COML 4692

Trance and Media

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024.

Media is a notoriously unwieldly concept, at once self-evident and generalizable beyond the bounds of conceptual utility. Yet one feature that tends to inhere in both the narrowest and broadest of definitions is media's capacity to transcend time and space. Similarly, to be a medium, in the context of ritualistic mediumship requires, at minimum, the capacity to transcend the here and now in order to mediate between disparate realms of being. Both media studies and the anthropology of "altered states of consciousness" have complicated traditional approaches to the philosophy of the subject from various disciplinary perspectives. Through film, video, and theory, this course explores trance and media in conjunction and across the globe.

When Offered Fall.

Distribution Category (ALC-AS, CA-AS)

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