Cornell Media Studies • Media Objects Podcast

Cornell Media Studies seeks funding to complete the first series of the Media Objects podcast, and to support the production of a second series in 2025-26.

The Media Objects Podcast is a collaboration between Cornell Media Studies and the artists in The World According to Sound (Chris Hoff ’02 and Sam Harnett). Together we are producing immersive sonic essays that explore key concepts in Media Studies, drawing on the work of Cornell faculty and illustrating Cornell’s unique approach to the field. Each episode is devoted to a familiar—or an unfamiliar—media object, and each series together comprises a narrative arc.

A trailer and one episode can be streamed now on the Media Studies website and on YouTube.

Media Objects will be the latest and most ambitious entry in Ways of Knowing, the World According to Sound’s audio show about to the humanities. Ways of Knowing was inspired by the World According to Sound’s artists residency at Cornell in the fall of 2019, which culminated in the Arts Unplugged event “Sonic University,” an eight-channel audio performance in the dark that sold out consecutive nights at the Schwartz Center. The Media Objects podcast reunites Cornell Media Studies and the World According to Sound in a project addressed to audiences inside and outside Cornell, illustrating the university’s distinctive approach to the study of media.
Cornell Media Studies is unique for its collation of scholars from the humanities, science and technology studies, communication, information science, and AAP. It is virtually alone in emphasizing deeply historical media forms ('media archaeology') as well as issues from the present day. And we are foresighted in employing its distinctive media collections (from the Library, the Johnson Museum, and elsewhere) in support of research and teaching.

Cornell Media Studies extends the university’s long tradition of interdisciplinary scholarship.  In addition to the monthly colloquium, which has just concluded its eighth year, and interdisciplinary graduate working groups, Media Studies has established undergraduate and graduate minors, each of which is anchored by a core class (“Thinking Media”/ “Thinking Media Studies”) that features as many as twenty guest lectures from across the university. A view of the kind of work we have hoped to foster can be seen in the texts produced for the pandemic year Media Objects conference, featuring faculty and graduate students from outside the steering group of the Media Studies Initiative.  

Thank you for supporting our work and for promoting the scholarship and teaching of our colleagues beyond the walls of Cornell.