COURSE DESCRIPTION
This research seminar examines the complex history of media, from the earliest forms of oral and written communication to contemporary social media. It engages with issues of race, gender, sexuality, property rights, inequality, democracy, political culture, and human agency to consider how the various means and structures through which people express themselves have changed over time. The course is designed to introduce students to a broad literature on the history of media across multiple national contexts and .
REQUIRED BOOKS
Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication
Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination
Dan Sinker, The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel
All other readings are available online or in class.
COURSE GOALS
The goals of this course are two-fold: to introduce students to the key events, individuals, technologies and concepts in the history of media, and to help students develop an original research project that examines both secondary and primary sources. Your paper should focus on a particular medium or technology (radio, television, film, newspapers, etc.) and examine its social, political, economic, technical, legal and/or cultural development. You must demonstrate your ability to engage with secondary and theoretical literature (i.e. works written by scholars about the history of media) and apply these insights to documentary evidence that you find in archives and historical societies, as well as cultural texts such as movies, television programs, newspaper articles, sound recordings and so forth. You will have to relate the theoretical and historical concepts explored in our class to primary sources—documents that provide insight into the way people lived, thought, worked, and expressed themselves in a given period of time.
For example, Bolter & Grusin’s “Double Logic of Remediation” is a secondary source, which presents a theoretical model for thinking about technology and language. Dan Sinker’s F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel is a primary source that can tell us (and future historians) about the state of politics, technology, and literature in the year 2010.
This course is designed to promote critical thinking through writing. It should help students develop the wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions they need to effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments; to formulate and present convincing reasons in support of conclusions; and to make reasonable, intelligent decisions about how their research connects the past to the present.
This syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations may be necessary. All students are expected to comply with University and History Department policies on academic honesty. I will report any violation of these standards to the Dean of Students, and any act of plagiarism will result in a grade of “F” for the assignment and, possibly, the course. The GSU policy on academic honesty is published in On Campus: The Undergraduate Co-Curricular Affairs Handbook.
ASSIGNMENTS/REQUIREMENTS/GRADING
Detailed descriptions of all assignments will be discussed in class.
Participation/In-Class Assignments: Attendance is mandatory; reading assigned texts and participation in class discussions are required. You are expected to share ideas about assigned readings in each and every class meeting and you will be evaluated after each class. The course will also include several short, in-class assignments, in which students will respond to essay questions and/or other prompts on concepts, events, media, and texts from the lectures and readings. (20%)
First Draft: The first draft of your final paper should be based entirely on legitimate secondary sources by scholars. The paper should draw on at least four sources (scholarly books or articles), and have a clear, well-defined thesis. Your paper should focus on a particular medium or technology (radio, television, film, newspapers, etc.) and examine its social, political, economic, technical, legal and/or cultural development. The paper should be turned in to both the writing consultant and the instructor. You should use the feedback from this first draft to enhance and revise your project for the final paper (see below). (20%)
Debate: You will be evaluated on your contribution to a debate on monopoly vs. diversity in American media. Your grade will be based on your participation in the actual in-class debate as well as a three-page, double-spaced “op-ed” or editorial based on your group’s findings (20%).
Bibliography: Prior to turning in a draft of the final paper in April, you will turn in a bibliography consisting of books, articles, and primary sources that you have located. The books and articles must be scholarly and credible sources, and the primary sources (newspapers, photographs, television programs, films, oral history reviews, and other texts from the past) must be relevant to your topic. All sources must be correctly cited in Turabian bibliographic format, and points will be deducted for improper style. (10%)
Final Paper/Presentation: The final paper is a revised and expanded version of your first draft, which draws on a variety of secondary sources as well as primary sources. Further guidelines and a rubric will be distributed later in the semester. (30%)
Formatting: All assignments should be turned in double-spaced, in Times New Roman, 12-point font, with footnotes in Turabian style.
