Department of English

Publics: Over the years, “Publics” has become a capacious framework to conceptualize wide ranging phenomena and practices: from mob behavior to crowdsourcing, from televised debates to cinema-going spectators, from infrastructural failures to global pandemics, from celebrity scandals to environmental controversies that bring together affected communities. This course uses theories and ideas of public spheres, public cultures, intimate publics, issue-based publics, heterogeneous publics, and counterpublics to explore case studies of such events and processes. The course engages with these theoretical trajectories about publics in order to ask questions such as: What is the role of media and mediation in shaping publics? Can publics include objects, human experiences, and animal affect, and if so, with what consequences? What are the connections between publics and networks? How do we account for public and its privates—of drives, affections, and stimulations in public? How do public spaces of protest create transnational publics and strengthen social movements?