This course has five units, each one devoted to one of media's affordances. (An affordance is a potential for use.) All readings are on electronic reserve except for those that are linked directly from this page. Some readings are available on both e-reserve and online (e.g., articles in the New York Times and Time). For the full syllabus, including course policies and grade breakdown, download the pdf version.
Day 1: Course Introduction (W 1/23)
unit i: media to sell
Day 2: Today's Media Companies and their Strategies (M 1/28) Read David Croteau & William Hoynes, "Introduction" and "Chapter 4: Strategies of the New Media Giants"
Day 3: Media Company: Disney (W 1/30) Read Janet Wasko, "The Disney Empire"; View "Original Disneyland Intro" (2 min. 48 sec.)
Day 4: Media Franchise: Batman (M 2/4) Read Eileen Meehan, "'Holy Commodity
Fetish, Batman!': The Political Economy of a Commercial Intertext"; View "Batdance", Batman (1989) trailer (Recommended: Wikipedia, "Batman", "Batman Franchise Media")
Day 5: Advertising (M 2/11) Read Inger L. Stole, "Advertising"; View "Chanel No. 5" ad
Day 6: MTV (W 2/13) View "MTV 1983 (Part 1 of 2)" (85 min.) and please don't ignore the commercials, promos, and VJs; Read Ed Levine, "TV Rocks With Music" and Janet Maslin, "TV View; A Song is No Longer Strictly a Song, Now It's a 'Video'"
unit ii: media to entertain
Day 7: Entertainment (M 2/18) Read Neal Gabler, "The Republic of Entertainment"
Day 8: Hollywood (W 2/20) First paper due; View Singin' in the Rain; Read Douglas Gomery, "The Triumph of Hollywood"
Day 9: Television Drama (M 2/25) View Grey's Anatomy episode "Kung Fu Fighting" (originally aired 11/1/07; to be repeated Friday, Feb. 15 at 7 pm on ABC); Read Michael Z. Newman, "From Beats to Arcs"
Day 10: Videogames (W 2/27) Read Steven R. Poole, "The Origin of Species" and "The Player of Games"
Day 11: Midterm Exam (M 3/3) no section this week/no class on Wednesday
unit iii: media to document reality
Day 12: Representing Experience (M 3/10) Read Anthony Lane, "Candid Camera: The Cult of Leica"
Day 13: Photography (W 3/12) Read John Szarkowski, "The Photographer's Eye"; Mia Fineman, "Say Cheese!: A History of the American Snapshot"; Alex Williams, "Here I Am Taking My Own Picture"
Day 14: Sound Recording and Music (M 3/24) Read Michael Chanan, "Record Culture"
Day 15: The Moving Image (W 3/26) View Early Lumière Films; Early Edison Films; Méliès's The Black Imp; Read Eric Barnouw, Documentary, pp. 1-51
Day 16: Reality TV (M 3/31) Read Susan Murray, "“’I Think We Need a New Name For It’: The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV” and Michael Hirschorn, "The Case for Reality TV"
unit iv: media as civic culture
Day 17: Media for Citizens (W 4/2) Read Peter Dahlgren, "Media, Citizenship and Civic Culture"
Day 18: Newspapers and their Public (M 4/7) Read Michael Schudson, "The Revolution in American Journalism in the Age of Egalitarianism: The Penny Press"
Day 19: News Culture and New Technologies (W 4/9) Read Michael Schudson, "National News Culture and the Informational Citizen"
Day 20: Digital Publics (M 4/14) Read Howard Rheingold, "A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community"
Day 21: Media by Citizens (W 4/16) Read Wikipedia, "Citizen Journalism"; Steve Outing, "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism"; Jay Rosen, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience"; Jeff Jarvis, "Networked Journalism"
unit v: media as art
Day 22: Art and New Technologies (M 4/21) Read Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
No class Wednesday, April 23 (sections will meet this week) - spend this time working on your paper
Day 23: Movies as the "Seventh Art" (M 4/28) Second Paper Due; Read Hugo Münsterberg, "The Function of the Photoplay"
(note: no sections April 29/30)
Day 24: Advertising and Pop Art (W 4/30) Read Lawrence Alloway, "The Arts and the Mass Media"; Time, "Pop Art - Cult of the Commonplace"
Day 25: Music Sampling (M 5/5) Read Mark Katz, "Music in 1s and 0s"; Listen to Paul Lansky, "notjustmoreidlechatter"; Camille Yarbrough, "Take Yo' Praise"; Fatboy Slim, "Praise You"; Public Enemy, "Fight the Power" (for some of these to play in their entirety, you need to sign up for an account at imeem, which is easy and fast)
Day 26: Remix Culture (W 5/7) Read articles from Wired 13.07 in the section "remix planet" (yeah, all of them--they're short!)
