COM 211 Media and Love

On film and through new technologies, media have influenced how we find romantic love, what we expect from romance, and where or with whom we make meaningful connections. This course will ask students to think critically about media representations in American Culture, as well as new technologies of love. Do media help us understand and practice love? If not, how can we expand our conception of love beyond formulaic narratives and compatibility matrices? Why is popular culture so myopically focused on romantic love? How are different kinds of love connected to our search for a happy and meaningful life? Our exploration will be theoretically grounded by readings in Cultural Studies, which proposes media representations as ideologically charged through rhetorics of difference (race, class, gender, etc); Media Ecology, which sees new technology as an environment that dictates the kind of conversations we can have, who can speak, and who can listen; and perspectives on the concept of love