“There is no way in which to understand the world without first detecting it through the radar-net of our senses” (Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses) This graduate seminar provides a broad yet in-depth overview of recent developments in phenomenological and sensorial approaches to media studies. Traditionally, media texts have been construed as sites of meaning to be “read” — or hermeneutically “unpacked” — by spectators who are sensitively attuned to the inner workings of films, television series, musical compositions, and other cultural productions. Such interpretative activity, focused on the formal and functional properties of a given text, has been conceived of as a largely cognitive and structural — rather than corporeal and sensorial — exercise. Over the past two decades, however, scholars have advanced alternative ways of conceptualizing and engaging in textual analysis, putting their own bodies and lived experiences front-and-center as mediating factors in cultural consumption. Drawing upon the work of key thinkers in this area, including Vivian Sobchack, Laura Marks, Jennifer Barker, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this course introduces students to a range of philosophical inquiries surrounding multisensory media engagement, connecting seemingly discrete phenomena (related to sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch) while encouraging greater self-reflection on the students’ part (in terms of their own previous experiences with motion pictures, TV shows, music recordings, graphic novels, video games, and online texts). Week-to-week, emphasis will be placed on textual materiality and the medium-specific features of selected case studies, giving students an opportunity to discern the unique aural, visual, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile components of cinematic, televisual, literary, digital, and online communication. However, this course takes one specific type of cultural production — the horror film — as its thematic and historical through-line during the first half of the semester. Few genres exert as much affective sway over its audience as the horror film, which has been described by more than one theorist as a “body genre.” As such, it will serve as a useful springboard for thinking about and sensorially perceiving our own physical or emotional “limits” as audiences. SPCM 648: Media Texts Media Sensorium: Textual Perception of/through the Body INSTRUCTOR: Dr. David Scott Diffrient OFFICE: BHSCI A 211 OFFICE HRS: 3:30 – 4:45 p.m. Wed./Thurs. SEMESTER: Fall 2019 HOURS: 6:30 – 9:10 p.m. Thursday ROOM: BHSCI A217 Course Description “Poetry is what you can’t translate. Art is what you can’t define. Film is what you can’t explain. But we’re going to try, anyway” (James Monaco, How to Read a Film)