Media and the Humanitarian Impulse

Catalog description

From the power of the ‘Like’ button and hashtag-activism to the media frenzy surrounding a celebrity visit to help out in a disaster-struck country, this class engages with histories of humanitarianism, their antecedents within empire-making, and the shifting ways in which technology and digital cultures have often helped, sometimes hindered, and regularly complicated humanitarian efforts and modes of communication. Guiding questions include, but are not limited to: what motivates the humanitarian impulse—understood as an individual’s need to advocate, act, or raise awareness about a particular issue or crisis? How has humanitarianism shifted over time, especially in response to de/colonization, capitalism, commodification, and shifting geopolitics and global governance regimes? How have humanitarian issues and crises historically been publicized through the media, whether at the level of the individual, non-profit organization, nation-state, or intergovernmental organization? What effects—if any—do digital culture enacted as activism have on existing humanitarian dilemmas? While this course emerges from critical theoretical and historical foundations within media studies and visual culture, cultural studies, political science, and studies of capitalism, colonialism, and independence, it also relies upon participatory culture, meaning students will engage with and critically reflect upon social media. Possible readings by Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Jonathan Crary, Michael Barnett, Barbie Zelizer, Aimé Césaire, Lilie Chouliaraki, Susie Linfield, and Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser, among others.