CMS.790
Media Theory and Methods I
Lecture: Mon, Wed 11-12:30
(1-277)
Lab: Tues EVE 7-10:00
PM (14E-310)
Office hours: Tues 4-5:00 PM and Thurs 3-4:00 PM
Prof. Henry Jenkins
14N-217
253-3068
henry3@mit.edu
http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/syllabi.htm
This course is designed as an advanced
introduction to core issues in media theory and to the basic approaches to
research methods deployed by the Comparative Media Studies faculty. In many of
the sessions, CMS faculty will be describing their own research and discussing
the conceptual models and methodologies which shape its development. This
course is designed to provide you with broad exposure but also help you to
narrow your focus, over the two terms, onto your thesis project.
Required Books (order from Amazon or another
online book service):
Janet
Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
(Cambridge: MIT Press,
1997)
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (New
York: Harper, 1994)
Course Materials (On reserve in the reserve book
room or in the CMS Graduate Student Office)
Requirements:
1. Group
Presentation on New Media Artifact (Oct. 29). (20 percent)
2. Individual
Presentations of Research Projects (Dec. 4-11). (20 percent)
3. Final
Paper, including preliminary materials (Dec. 20; extensions possible with
explicit permission of the instructor; incompletes will be granted ONLY under
extraordinary circumstances.) (40 percent)
4. Class
participation. (20 percent)
Part
One: Core Concepts
September 4, 2002
Towards
A Comparative Approach to Media Studies (Jenkins)
September 9, 2002
Theory
and Practice in Digital Culture (Jenkins)
Read: Thomas
McLaughlin, “Theory Outside the Academy.” Street
Smarts and Critical Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1996).
Henry
Jenkins, “The Work of Theory in the Age of Digital Transformation.” Toby Miller
and Robert Stam (Eds.), A Companion to
Film Theory (New York: Blackwell, 1999).
LAB:
Research and Media Production (Canner and Fendt)
September 11, 2002
Research
in an Industry Context (Koerner)
TBA
September 16, 2002
Research
Paradigms
Read: Kim Schroder,
“The best of both worlds? Media audience research between rival paradigms.”
Alasuutari, (Ed.), Rethinking the Media
Audience (London, 1999) 38-68.
Excerpts
from Janet Wasso, Mark Philips, & Eileen R. Meehan (Eds.), Dazzled By
Disney: The Global Disney Project (New York: Continuum, 2001).
LAB:
Theory and Practice in Soviet Cinema (Jenkins)
Read: David
Bordwell, “Seizing the Spectator: Film theory in the Silent Era.” The Cinema of Eisenstein (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 111-138.
September 18, 2002 (Henry is in Vancouver)
The
Research Process (Uricchio)
Carlo
Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm.” Clues, Myths, and the
Historical Method (London, 1990/ It.1986): 96-125.
Robert
C. Allen, “Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906-1912.” Cinema
Journal, Spring 1979, 2-15.
Ben
Singer, “Manhattan Nickelodeons: New Data on Audiences and Exhibitors.” Cinema
Journal, Spring 1995, 5-35.
Robert C. Allen, “Manhattan Myopia; or, Oh!
Iowa!” Cinema Journal, Spring 1996, 75-103.
Ben Singer, “New York, Just Like I Pictured
It...” Cinema Journal, Spring 1996, 104-128.
William
Uricchio & Roberta E. Pearson, “Dialogue: Manhattan's Nickelodeons.” Cinema
Journal, Summer 1997, 98-102.
Judith Thissen, “Oy, Myopia!” Cinema Journal,
Summer 1997, 102-107.
Ben Singer, “Manhattan Melodrama.” Cinema
Journal, Summer 1997, 107-112.
September 23, 2002
STUDENT
HOLIDAY – NO CLASS
September 25, 2002
Debating
Interpretations (Jenkins)
Read: Donna Harraway, “The Teddy Bear Patriarchy:
Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936,” Nicholas B. Dirks,
Geoff Eley, and Sherry Ortner (Eds.), Culture/ Power/ History: A
Reader in Contemporary Social Theory
(Princeton University Press, 1993)
Michael Schudson, “Cultural Studies and the Social
Construction of ‘Social Construction’: Notes on ‘The Teddy Bear Patriarchy.’”
Elizabeth Long (Ed.), From
Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives (Blackwell Publishers, 1997)
Part
Two: The Concept of Media
September 30, 2002
The
Concept of Media (Jenkins)
Read: Marshall
McCluhan, "Playboy Interview," The
Essential McLuhan (New York: Harper Collins, 1996)
LAB:
Media in an International Context ( Banerjee)
Read:
K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake, “Recent Developments in Indian Popular
Cinema.” Indian Popular Cinema (Orient Longman, 1998), chapt. 7, pp.
103-122.
Ashish
Rajadhyaksha, “The Phalke Era: Conflict of Traditional Form and Modern
Technology.” Tejaswini Niranjana, P. Sudhir, Vivek Dhareshwar (Eds.), Interrogating
Modernity: Culture and Colonialism in India (Calcutta: Seagull, 1993).
Screen:
Sholay
October 2, 2002
New
Historicism (TBA)
October 7, 2002
Media
and Reality (Jenkins)
Read: Andre Bazin,
“The Myth of Total Cinema” and “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” What Is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1967).
LAB:
Run Lola Run (Jenkins)
Read: Jay David
Bolter and Richard Grusin, “Introduction: The Double Logic of Remediation.” Remediation (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1998).
October 9, 2002
Defining
a New Media (Jenkins)
Read: Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of
Narrative in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997). (Required book.)
