Someone in the back most likely rolled their eyes the first time a UCLA professor slid a small deck of cards across a seminar table and instructed graduate students to distribute them like a game. On a trading card is Judith Butler. David Gauntlett shrank to a rectangle the size of a pocket. Until you see a room full of first-year students actually start talking, it sounds almost disrespectful to the seriousness of media theory.
It was later referred to by that professor as the best fifteen dollars spent on education. The quote went viral. And now, in a way that no one could have predicted, something that was first created at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom as a low-stakes teaching tool is subtly making its way into American lecture halls, departmental reading lists, and faculty Twitter threads.
At Bournemouth, the Theory Trading Cards were created for a particular, unglamorous purpose. Media students in their first year felt intimidated. Not a little hesitant, but truly frozen. Students who would rather fail in silence than raise their hands and pronounce “Baudrillard” incorrectly in front of their peers. There has always been a certain weight associated with media theory, which lies between philosophy and cultural criticism. abstract concepts, dense language, and intellectuals who appeared to be from a different era. The set of cards attempted to break through that.
Each card condenses a theorist or idea into something digestible, such as a name, a central concept, a link to media, or an identity. Gauntlett’s research on identity and media. Butler’s perspective on gender roles. These are the kinds of concepts that typically need three lectures and a visit to Sparknotes before they can even be processed. It’s important to acknowledge that some academics find the format unsettling, and whether this simplification is a feature or a bug will likely depend on who you ask. Reducing complicated theory to card-sized summaries raises legitimate concerns that students will learn to identify names rather than comprehend arguments.
This is what’s intriguing, though. The cards seem to function best as entry points into reading rather than as substitutes for it. Before beginning a chapter, a student who is familiar with the general outline of Gauntlett’s ideas is less likely to give up on it completely. The format seems to lower the psychological barrier rather than the intellectual one, and this distinction is more important than it may first appear.
Because there have always been plenty of textbooks available for media studies in the United States, the American uptake is noteworthy. If anything, the market is oversaturated with pricey, thick volumes that students purchase once and glance at twice. The price of the Theory Trading Cards is fifteen dollars. They are small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. Over a coffee table, you can quarrel about them. It’s possible that American academics are reacting to the permission they symbolize rather than the cards themselves—permission to make theory feel less like a rite of passage and more like a worthwhile discussion.
As this develops on faculty forums and social media, something nearly generational is taking place. Perhaps because they were once students who also found the canonical texts alienating before eventually falling in love with them, younger professors in particular seem drawn to the format. They recall the freeze. The eye-roll is familiar to them. Additionally, if it results in fewer students quietly giving up on the material by week three, they are willing to try something that may appear a little ridiculous.
It’s still unclear whether a card deck can actually change the way media theory is taught in American universities. The format has clear limitations, the adoption scale is still small, and there is little research on its efficacy. However, the discussion it has sparked about pedagogy, accessibility, and the true purpose of media theory may be more significant than the cards themselves.
