| I. Core Concepts |
| 1 | Introduction to the Course: A Comparative Approach to Media Studies: Storytelling Across Media | "Imaginary Social Relationships" through Media
Narratives across Different Cultures and Media |
| 2 | Media Studies: An Interdisciplinary Field
Technology and Meaning: Concepts of "High" and "Low" Culture | McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Introduction by Lewis Lapham. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999 and pp. 3-47.
Mukerji, Chandra, and Michael Schudson. "Introduction: Rethinking Popular Culture." In Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Edited by C. Mukerji, and M. Schudson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. 1-8.
Kellner, Douglas. "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture." In Gender, Race and Class in Media. Edited by Gail Dines, and Jean Humez. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage, 1995. Pp. 5-17.
Core Definitions: McLuhan
The Official Marshall McLuhan Website
Wired Magazine's Marshall McLuhan Archive |
| 3 | Lab/Discussion Section: Show and Tell (Media Artifacts) - See Handout
Note: Sections meet in extended session for 1.5 hours. | |
| 4 | Approaches to Studying Media: The Concept of Commodity - The Frankfurt School and the Birmingham School
Questions of Ownership and Control of Media
The Challenge of Cultural Pluralism | Horkheimer, Max, and Theodore Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." In The Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1995. Pp. 120-167.
Debord, Guy. "The Commodity as Spectacle." In Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Books, 1977. Pp. 1-18 and 42.
Williams, Raymond. "Culture." In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Hall, Stuart. "Encoding/Decoding." In Culture, Media, Language. Edited by Stuart Hall, et al. London: Hutchinson, 1980. |
| 5 | Applying the Frameworks: Advertising | Jhally, Sut. "Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture." In The World and I. Washington, D.C.: Washington Times Corp., 1990.
Kellner, Douglas. "Reading Images Critically: Towards a Postmodern Pedagogy." Journal of Education 170, no. 3 (1988).
Goldman, Robert. "Constructing and Addressing the Audience as Commodity." In Reading Ads Socially. London: Routledge, 1992.
Williams, Raymond. "Advertising: The Magic Game." In Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 1980.
Schudson, Michael. "The Emergence of New Consumer Patterns: A Study of the Cigarette." In Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York City: Basic Books, 1986. Pp. 178-208.
Website: History of Advertising in America
Early Tobacco Advertisements |
| 6 | Screening/Discussion Section: The Power of Advertising
Documentary Film Screening | |
| 7 | Key Media Debates: Influence, Representation, Control
Guest Speaker: Prof. Mark Lloyd | "Professor Jenkins Goes to Washington."
Schiller, Herbert. "Not Yet the Post-Imperialist Era." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8 (1991): 13-28.
Professor Jenkins Goes To Washington
Key Debates in the Media Literacy Movement
Kids and Commercialism: Center for a New American Dream
NAACP Image Awards
National Asian American Telecommunications Association
National Organization For Women Mediawatch
Glaad Media Watch |
| II. Comparative Media Over Time |
| 8 | Comparing Oral and Print Cultures: Different Forms of Storytelling | Eisenstein, Elizabeth. "Some Features of Print Culture." In Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. 42-91.
Radway, Janice. "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading." In Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 113, no. 3 (Summer 1974). Reprinted in Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan. A Cultural Studies Reader: History, Theory, Practice. London: Longman (1995): 334-350. |
| 9 | Written Media: The Press: Technology, Power and Influence | Hall, Stuart, et al. "The Social Production of News." In Media Studies: A Reader. 2nd. ed. Edited by Paul Marris, and Sue Thornham. New York City: NYU Press, 1999. Pp. 646-652.
Habermas, Jurgen. "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article." In Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Edited by Stephen E. Bronner, and Douglas Kellner. New York: Routledge, 1989. Pp. 136-142.
McChesney, Robert W. "Journalism, Democracy, ... and Class Struggle." Monthly Review 52, no. 6 (November 2000): 1-15.
Screening/Discussion Section: Written Media: The Press: Frameworks and Biases in Presenting Information
Documentary Film Screening
"Journalism, Democracy, ... and Class Struggle" |
| 10-11 | The Rise of Entertainment Culture in Late 19th Century America and the Growth of Modern Mass Media in Early 20th Century America | Lipsitz, George. "This Ain't No Sideshow." In Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Pp. 3-12.
Singer, Ben. "Modernity, Hyperstimulus and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism." In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Edited by Leo Charney, and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 72-99.
Gunning, Tom. "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator." In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. Edited by Linda Williams. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Pp. 114-133. |
| 12 | Screening/Discussion Section: The Rise of Modern Mass Media: Early Silent Film in the U.S. | |
| 13 | The Documentary Mode: Photography and Film
Media and Social Reform | Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." In Illuminations. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1969. Pp. 217-251.
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. (Excerpt)
Selected Photographs of Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis.
Susan Sontag, On Photography-excerpt
Photographs of Lewis Hine
Photographs of Jacob Riis
Website: American Memory Collection Photos And Prints |
| 14 | The Star System: Origins in the Silent Era | Dyer, Richard. Stars. (Excerpt)
Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America. (Excerpt) |
| 15 | Screen Culture: Movies and Music | Budd, Michael. "The German Film Industry and the Making of Caligari." In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Edited by Mike Budd. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Pp. 8-25.
