Skip to main content

Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Media Aesthetics

The Media Aesthetics group aims to teach young people how to make sense of their sensual perceptions with contextual and self-awareness by developing an aesthetic education curriculum focused on advancing global media literacy in the U.S. and beyond.

About the Project

Technology and social life have become deeply enmeshed, yet digital media infrastructure has promoted highly polarized orientations locally and globally. At the same time, these mediated networks of information, entertainment and communication afford opportunities for resilient self-fashioning, forging communities, imagining sustainable futures and fostering a politics of hope. This group seeks to help harness these opportunities for world-making through aesthetic educationteaching young people how to make sense of their sensual perceptions with contextual and self-awareness. The group will develop an aesthetic education curriculum focused on advancing global media literacy to share with partners in secondary and higher education in the U.S. and beyond.

Group Members

Co-leads:

  • Dilip Gaonkar, Culture and Communication, School of Communication
  • Patrick Noonan, Asian Languages and Cultures, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Northwestern group members:

  • A.J. Christian, Communication Studies, School of Communication
  • Dahye Kim, Asian Languages and Cultures, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
  • Domietta Torlasco, French and Italian, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences