Romanticism and media theory have a recursive relationship. In this panel we invite contributions which explore Romantic thought in constellation with media theory and critical theories of technology.  Several foundational media theorists—including Kittler, Benjamin, McLuhan, and Ong—engaged extensively with Romanticism. Romantic criticism can be seen as the critical nexus out of which media theory emerges, such that Brooke-Smith has recently positioned Romanticism as a “media theory avant la lettre” ( 2013). As such, Romanticism should be understood not merely as a literary movement, but as a self‑reflexive deployment of mediatic forms. Likewise, media theory itself returns to Romanticism to reflect on the ways subjectivity and media are co-constructed.

This panel reinterprets Romanticism through the lens of media theory, and media theory through the lens of Romanticism. We theorize Romantic tropes not merely as literary devices but as media systems. This entails understanding Romanticism’s deployment of the fragmentary encyclopedia and the interdisciplinary journal as media theoretical mechanisms that incite unbounded conflicts of the faculties, thereby destabilizing conventional epistemic structures. We see Romantic texts as active participants in the mediation, storage, and transformation of cultural material. Romantic thinkers cultivated a form of critical media practice by interweaving poetry, print culture, and their own theoretical reflections, positioning their cultural production within a richly object‑oriented, intermedial field that anticipates contemporary media‑theoretical concerns. This panel speculates on the co‑constitution of Romanticism and media theory, situating them within a shared interdisciplinary inquiry into how media condition subjectivity and shape knowledge over time.

Recent developments in technology also participate in this Romantic recursivity. Romanticism can be used to theorize developments in information technology (Streeter, 2011; Coeckelbergh, 2017). A Romantic discourse is present at the origins of digital media: from the first Apple Computer logo featuring a quote from Wordsworth’s Prelude, or Nelson naming his early vision of hypertext “Project Xanadu.” Likewise, second-order cybernetics borrows from Romanticism’s own emphasis on self-reflexive change, with Hui describing Romanticism as “a proto-cybernetics”(2019). Despite Kittler’s claim that Romanticism is foreclosed by newer media forms, it seems to return not only via new technologies, but also later media theories - perhaps even Kittler’s own.

This seminar welcomes submissions that address the topic of media (theory) and Romanticism from the following potential angles: 1) Romanticism in constellation with media theory. 2) Romantic theories of technology. 3) Histories of “Romantic technology” (how media makes recourse to Romantic ideas). 4) Media materialist readings of Romanticism.