East Asian Screen/Bodies

Catalog description

How have screen media interacted with bodies in East Asia? This graduate seminar hopes to use the “/” symbol to bring to light different ways screens have recorded, archived, addressed, and transformed both human and non-human bodies in East Asia. A central narrative thread of the course is the archeology of screen-based media. We will connect the contemporary proliferations of screens of various sizes, shapes, and properties to the television screen, the collective screen of cinema, and the traditional furniture screen. Course readings will be interdisciplinary, bringing into dialogues inquiries and methodologies found in art history, cinema and media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and performance studies. Another focus of the course is reflecting on and developing strategies for grounding broad, theoretical frameworks in the specific geopolitical space of East Asia. Any given screen situation will be examined in relation to both the nation state and transnational forces, as the intersection between the technological, the material, the cultural, and the historical.