Direct Ph..D.
M.Phil. Courses
Media Research Methods
Media in Contemporary Society
Visual Histories: Themes in Photography and Materiality
Media and the Development Discourse
M.A. (Optional) Course
Course Title: Media in Modern India
Course Teacher: Dr. Rakesh Batabyal
Credits: 4
Mode of Evaluation: Two Tutorials (50%) and End Semester Examination (50%)
This course explores the patterns of relationship between media and society during the 19th and 20th centuries in India. The emphasis is on the emergence of modern media, which includes the press, radio and other electronic forms. The creation of new spaces hospitable to the new media will be critically studied to appreciate the contest and struggle that practitioners of the new media, generally the intelligentsia, faced in this process. The form as well as the content of the media appears to have been shaped during this contest between the most advanced technologies of media, which competed with the traditional media and existing communication modes. A critical reading of the intermeshing of production, reception and institutional base of the media will provide insights into this evolving architecture of media in India. The course includes sections such as:
Evolution of Media In Moderns times Indian
Media in India: Its Character, Colonialism, Nationalism and Media in India
Media in Post Independence Society: Media and Development
Contemporary Media and Global Politics
Course Title: Media, Politics, and Violence
M.A. (Optional): Monsoon 2022
Course No.: MM 402
Course Teacher: Dr. Chitralekha
Credits: 4
Evaluation: 50% Class Test; 50% Research Paper and Presentation
This course engenders understanding of the paradigmatically altered relationships between media, politics and violence in contemporary nation-states. Indian media has over recent years witnessed transformations in its structural placement versus the state and the market, leading to several new questions for not just the manner in which political conflicts have been represented, experienced or remembered in collective or national memory, but also how these protracted interventions have appropriated and reconstituted political projects. Students will be encouraged to view such engagements in the context of larger historical shifts in thinking on media and politics: from questions of content, interpretation, institutions, and ownership; to enquiries into how social and cultural institutions, and modes of social interaction, have been transformed by their engagement with mass media; examinations of how mass media has intervened with the work of war, constituting now an inextricable part of its rationalization, practice and memories; as well as critically, the nature of interstices between digital media, political mobilization, and violence. As part of this project, students engage with prior and problematic questions of the nature of relationships between power, politics, and violence; as well as the work of media (or its surveillance) on the framing and discursive legitimation of its practices. The course engages intensively with intersections between media, political struggles and violence in India, but seeks to develop a comparative perspective by familiarizing students with research in diverse contexts.
The course is structured within three broad sections:
- Critical Perspective
- Contexts
- New (Media) Contexts
MM 403 Visual Histories: Themes in Photography and Materiality
Course Teacher: Dr. Sujith Kumar Parayil
Credits: 4
Evaluation: One mid-term assignment (30%), presentation (20%) and end-term examination (50%)
Course Description:
Various visual technologies-painting, photography, cartography, map, cinema - have been central to the constitution and experience of modernity. Photography, as one of the technologies of representation, came to India during the later phase of colonialism; it invariably depicts many complex layers of Indian society. Through a close reading of some key writings on the history, practice and theory of photography, this course will examine the ways in which ideas of culture and modernity have emerged and how photograph visualizes the idea of modern self. More specifically, we will look at the ways in which the subject of modernity is constituted through technology and how ideas of tradition, identity and authenticity are reconfigured. The course sets out as a threshold to enter the burgeoning field of study of visual culture and social life of images.
The main objectives of this course are; to understand the history and political economy of photography; to explore the technique of representations and the facets of modernity in the late 19th and early 20th century; to examine the photographically mediated visual culture, in conjunction with the other forms of representational practices which are involved in literature, art and architecture; to situate the question of realism and its early forms. The course will look at the contemporary 'photographic movements' which highlights the visual elaboration of ethical, moral and human right issues. Overall, the course will enable students to critically engage with visual images, in order to explore how they are imbued with forms of power relationship, subjectivities, and resistance. It would help students to appreciate the multiple layers and social signifiers of images, by deploying various analytical tools such as historical, semiotic and discourse analysis.
The course will have taught sessions and a self-study paper and students' presentations
For details, contact:
sparayil@gmail.com
For course schedules or enquiries, contact:
Dr. Batabyal: E-mail: rakeshbatabyal@gmail.com; Contact no. (Office) 011- 26738904
Dr. Chitralekha: E-mail: d.chitralekha@gmail.com; Contact no. (Office) 011- 26704679
Dr. Sujith Kr. Parayil: E-mail: sparayil@gmail.com; Contact no. (Office) 011- 26738902
Administrative In-charge, Centre for Media Studies, School of Social Sciences, Building-I, Room No. 03, Ground Floor; E-mail: chair_cms@mail.jnu.ac.in, Contact no.: 011- 26704618