Culture is what mediates between individuals and their society.
This mediation takes traditional forms of books, paintings, buildings, films, social institutions, mass media and other cultural products. The emergence of digital communications technologies of the past three decades has dramatically altered patterns of everyday life, from political and economic structures and the public sphere, to communicating with other people, socialization, new modes of cultural production, and notions of the body and self. These wide-ranging phenomena, created in part by communications technologies, have provoked the convergence of interests shared by diverse disciplines and theoretical orientations. We will examine ideas of a culture of simulation and conceptualizations of the body and perception shared by diverse disciplines, along with theoretical models that will help frame discussions and elucidate assumptions inherent in each author's arguments. This course stresses the developing methods for critically analyzing diverse theoretically orientations and concerns.