Grade Weight:
Participation: 20%
First Draft: 20%
In-Class Assignments: 20%
Debate/Op-ed: 20%
Final Draft of Paper: 20%
COURSE SCHEDULE
* indicates in-class reading/viewing
Mon, 14 January Overview
Wed, 23 January Concepts in Media Studies
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, “The Double Logic of Remediation”
Mon, 28 January The Origins of Communication
Ian F. McNeely and Lisa Wolverton, “The Library,” in Reinventing Knowledge, 3-35
Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess (view in class)*
Wed, 30 January The Print Revolution
James Gleick, The Information, 28-63
Mon, 4 February Debating the Revolution
Elizabeth Eisenstein, “An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited”
Adrian Johns, “How to Acknowledge a Revolution”
Wed, 6 February Origins of American Media
Paul Starr, Creation of the Media, chap. 1-2
Due: Paper Topics (3-5 sentences), E-mail as .doc File to Writing Consultant and Instructor
Mon, 11 February Reading Nineteenth Century Print Culture
Mission society pamphlets*
Lawrence Goodwyn, Populist Moment (excerpt)*
Dime novels*
Wed, 13 February Tinfoil Traces: Sound Recording
Lisa Gitelman, “Reading Music, Reading Records, Reading Race”
Griffin Hall, “The Bogus Talking Machine” (1876)*
Phonoscope clippings (1896-1900)*
Mon, 18 February The Wireless World
Susan Douglas, Listening In, 3-218
Wed, 20 February The Age of Television
Gary Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 113-155
Susan Murray, “Ethnic Masculinity and Early Television’s Vaudeo Star”
Mon, 25 February The Emergence of New Media
William Burroughs, “The Invisible Generation” (1967)
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, 43-74
Wed, 27 February Writing Workshop
Due: First Draft of Final Paper, E-mail as .doc File to Writing Consultant and Instructor
Mon, 4 March The Geography of New Media I: Video
David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1983)*
Wed, 6 March The Geography of New Media II: Cable
Alexandra Cassavettes, Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)*
Mon 11, March The Geography of New Media III: Hip-Hop
Jeff Chang, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, 67-108
Wed, 13 March American Media: Monopoly or Diversity?
Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 3-26
Noam Chomsky, “Media, Knowledge and Objectivity” (1993)
Op-Ed Due: E-mail as .doc File to Writing Consultant and Instructor
Spring Break – 18-22 March
Mon, 25 March Innocents Abroad? American Media around the World
Elihu Katz, The Export of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of Dallas (excerpt)
Christopher S. Wren, “Tunes of West Worry China” (1982)*
Serge Schemann, “Video’s Forbidden Offerings Alarm Moscow” (1983)*
Jonas Baes, “Towards a Political Economy of the ‘Real’: Music Piracy and the Philippine Cultural Imaginary” (2002)*
Wed, 27 March Global TV
Lila Abu Lughod, “Islam and Public Culture: The Politics of Egyptian Television Serials” Arab Labor (Israeli TV series; on reserve in library) – watch at least one episode
Mon, 1 April Deindustrialization and the New Economy
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (excerpt)
Manuel Castells, The Informational City, 33-57
Wed, 3 April Property Rights
Cummings, “From Monopoly to Intellectual Property”
Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas, “On the Rights of Molotov Man”*
Mon, 8 April Looking Forward
Dan Sinker, F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel (2011)
Wed, 10-Thurs, 11 April Appointments for Final Paper Consultation
Mon, 15 April Writing Workshop
Draft of Final Paper Due: E-mail as .doc File to Writing Consultant and Instructor
Wed, 17 April Presentations
Mon, 22 April Presentations
Wed, 24 April Presentations
**MONDAY, APRIL 29 – FINAL PAPER DUE TO INSTRUCTOR
IMPORTANT WORKS IN MEDIA HISTORY
Lila Abu-Lughod, Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt
Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music
Ben Bagidikian, The Media Monopoly
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
Menahem Blondheim, News over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in
America, 1844-1897
James Boyle, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
Robert Burnett, The Global Jukebox: The International Music Industry
Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th Century French Countryside
Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communication and Cultural
Transformation in Early Modern Europe
Claude Fischer, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class
Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio
Gladys and Oswald Ganley, Global Political Fallout: The VCR’s First Decade
Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture
Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order
Donna Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_Oncomouse
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity
Adrian Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making
Elihu Katz and Tamar Liebes, The Export of Meaning: Cross-cultural Readings of Dallas
Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media
Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Monfort, The New Media Reader
Peter Manuel, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Ian F. McNeely and Lisa Wolverton, Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet
George Myerson, Heidegger, Habermas and the Mobile Phone
Robert Samuels, The Illustrated History of Copyright
Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo
Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction
David Suisman and Susan Strasser, Sound in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form
Brian Winston, Media Technology and Society
Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals
IMPORTANT TERMS AND CONCEPTS
Agency
Base/superstructure
Dialectic
Diversity
Fordism
Gender
Hypermediacy
Immediacy
Materialism
Metaphor
Modernity
Monopoly
Network effects
New media
Post-fordism
Post-industrial
Postmodern
Print culture
Remediation
Specificity
Structure
Technological determinism
PARTIAL GUIDE TO EDITORIAL NOTATION
S-V Agreement subject and verb do not agree
SP spelling
COL/colloq colloquialism
T.S./TS topic sentence
par/ paragraph
w/ with
PV passive voice
vague referent/VR referent of pronoun or clause is unclear
that/who use that for things, who for persons
run-on run-on sentence
WC/wc word choice
