Common as it is to think of textual form in relation to language, history and culture, in what ways does attention to media transform how we read? This course takes seriously what it means to compare across media and expands critical methods beyond textual form. With explorations ranging from discourse analysis and phenomenology to structuralism and objected-oriented-ontology, we will draw together media historians, cultural theorists and new media scholars to consider a number of key questions: How does an image differ from a picture? What is the relation between text and world? How does perspective relate to frame? How does the interface relate to phenomenology? Each week takes a key aspect of media aesthetics to move beyond analysis based on language and culture towards a consideration of networks, reflexivity and the senses. The course will pair together readings with films, photographs and videos, all with the goal of collapsing the boundaries of theory and practice. Reading back and forth across history, we will consider media’s past and future in an effort to enact comparativism not only as a translational and transnational model of inquiry, but as the groundwork for transmedial aesthetics.