Marks, Martin. "Music and the Silent Film." In The Oxford History of World Cinema. Edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 183-192.
Gorbman, Claudia. "Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator." In Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987. Pp. 53-69.
Copland, Aaron. "Film Music." In What To Listen For in Music. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 47-152. |
| 16 | Screening/Discussion Section: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Piano Accompaniment and Discussion: Prof. Martin Marks) | |
| 17 | Sound Genres And Audiences: Storytelling Across Media: Melodrama and Horror | |
| 18 | The Social Problem Movie: Storytelling Across Media | Lab/Discussion Section: Screening: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). |
| 19 | Filmic and Ethnic Images | Selections, Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema. Edited by Lester Friedman. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991. |
| 20 | Storytelling Across Media: Film and Colonialism | Andrew, Dudley. "Adaptation." In Concepts in Film Theory. New York: Oxford, 1984. Pp.96-106.
Kipling, Rudyard. "The Man Who Would Be King."
Lecture: Stephen Brophy
Lab/Screening/Discussion Section: The Man Who Would Be King.
The Man Who Would be King |
| 21 | Broadcasting: Radio and Television: The Public Interest, Public Entertainment and the Commercial Imperative | The Trouble With Television |
| 22 | TV as Consensus Narrative: Critiques of TV | Fiske, John. "Bardic Television." In Reading Television. London and New York: Methuen, 1978. Pp. 85-100.
Thorburn, David. "Television As an Aesthetic Medium." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4 (1987): 167-173.
———. "Is TV Acting a Distinctive Art Form?" The New York Times (14 August 1977).
Arnheim, Rudolf. "A Forecast of Television." In Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 188-198.
Williams, Raymond. "Programming: Distribution and Flow." In Television and Cultural Form. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1993 (rpt: 1976). Pp. 72-112.
Uricchio, William. "The Trouble With Television." In Screening the Past: An International Electronic Journal of Visual Media and History 4 (1998).
Grey, Herman. "The Politics of Representation in Network Television." In Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for 'Blackness'. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Pp. 70-92.
Screening/Discussion Section: Episode 1, Six Feet Under (HBO 2001).
"1961", If These Walls Could Talk 2 (HBO 2000). |
| 23-24 | Cable TV and Independent Film | Wyatt, Justin. "From Roadshowing to Saturation Release: Majors, Independents and Marketing/Distribution Innovations." In The New American Cinema. Edited by Jon Lewis. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. Pp. 64-86.
Lewis, Jon. "Money Matters: Hollywood in the Corporate Era." In The New American Cinema. Pp. 87-121.
Supplementary: Hbo Online
Supplementary: Association Of Independent Video And Filmmakers
Supplementary: Sundance Institute
Supplementary: Sundance Channel |
| 25-26 | Globalization and Media Culture | Condry, Ian. "Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture." In Urban Life. Edited by G. Gmelch, and W. Zenner. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001.
Appadurai, Arjun. "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy." In Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pp. 27-47.
Screening/Discussion Section: Monsoon Wedding (2001). |
| 27-28 | Models of The Digital Revolution | Murray, Janet. Hamlet On the Holodeck. New York: Free Press, 1997. Pp. 273-283.
Gilder, George. Life After Television. New: Norton, 1994. Pp. 35-49.
Katz, John. "The Birth of a Digital Nation." In Media Rants: Postpolitics in the Digital Nation. San Francisco: HardWired, 1997. Pp. 50-58.
Barlow, John Perry. "The Declaration of Independence in Cyberspace."
Landow, George. "Reconfiguring Narrative." In Hypertext. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1992.
Hodges, M., and R. Sasnett. "New Views in Education." In Multimedia Computing: Case Studies from the MIT Project Athena. Reading, Ma. Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pp. 29-37.
Murray, Janet. "Restructuring Space, Time, Story and Text in Advanced Multimedia Environments." In Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia and the Social Construction of Knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. Pp. 319-345.
Schank, R., M. Jona. "Empowering the Student: New Perspectives on the Design of Teaching Systems." Journal of the Learning Sciences (January 1991): 7-35.
The Media and 9/11
Links To Lecture 27 Presentations
Monday Lab: Panel/Discussion Section: Panel: Educational Applications of Digital Technology
Speakers: Profs. Peter Donaldson, Kurt Fendt, Edward Barrett, Wyn Kelley
Links To Lecture 27 Presentations |
| 29-30 | Contemporary Issues: Media Convergence and Power in the Digital Age
Audiences as Producers and Receivers | McChesney, Robert. "Oligopoly: The Big Media Game Has Fewer and Fewer Players." The Progressive. (November 1999): 1, 20-24.
Jenkins, Henry. "Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk: Slash and the Fan-Writing Community." In Textual Poachers: Television Fan and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. 237-265.
———. "Out of the Closet and Into the Universe: Queers and Star Trek." In Science Fiction Audiences. Edited by John Tulloch, and Henry Jenkins. New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. 237-265. |
| 31-32 | Discussion Section: Extended section 7-10 | |
| 33 | Last Day Of Class | |