Undergraduate Academics
Media Studies
Media studies is an interdisciplinary field that engages in material, cultural, and affective histories of communication technologies, focusing on the impact on culture and society. At Sarah Lawrence College, we explore a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, including sound studies, media archeology, digital humanities, and popular culture studies. Students investigate the relations between social, political, and cultural contexts and the development of methods, ideas, practices, tools, and objects across diverse media in the global digital era.
Media Studies 2026-2027 Courses
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Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Fall | 5 credits
MDST 3100
This course will explore the cultural history of the modern internet, through the lens of internet freedom, and as a humanities problem: a contested cultural ideal that took shape through media forms, emerging technologies, institutional and political currents, and everyday practices of communication. We will examine how concepts such as freedom of expression, privacy, security, and public truth acquired meaning in contemporary networked life—through platforms and interfaces, moderation and metrics, and the narratives used to explain, justify, and critique them. Rather than treating internet technology as neutral infrastructure, we will consider it as a cultural form: an essential structure driven by contested values that organizes visibility, voice, security, and belonging in modern life. This history will allow us to explore questions such as: how do we understand our rights, and their expression, in networked telecommunications culture? How are the benefits of privacy, freedom of expression, and association shaped by the values, narratives, and cultural assumptions of policy makers, the technology industry, and internet users in the Global North and South? Readings and objects will include media theory and media history; investigative journalism and documentary evidence; and institutional documents (platform policies, terms of service, transparency reports) treated as genres of governance. The course will emphasize humanities methods—conceptual genealogy, close reading of texts and interfaces, and argumentation grounded in careful interpretation. Technical and legal materials will be used in support of cultural and historical analysis.
Faculty
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Sophomore and Above, Seminar—Spring | 5 credits
MDST 3553
This seminar will examine digital rights as a field of public debate: a set of arguments, institutional responses, and cultural struggles that arise when network infrastructures become sites of conflict. We will examine the documents and genres through which disputes concerning privacy, freedom of expression, and security on the internet are articulated and negotiated—principles and manifestos, platform policies and transparency statements, government policy declarations, investigative reporting, polemics, and contested cases. With the central focus of a cultural history of digital rights, students will explore the panoply of conflicting voices among communities, cypherpunks, human rights activists, anarchists, governments, anti-globalization activists, and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, contributing to the tapestry of countervailing currents that have shaped the contemporary internet. This cultural history will allow us to explore a central question: what does security mean to individuals and communities on the contemporary internet, and how is this mediated for the marginalized and for the privileged? The course will emphasize humanities methods: conceptual genealogy, close reading of public-facing texts, and analysis of rhetoric, evidence, and legitimacy claims. Students will complete short case presentations and a community-partnership/service-learning project that will see them developing a curated archive of primary materials plus a sustained interpretive essay explaining the stakes, the publics addressed, and the value tradeoffs at issue.
Faculty