MDIA 300 is a writing intensive course in media theory. It is not a class in writing for media (in the sense of, eg, journalism), but a class in writing about media—what media is, what media(tion) means, and what media does.

This course uses texts on media theory, from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, to learn about media and mediation, but also to learn how to do such theoretical work effectively ourselves, with an explicit understanding of theoretical work, as a form of research and critical scholarship, that is inherently collaborative.

The practice of media theory is a writing practice, in the sense that it tends to happen in writing and come in the form of written texts. But we might better understand media theory as a social practice of ‘languaging’: words, communication, and the sharing of ideas come in many forms, and ‘writing’ per se can be a fundamental part of the process without necessarily being the form of the end product of theorizing about media and mediation. The ‘writing intensive’ aspect of the course, as revealed on this blog, recognizes writing to be a means of organizing ideas, but encompasses many forms of media theory ‘products’.

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