Communications, philosophy, film and video, digital culture: media studies straddles an astounding array of fields and disciplines and produces a vocabulary that is in equal parts rigorous and intuitive. "Critical Terms for Media Studies" defines, and at times redefines, what this new and hybrid area aims to do, illuminating the key concepts behind its liveliest debates and most dynamic topics. Part of a larger conversation that engages culture, technology, and politics, this exciting collection of essays explores our most critical language for dealing with the qualities and modes of contemporary media. Edited by two outstanding scholars in the field, W.J.T. Mitchell and Mark B.N. Hansen, and featuring a team of distinguished contributors - including N. Katherine Hayles, Johanna Drucker, and Bernard Stiegler - "Critical Terms for Media Studies" offers diverse opportunities for students to understand the language that underpins much of new media. The essays, commissioned expressly for this volume, not only emphasize the ways in which technology changes our understanding of mediation, but also help to articulate issues important to media practitioners, such as the obsolescence of the body and the changing role of memory. Mitchell and Hansen have organized these essays into three interrelated groups: 'Aesthetics' engages with terms that describe sensory experiences and judgments, 'Technology' offers entry into a broad array of technological concepts, and 'Society' invites inquiry into language that describes the systems that allow a medium to function. A compelling reference work for the twenty-first century and the media that form our experience within it, "Critical Terms for Media Studies" will engage and deepen anyone's knowledge of one of our most important new fields.

About the Author
W. J. T. Mitchell is the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is the author or editor of nine books published by the University of Chicago Press, including What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Mark B. N. Hansen is professor of literature and arts of the moving image at Duke University. He is the author of New Philosophy for New Media, among other titles.

Reviews
"Critical Terms for Media Studies offers not simply a collection of critical terms, but a paradigm-shifting rethinking of the field itself. It represents an extremely important approach to media in the twenty-first century, one that will become increasingly relevant as the ubiquity of new media and new technologies make the questions it raises more and more pressing. The book is a definitive and defining statement about the future shape and direction of media studies." - Charlie Gere, Lancaster University.



Book Information
ISBN 9780226532554
Author W. J. T. Mitchell
Format Paperback
Page Count 376
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 595g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 2mm