Media Materialities: Form, Format, and Ephemeral Meaning (BCMCR New Directions in Media and Cultural Research)

Review

'The essays and short takes in Media Materialities offer a welcome new theoretical contribution to our understanding of materiality, and shed new light upon the complex relationships between humans and the objects that surround us. As such, this volume will be highly useful for scholars and graduate students interested in media studies, as well as in anthropology, material culture, and cultural studies in general.'While many once imagined a digital future as a world permeated by information and yet free of "things," to live in today's media culture is to exist surrounded by countless physical objects-photographs, film reels, cassettes, cables, radios. Media Materialities begins with personal reflections on the affective, cultural, and political significance of everyday objects, linking cutting-edge theories of media materiality with the grounded study of material culture and public memory. In drawing out the lines between objects, media, materiality, and culture, Media Materialities provides an interdisciplinary intervention that expands the scope and possibilities of media and cultural studies today. Grant Bollmer, senior lecturer of digital media at the University of Queensland, and author of Materialist Media Theory: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2019).

About the Author

'The essays and short takes in Media Materialities offer a welcome new theoretical contribution to our understanding of materiality, and shed new light upon the complex relationships between humans and the objects that surround us. As such, this volume will be highly useful for scholars and graduate students interested in media studies, as well as in anthropology, material culture, and cultural studies in general.'