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UNIT ONE: THEORY
Thursday September
6: Introduction to Media Theory: Ways of Knowing
Tuesday September
11: Theory and Practice
Read: Thomas McLaughlin, "Theory Outside the Academy,"
Street Smarts and Critical Theory (Madison: UW, 1996); Gill Branston,
"Why Theory?" in Reinventing Film Studies; and Henry
Jenkins, "The Work of Theory in the Age of Digital Transformation"
in Toby Miller and Robert Stam (eds.), A Companion to Film Theory
(New York: Blackwell, 1999).
Tuesday September
11: LAB: The Virtual Screening Room
Read: David Bordwell, "Seizing the Spectator: Film theory
in the Silent Era," The Cinema of Eisenstein (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1993), pp. 111-138.
Thursday September
13: The Concept of Media
Read: McCluhan, "Playboy Interview" The Essential
McLuhan (New York: Harpercollins, 1996).
UNIT TWO: MEDIA
Tuesday September
18: Media and Reality
Read: Andre Bazin, "The Myth of Total Cinema" and "The
Ontology of the Photographic Image," What Is Cinema? (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967).
Tuesday September
18: LAB: Run Lola Run
Read: Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, "Introduction:
The Double Logic of Remediation," Remediation (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1998).
Thursday September
20: Visual Culture
Read: Sturken and Cartwright, Chapters 1, 4
Tuesday September
25: Defining a New Media
Read: Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative
in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). (Required book.)
Tuesday September
25: LAB: Scream, Hellzapoppin
Thursday September
27: Art and Defamiliarization
Read: Kristin Thompson, "Neoformalist Film Analysis: One Approach,
Many Methods," from Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film
Analysis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 3-46.
Tuesday October
2: Theorizing Words and Images
Read: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (New York: Harper,
1994). (Required book.)
Thursday October
2: LAB:
Student presentations on Recent CD-ROMS. Copies of the CD-ROMS and work
stations will be available at the LARC. Students are encouraged to prepare
presentations on games that they already know well, since the time investment
in starting a new game will be considerable. Your group should look at
how the game makes use of the new media, how it breaks with traditional
forms of cinematic representation, what potentials and restrictions it
places on player participation in the unfolding narrative, your presentation
assessment of its use of the media. One of the tasks will be to think
about what criteria would be appropriate for talking critically about
this new media.
UNIT THREE: CULTURE
Thursday October
4: The Concept of Culture
Read: Peter Barry, "Ten Tenets of Liberal Humanism,"
Beginning Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)
; Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory
of Culture," The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), pp. 3-30.; and Renato Rosaldo, "The Erosion of Classic
Norms," Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp.25-67.
Tuesday October 9: NO CLASS
- COLUMBUS DAY
Tuesday October
9: NO LAB - COLUMBUS DAY
Thursday October
11: Advertising
Read: Sturken and Cartwright, Chapter 6; Grant McCracken, "Meaning,
Manufacture and Movement in the World of Goods," Culture and Consumption
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
Tuesday October
16: Carnival, Liminality, and the Liminoid (Cain)
Read: Rene Girard, excerpt from Violence and the Sacred
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1979); Mikhail Bakhtin, excerpt
from Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1988).
Tuesday October
16: LAB: Jamming the Culture Industry
Read: Rosemary Coombes and Andrew Herman, "Trademark Wars"
(handout)
Screening: The Truman Show
Thursday October
18: Cultural Hierarchy
Read: Pierre Bourdieu, "The Aristocracy of Culture,"
Distinction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1984), pp. 11-96.
Tuesday October 23: Authorship
Read: Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" in Chandra
Mukerji and Michael Schudson (eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 446-464
Tuesday October 23: LAB:
Readers
Read: Sturkin and Cartwright, Chapter 2; Alex Doty, "There's
Something Queer Here," from Alex Doty, Making Things Perfectly
Queer (Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 1993) pp.1-15.
