[Air-l] Mediation and Transnational Identity

[andrew.herman at comcast.net]

Friends-

Sometime last summer I sent a message to the group asking for assistance on a course I am putting together on (Trans)national Identity and Mediation.  The community came across with some wonderful sources and suggestions.  Alas, although those messages have been gobbled up by the Comcast Pacman.  So, I am submitting the request again.  Any suggestions would be most helpful.  Below is a description of the course.  Although course focuses somewhat on Canada, any and all suggestions about the general topic would be appreciated

[Trans] National Identities, New Media/tions and the Place of the Public.  

This course explores the ways in which communications technologies shape national identities and understandings of public goods. We consider transformations and contestations of the public sphere, the public domain, intellectual property, freedom of speech, and multiculturalism in the face of an intensification of global population and cultural flows.

The course will explore relationships between communications technologies and national identities with a particular emphasis on Canada.  We consider key concepts such as the nation, the public (the public sphere and the public domain), citizenship, the national imaginary, and the national symbolic. The objectives of Canadian cultural policy will be addressed and Canada’s cultural self-understanding as a society made up of relationships between founding nations, First Nations, and committed to multiculturalism will be critically examined. 

The course will first explore communication theories developed in and for Canadian society under conditions of mass media communications. We will then consider the extent to which processes of globalisation and new information communications technologies are posing new challenges to national identity and new opportunities for alternative forms of nation-building. We consider key concepts such as deterritorialization, transnationalism, diaspora, counterpublics, and global civil society. We will ask whether emerging social movements and networks (of aboriginal peoples, cultural diasporas, farmers, and governments committed to maintaining cultural diversity in the face of global trade) enabled by digital technologies strengthen or undermine “the nation” or demand that we conceptualise it differently.

Thanks, 

Andrew

P.S. TO PHILLIPE VANNINI--How does this sound for a panel/session for the Stone?


--
Visiting Professor and Research 
Fellow in Digital Communications 
and Cultural Policy
Joint Graduate Program in 
Communication and Culture
York University
4700 Keele St.TEL 3007
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
(416)736-2100 x 30157