124261 KO Critical Media Analysis (2020S)

Since at least the Renaissance, the "human" has been the organising concept of cultural, philosophical, scientific, political, economic, historical, literary and critical debates. However, in recent years, significant theoretical movements in nonhuman studies, (animal studies, ecocriticsm, ecofeminism, posthumanism, cyborg theory) have challenged the correctness and ethics of studying culture exclusively through 'the human’. By focusing rather on media representations of animals, landscapes, machines, networks, cyborgs, and AI in diverse historical contexts and cultural modes (films, TV, computer games, music, social media and all forms of popular culture), together we will explore the very notion of culture (what it excludes and why, its unspoken assumptions and exploitations) and consider how, in an increasingly mechanised and digitised cultural realm, the limits of the human are being redrawn once again in the present moment.