Media and Everyday Life

This is a graduate seminar that treats media not as a separate "thing we consume" but as something woven into the texture of daily life — how people seek information, air grievances, manage privacy, and craft a self through phones, screens, and platforms. The approach is anthropological: you read ethnographies and cultural theory of the everyday, then argue with them through case studies rather than memorizing a canon. Most of the work happens outside class — close reading of theory articles, two presentations, and an individual research paper you develop across the semester with one-on-one meetings. It pairs naturally with media studies and cultural anthropology tracks, and matters because it trains you to analyze the ordinary, often invisible ways media shapes politics and identity.