The course thinks through the constitutive role of media devices and infrastructures in environmental and energy matters. We will examine both media/cinematic/documentary representations of energy resource extraction and distribution (depictions of coal mines, oil pipelines) and media infrastructures like data centers that depend on tons of energy for their operation. Media representations and media infrastructures are imbricated in questions about energy transitions (from coal to wind, for instance) and intersecting energy cultures which are also crucial questions for socio-environmental justice. Histories of energy media can be found interweaved with history of computation, history of waste, and history of heating among other histories. Students will read across fields such as media ecologies, energy humanities, and environmental science, and then draw connections and make comparisons. As we endeavor to make sense of the relationship between energy and media, we will address entangled questions/issues of work, labor, mediations, aesthetic regimes, radiance, signal, information, identity and materiality. Students will write a research paper of 5000 words.

CIMS History & Geography.