Final Exam Tuesday, May 13, 12:30-2:30
full citations
Lawrence Alloway, "The Arts and the Mass Media," Architectural Design & Construction (February 1958).
Erik Barnow, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (New York: Oxford UP, 1974).
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations (trans. Hannah Arendt)
Michael Chanan, "Record Culture," Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music (London: Verso, 1995).
"Citizen Journalism," Wikipedia.
David Croteau and William Hoynes, The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest (Pine Forge, 2005).
Peter Dahlgren, "Media, Citizenship, and Civic Culture," in James Curran and Michael Gurevitch, eds., Mass Media and Society 3rd ed. (London: Arnold, 2000), 310-328.
Mia Fineman, "Say Cheese!: A History of the American Snapshot," Slate (17 October 2007).
Neal Gabler, "The Republic of Entertainment," Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage, 2000).
Douglas Gomery, "The Triumph of Hollywood," Movie History: A Survey (Wadsworth, 1991).
Michael Hirschorn, "The Case for Reality TV," Atlantic Monthly (May 2007).
Jeff Jarvis, "Networked Journalism," BuzzMachine (5 July 2006).
Mark Katz, "Music in 1s and 0s," Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (Berkeley: U of California P, 2004).
Anthony Lane, "Candid Camera: The Cult of Leica," The New Yorker (24 September 2007).
Ed Levine, "TV Rocks With Music," New York Times (8 May 1983).
Janet Maslin, "TV View; A Song is No Longer Strictly a Song, Now It's a 'Video,'" New York Times (23 January 1983).
Eileen Meehan, "Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!" in Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, eds., The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and his Media (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Hugo Münsterberg, "The Function of the Photoplay," in Philip Lopate, ed., American Movie Critics (New York: Library of America, 2006), 10-17.
Susan Murray, "“’I
Think We Need a New Name For It’: The Meeting of Documentary and
Reality TV” in Susan Murray and Laurie Ouelette, eds., Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (New York New York UP, 2004), 40-56.
Michael Z. Newman, "From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative," The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006), 16-28.
Steve Outing, "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism," Poynter Online (15 June 2005).
Stephen R. Poole, Trigger Happy (Fourth Estate, 2001).
"Pop Art - Cult of the Commonplace," Time (3 May 1963).
Howard Rheingold, "A Slice of Life in My Virtual Community," The Virtual Community: Homesteading On The Electronic Fronier (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993).
Jay Rosen, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience," PressThink (27 June 2006).
Michael Schudson, "The Revolution in American Journalism in the Age of Egalitarianism: The Penny Press," Discovering The News: A Social History of American Newspapers (Basic Books, 1980).
Michael Schudson, "National News Culture and the Informational Citizen," The Power of News (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996).
Inger L. Stole, "Advertising," in Richard Maxwell, Ed., Culture Works: The Political Economy of Culture (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001).
John Szarkowski, The Photographer's Eye (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1966/2007).
Janet Wasko, Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy (Polity, 2001).
Alex Williams, "Here I Am Taking My Own Picture," New York Times (19 February 2006).
Wired 13.07 (July 2005), "Remix Planet" section.