October 14, 2002
COLUMBUS
DAY—NO CLASS
October 16, 2002
Reading
Texts (Donaldson)
Peter S. Donaldson with Greg Dancer and Sara Lyons,
“‘In Fair Verona:’ Media, Spectacle and Performance in Romeo+Juliet.” Shakespeare
after Mass Media, Richard Burt (Ed.). (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp.
59-82.
Related multimedia essay: same
title at http://shea1.mit.edu/saa99/html2000/
Peter S. Donaldson, “Shakespeare in the Age of
Post-Mechanical Reproduction: Sexual and Electronic Magic in Prospero's Books.”
Shakespeare the Movie: Popularizing the Plays on Film, Tv, and Video, (Eds.)
Lynda E. Boose & Richard Burt (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 148-168.
Related multimedia essay: Peter S. Donaldson, “Digital Archives and Sibylline Fragments:
The Tempest and the End of Books,” Postmodern Culture 8.2 (Jan., 1998).
Special Issue on Film. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/postmodern_culture/ also
at: http://shea.mit.edu/eob/
October 21, 2002
Reading
Images (TBA)
LAB:
Reading Music (Marks)
Read: Martin Marks, “Breil’s Score for: The Birth of a Nation.” Music and
the Silent Film (Oxford University Press, 1997), chapt. 4, pp. 109-166 & appendix, pp.
198-287.
October 23, 2002
Theorizing
Words and Images (Jenkins)
Read:
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
(New York: Harper, 1994). (Required book.)
October 28, 2002
New
Media, Classical Responses (Jackson)
Read: Walter
Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations,
Trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1968).
Theodor
Adorno, “Response.”
William
Wordsworth, “Resolution and Independence.”
Lewis
Carroll, “The White Knight's Tale.”
LAB:
Student presentations on Recent CD-ROMS. Students are
encouraged to prepare presentations on new media artifacts that they already
know well, since the time investment in starting a new game will be
considerable. Your group should look at how the artifacts make use of the new
media, how it breaks with traditional forms of cinematic representation, what
potentials and restrictions it places on participation in the unfolding
narrative, your 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.
October 30, 2002
Media
Effects, a Qualitative Perspective (Turkle)
Sherry Turkle, “Introduction: Identity in the Age of the
Internet,” (pp. 9-26). Chapter 7: “Aspects of the Self,” (pp. 177-269). Life
on the Screen: Identity in the Age of
the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1997).
Part
Three: The Concept of Culture
November 4, 2002
Culture
Defined (Thorburn)
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of
Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973):
“Chapter 1: Thick
Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture” (pp. 3-30)
“Chapter 15: Deep
Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” (pp. 443-53).
James
W. Carey, “A Cultural Approach to Communication.” Communication as Culture
(Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 13-36.
Raymond
Williams from Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York:
Oxford, 1985; original revised edition, 1983), pp. 31-32; 87-93 [“Aesthetic,”
“Culture”].
From Marxism and Literature (New York:
Oxford, 1977), pp. 108-127.
LAB:
Hellzapoppin (Jenkins)
Read: Henry Jenkins, “The
Strange Case of the Backflipping Senators.” What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early
Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992)
pp. 1-25.
November 6, 2002
Popular
Culture
Henry Jenkins, “Games, the New Lively Art”
(Forthcoming) http://web.mit.edu/21fms/www/faculty/henry3/GamesNewLively.html.
Robert Warshow, “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner.” The
Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre & Other Aspects of Popular
Culture (New York: Atheneum, 1975), pp. 135-154.
November 11, 2002
VETERAN’S
DAY – NO CLASS
LAB:
Film as Cultural Critique (Fischer)
November 13, 2002 Researching Chinese Advertising (Wang)
Jing Wang, “Modern and Contemporary Chinese
Advertising.” An entry for the Routledge Encyclopedia for Contemporary
Chinese Culture (2003).
Jing Wang (Ed.), “Guest Editor’s Introduction.” Special
Issue of Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique: Chinese Popular Culture
and the State, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Duke University Press, 2001).
November 18, 2002
Cultural
Hierarchy (Jenkins)
Read: Pierre
Bourdieu, “The Aristocracy of Culture.” Distinction: A Social Critique of
the Judgement of Taste (R. Nice, Trans.). (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press 1984), pp. 11-96.
Lab:
Readers (Jenkins)
Read: Alex Doty,
“There's Something Queer Here.” Making
Things Perfectly Queer (Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
pp.1-15.
Screening:
The Celluloid Closet
November 20, 2002
Authorship
(Jenkins)
Read: Michel
Foucault, “What is an Author?” Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Eds.), Rethinking Popular Culture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), pp. 446-464.
November 25, 2002
Researching
Intellectual Property (Coombe)
Rosemary Coombe, “Author(iz)ing The Celebrity:
Engendering Alternative Identities.” The Cultural Life of Intellectual
Properties: Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law (Durham:Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 89-122.
Lab:
Ethnographies of Consumption (Jenkins)
Henry
Jenkins, Ch. 1, 2, 4, from Textual
Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge,
1992) (required book).
John Tulloch, “Conclusion: Cult, talk, and
their audiences.” Watching Television
Audiences: Clutural theories and methods (London: Arnold, forthcoming),
chapter 11, pp. 202-248.
November 27, 2002
Ethnographies
of Production (Shattuc)
TBA
December 2, 2002
Art
Worlds (Jenkins)
Read:
Howard Becker, excerpt from Art Worlds
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1984)
LAB:
African cinema, contexts of production and reception (Cazenave)
Screen:
Lumumba
Read:
Teshome Gabriel (1998). “Toward a Critical Theory of Third World Films.” Cinemas
of the Black Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), pp.
70-90.
Martin
Mhando, Approaches to African Cinema Study.
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/8/african.html
December 4, 2002
Student
Presentations
December 9, 2002
Student
Presentations
Lab:
Student Presentations
December 11, 2002
Student
Presentations