https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2025-2026/L_ZAMAACW021IMPORTANT: Students wishing to take this course as an elective should email the coordinator at least two weeks prior to the start of the course. The number of places for elective students is limited. Learning goals Understanding1) Summarize, give examples of, and explain central theoretical positions, key academic works, fundamental terminology, dominant methodological approaches, and current developments in academic debates surrounding media, the environment and eco-materialism.2) Identify key features and components of media culture (including relevant technologies and practices of manufacturing, production, distribution, reception and disposal) and describe their mutual interactions with larger social, political, infrastructural and ecological systems.Analyzing and evaluating3) Evaluate academic publications in media studies.4) Assess others' work and give constructive and substantiated peer feedback.5) Relate own findings, views and approaches to current debates within the subject area.Applying and creating6) Apply critical thinking and analytical skills to a case study in the subject area.7) Historically contextualize media phenomena, industries, technologies, objects and art and apply theoretical frameworks and suitable methodology to discuss, interpret and analyze them.8) Design and plan a small-scale independent research project and prepare a research proposal.9) Clearly communicate research findings in a structured academic format on a level equal to academic journals (level 400).Materialities of Media: Elements, Infrastructures, Environments Effortless, lossless, seamless. Instantaneous, immediate, immersive. High definition, high resolution, high connectivity. Buzzwords like these have always proliferated in marketing and popular discourses surrounding media technology. But they hide the profoundly material, messy realities of media: the global extraction of physical resources, the exploitation of labor, the reliance on life both human and non-human, the accumulation of waste and toxic pollutants in the environment, the infrastructural breakdowns and vagaries of global supply chains. This course explores the materiality of media culture and art and their interactions with the environment. We examine how the elements of media – chemical components, physical structures, and biological agents – shape media production and consumption, and how media infrastructures are intertwined with environmental concerns and energy systems. Examples from both popular culture and contemporary art will help us navigate these intricate global issues, consider alternative models of media production and reception, and help us situate media’s relationships with geology, plant and animal life, and “nature” in the context of posthumanist critique. Cinema, in its many materialities, will be our guidepost in this undertaking. After completing this course, students will have an advanced understanding of the material components of media culture from the perspective of environmental humanities and eco-media thought, as well as a recognition for the potential of media art and technology to both address as well as exacerbate environmental crises. They will be able to appreciate how and why recent instruments of thought – such as naturecultures, posthumanism, postcolonialism, biopolitics, Anthropocene, or degrowth – have become integrated into scholarship on digital and analog media. Equipped with this range of conceptual and methodological tools, they will have developed critical skills for analyzing the ways in which media and the environment shape one another, and be able to apply these skills to their own research. On a practical level, the course functions as a colloquium, advancing students' skills in key aspects of academic writing, research design and peer review.Lectures and seminars. Regular attendance is mandatory; attendance rules follow the Faculty Teaching and Examination Regulations. Unexcused or repeated absences will lead to expulsion from the course. Please note that you will be required to read some literature in preparation for the first session, i.e. prior to the start of the course.Active participation and the completion of all individual and group assignments are required to pass the class. Your grade will consist of a peer review (25%, learning goal 4) and a seminar paper (75%, learning goals 1-3, 5-9). The minimum passing grade for the seminar paper and the course as a whole is 6,0. Other ungraded assignments are used to assess all learning goals. End terms: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9Recommended literature:López, Antonio, Adrian Ivakhiv, Stephen Rust, Miriam Tola, Alenda Y. Chang, and Kiu-wai Chu, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Ecomedia Studies. London: Routledge, 2023.Maxwell, Richard, and Toby Miller. 2012. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press.Bozak, Nadia. 2012. The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.Starosielski, Nicole, and Janet Walker, eds. 2016. Sustainable Media. New York: Routledge.Parks, Lisa, and Nicole Starosielski, eds. 2015. Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Hjorth, Larissa, Sarah Pink, Kristen Sharp, and Linda Williams. 2016. Screen Ecologies: Art, Media, and the Environment in the Asia-Pacific Region. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Cubitt, Sean. 2017. Finite Media: Environmental Implications of Digital Technologies. Durham: Duke University Press.Vaughan, Hunter. 2019. Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies. New York: Columbia University Press.This course is compulsory for MA students of Comparative Arts and Media Studies (CAMS). Students of other tracks within the MA Arts and Culture, the MA Heritage Studies, and the RMA Humanities (Critical Studies in Art and Culture / Environmental Humanities) as well as exchange students may be admitted upon request and should register by email to the coordinator of the course at least two weeks prior to the first session. The number of places available to non-CAMS students is limited and dependent on the size of the CAMS group in the respective year.Students who wish to take this course as an elective should email the coordinator at least two weeks prior to the start of the course. The number of places for elective students is limited and dependent on the size of the CAMS group.Students are expected to be proficient in all academic skills and research techniques expected of those with a university BA degree in the humanities. These include, among others, locating scientific literature, finding and delimiting primary and secondary sources and assessing their reliability, formatting a bibliography according to a stylesheet, structuring academic texts & arguments, writing a literature review, etc. Students should also have – or be willing to quickly and independently acquire – a minimum level of familiarity with the key literature, modes of thought and conceptual and methodological traditions of media studies, broadly speaking. Those in need of an introduction are advised to consult the latest editions of handbooks such as:Critical Media Studies: An Introduction (Ott & Mack)The Craft of Criticism: Critical Media Studies in Practice (Kackman & Kearney, eds.)Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts (Hartley)Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Sturken & Cartwright)Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (Durham & Kellner, eds.)Media Culture and Society: An Introduction (Hodkinson)