply to do an Honors project or thesis. Applications will be screened by the MCM Honors Committee. (Application forms should be obtained by prospective honors students in their 7th semester. They are available in the MCM office.) If approved, a student must then register for MCM1980, a one-credit thesis course in which they complete their Honors project.
Track II
Track II concentration combines production courses with the critical study of the cultural role of practice. It aims to engage students in the analysis of theories of production elaborated within philosophical, artistic, and technological traditions, while encouraging them to produce works that interrogate these traditions.
An MCM Track II concentration consists of 11 courses distributed as follows: two core courses, two additional courses below the 1000-level, three 1000-level courses, four production courses, and one senior seminar. Students are expected to meet regularly with their concentration advisors; they are required to meet at the beginning of their seventh semester to review their concentrations.
Track II Concentration Requirements:
Honors: Honors in Track II entails one additional course, generally an independent study (MCM1980 Honors Thesis Project). Enrollment in this course is approved upon acceptance of an Honors Proposal. Application forms must be submitted by prospective Honors students in the beginning of their seventh semester and are available in the MCM office. The course is taken in the student’s final semester. An Honors degree reflects not only the completion of the thesis course and project, but generally distinguished performance in the concentration.
Page last updated in February, 2009.