Screening: The Celluloid Closet
Thursday October 25: Collective
Intelligence
Read: Pierre Levy, Collective Intelligence (New York: Perseus,
2000)
Tuesday October 30: Artworlds
Read: Howard Becker, Art Worlds (Berkley: University of
California Press, 1984)
Tuesday October 30: LAB:
The Position of the Poacher
Read: Henry Jenkins, Ch. 1, 2, 4, from Textual Poachers: Television
Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992) (required
book); Henry Jenkins, "Quentin Tarantino's Star Wars?: Digital Cinema,
Media Convergence and Participatory Culture," in Bart Cheever (ed.)
d.film (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming). http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/starwars.html
Screening: Pleasantville
Thursday November 1: Youth
Culture and Moral Panic
Read: Excerpt from Ill Effects
Tuesday November 6: Postmodernity
Read: Sturken and Cartright, Chapter 7
Tuesday November 6: LAB:
Indigenous Voices
Read: Eric Michaels, Chapter V "Hollywood Iconography: A Warlpiri
Reading," from Bad Aboriginal Art: Traditional, Media and Technological
Horizons (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); John Hartley
and Alan McKee, "Telling the Stories: Indigenous Media, Indigenizing
Australian Media," The Indigenous Public Sphere (Cambridge:
Oxford, 2000).
Screening: 88.9 Radio Redfern
Thursday November 8: Globalization
Read: Sturken and Cartright, Chapter 9
Tuesday November 13: Global
Culture and Hybridity
Read: George Lipsitz, Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism
and the Politics of Place (London: Verso, 1994). (Required book.)
Tuesday November 13: LAB:
Manufacturing Consent
UNIT FOUR: SOCIETY
Thursday November 15: Diasporic
Media
Read: Hamid Naficy, "Between Rocks and Hard Places: The Interstitial
Mode of Production in Exilic Cinema," in Home, Exile, Homeland
(London: Routledge, 1999); Ella Shohat, "By the Bitstream of Babylon:
Cyberfrontiers and Diasporic Vistas," from Hamid Naficy (ed.), Home,
Exile, Homeland (London: Routledge, 1999).
Tuesday November 20: The
Public Sphere
Read: Sturken and Cartright, Chapter 5; Jurgen Habermas, "The
Public Sphere," in Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (eds.),
Rethinking Popular Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1991), pp. 398-404
Tuesday November 20: LAB:
Framing the News
Read: John Fiske, "Prologue: "The Juice is Loose,"
and "Introduction," Media Matters (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. xiii-19.
Thursday November 22: NO
CLASS - THANKSGIVING
Tuesday November 27: Rethinking
Citizenship
Read: David Buckingham, "Popularity, Postmodernity and the
Public Sphere" and "Creating Citizens: News, Pedagogy and Empowerment"
(London: Routledge, 2000); Michael Schudson, "Changing Concepts of
Democracy" (Media in Transition website: http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/articles/index_schudson.html)
Tuesday November 27: LAB:
The Politics of Popular Performance
Read: Lisa Nakamura, "Race" and Cynthia Fuchs, "Gender,"
from Thomas Swiss (ed.), Unspun: Key Concepts for Understanding the
World Wide Web (New York: New York University Press, 2000).
Screening: Righteous Babes; Last Angel of History.
Thursday November 29: Media
and Democracy
Read: Robert McChesney, "So Much for the Magic of Technology
and the Free Market: The World Wide Web and the Corporate Media System,"
in Andrew Herman and Thomas Swiss (eds.), The World Wide Web and Contemporary
Cultural Theory (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 5-36.; Cass R, Sunstein,
"The Daily We: Is the Internet really a blessing for democracy?,"
from Boston Review, Summer 2001, pp. 4-19, http://bostonreview.mit.edu/BR26.3/sunstein.html.
Tuesday December 4: The
Information Society (and Student Presentations)
Read: Manuel Castells, "The Information Technology Revolution,"
Tuesday December 4: LAB:
Student Presentations
Thursday December 6: Student
Presentations
Tuesday December 11: Student
Presentations
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