I’ve taught contemporary theory and media course between my time in India and US. Previously in Delhi, I have taught on digital theory with a focus on India’s surveillance regimes. And beyond university based classrooms , through my curatorial work, I have been engaged in questions of curriculum building, and sharing resources beyond art and academia. Below are the more recent courses I have taught in the US. Syllabi available upon request.
I now think of teaching with only question, “Can a class be a forest?”
I.
From climate change predictions to everyday acts of weather forecasting, share trading, and gambling, our contemporary lives are increasingly shaped by how we speculate and imagine our futures. In imagining our futures, we rely on media to visibilize, give shape to, and predict events over time (these may be individual or collective futures). In this course, we will discuss what forms of alternative media futures we can build. One that is not built on disaster, anxiety about planetary collapse, or digital surveillance - but on possibilities of non-hierarchical, non-extractive, inclusive futures.
This course is primarily divided into three components. The first four weeks will introduce students to concepts, histories and well-established traditions of futures thinking – with inroads into futurism, science fiction, and the many definitions of the word “future” itself. The second component, comprising weeks four to six, will look into contemporary media practices and the various predictive natures of our digital cultures – from prediction cultures in banking and finance, to climate and smart city planning. The last three weeks are about decolonizing futures thinking with a focus on design, multi-species entanglements, indigenous thought and a survey of the alternate forms of futures building already in practice. Here we will also envision alternative futures we can work towards. Throughout the course we will discuss questions of race, ethnicity, and for whom liveable futures are to be built.
II.
Starting from Raymond Williams’ claim “culture is ordinary,” this course delves into the study of cultural and media production as it permeates our everyday lives. This course asks what is culture, what are its low and high or mass-popular and elite forms, and who engages with culture through production, distribution, and consumption. Over the course of six weeks, we will read key texts in the field, the roots and disciplinary emergence of cultural studies, and cultural theory, but also how it shapes our conceptions of history, politics and identity (especially with a focus on race). Every class, we will discuss key texts and discuss them in conversation with cultural and media productions from across the world. The objectives of the course then are double-fold – enabling students to critically engage in theoretical debates in the field, and articulating these theoretical debates/frameworks in analyzing cultural productions. pujita@ucsb.edu
pujita.guha90@gmail.com