Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Leah Anderst

Subject Categories

Film and Media Studies

Keywords

Technology, Cinema

Abstract

From its inception, cinema has been a locus of convergence between art, commerce, and technology. As a highly self-reflexive medium, motion picture art has frequently returned to deep philosophical and ethical questions about the relationship between humanity and machines. What does it mean to be human in an increasingly technological society? The twentieth century’s first major historical and philosophical treatise on the human-machine relationship was Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization. It was the first in Mumford’s “Renewal of Life” series; four volumes published between 1934 and 1951. This paper examines the evolution of Mumford’s thoughts and the parallel history of cinema. From my study of Mumfordian themes in film, a canon-in-progress of tech-critical cinema emerges which echoes key ideas in his work: resistance to technologically deterministic rhetoric, and the need for a collective renewal of the human spirit. I see Lewis Mumford’s corpus as a rich source to put into conversation with tech-critical films and contemporary media analysis. Is/was cinema capable of reconciling contradictions between art and technics? Is a Mufordian Renewal movement possible in the twenty-first century tech and media landscape? Has humanity passed a point of no return with regard to human-tech convergence? Can the outsized influence of tech capital be reined in by human-to-human re-connection, and how?

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