Student Originated Studies: Media/Philosophy

Description

This SOS is designed to support creative and theoretical projects that can only arise at juncture of these distinct but related modes of academic and creative labor.  We invite students, including transfers, who have significant academic experience in media production and studies and/or critical theory and philosophy, and who are committed to exploring the boundaries of these modes of inquiry. 

Our experiments will be anchored by a central line of inquiry around the relationship between objects, images, figures, and perception on the one hand and judgment, reflection, valuation, critique and synthesis on the other.  This means that the entire program will screen films and read texts together.  One shared text, for example, will be Mary Ann Doane's The Emergence of Cinematic Time , which argues that the cinema participated in representing the singular instant of chance and ephemerality in the face of the increasing rationalization and standardization at the turn of the 19 ^th Century.  Media and philosophy students alike will need to develop an understanding of what it means to think historically and concretely about both thought and its objects.

Students will research and design individual projects in the first quarter, while focusing on honing a set of shared skills, exploring overlapping areas of student interest, and learning about developing models of creative/critical collaboration. Students will work in depth with one faculty member, depending on their academic focus (media production, critical theory, or philosophy), but seminars, workshops, lectures, and critiques will provide time for work outside these concentrations. The second quarter of the program will provide space for implementing individual projects and will culminate in a public conference.

Media Track: This part of the program is designed for students who have already developed some expertise in media production, are familiar with aspects of media theory, and wish to do advanced production work that may have developed out of previous academic projects and/or programs. We will focus on experimental and non-fiction forms, which require a period of germination for new ideas to emerge. Students will deepend their understanding of media history and theory through readings, seminars, and writing; they will expand their technical skills through workshops; and they will present their own research to the entire program. In addition, each student or team of students (for collaborative projects) will do extensive pre-production planning and research in the first quarter for a media project to be completed by the end of the second quarter in time for public screening.

Philosophy Track: This part of the program is for students who have some substantial background in philosophy and/or critical theory. Ideally, students in this track will arrive with a specific set of categories that they find both intriguing and perplexingly abstract, and terms and questions that seem to invite extra-philosophical attempts to render them concrete. Students are free (and are in fact, required) to choose their own topics, but Kathleen Eamon's central areas of research and inquiry include aesthetics, social and political philosophy, and critical theory; a list of figures of interest includes Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and the Frankfurt School theorists.  Students in this section will read texts, participate in and lead seminars, share and critique writing throughout the program, and develop a presentation and conference paper for the end of the second quarter.