January 11: Course Introduction
Syllabus review
January 18: Dialogue and Dissemination
Plato, Phaedrus, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html.
John Durham Peters, “Introduction: The Problem of Communication,” and “Dialogue and Dissemination,” in Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
January 25: Mass Communication Research Coalesces, 1919-33
Part I in Peters & Simonson
February 1: Communications Research, 1933-49
Part II, especially Readings 12, 15, 21, 32, 35, 39, 40
Group 1: Readings 12-24 in Peters & Simonson
Group 2: Readings 29-41 in Peters & Simonson
February 8: The Culture Industry
Readings 25-27 in Peters & Simonson
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1968), 217-52.
Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Self-Deception,” in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 1969), 120-67.
Theodor Adorno, “The Culture Industry Reconsidered,” in The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, ed. J.M. Bernstein (New York: Routledge, 1991), 98-106.
Paddy Scannell, “Benjamin Contextualized: On ‘The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,’” in Canonic Texts in Media Research: Are There Any? Should There Be? How About These?, ed. Elihu Katz, John Durham Peters, Tamar Liebes, and Avril Orloff (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003), 74-89.
February 15: Mass Communication Theory, 1949-68
Part III, especially Readings 42, 44, 48, 49, 53, 54, 55, 65, 68
Group 3: Readings 42-55 in Peters & Simonson
Group 4: Readings 56-68 in Peters & Simonson
February 22: No class for Western States Communication Association conference
March 1: A Consumer’s Republic I
Cohen, Chapters 1-2
Roderick Hart, “Political Feelings,” in Seducing America: How Television Charms the Modern Voter (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), 1-21.
March 8: A Consumer’s Republic II
Cohen, Chapters 3-4
Thomas Frank, “Why Johnny Can’t Dissent,” in Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 31-45.
March 15: Visuality I
Neil Postman, “The Age of Show Business,” Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1985): 83-98.
Stuart Ewen, “…Images Without Bottom…”, in All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 13-23.
Kevin DeLuca, “Making Waves,” Image Politics: The New Rhetoric of Environmental Activism (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1999): 1-24.
Jean Burgess & Joshua Green, “How YouTube Matters,” YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture (Polity, 2009): 1-14.
March 22: No class, spring break
March 29: Visuality II
Sut Jhally, “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture,” in Gender, Race, and Class: A Text-Reader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 249-57.
Stuart Hall, “The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media,” in Gender, Race, and Class: A Text-Reader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 89-94.
Jean Kilbourne, “‘The More You Subtract, the More You Add’: Cutting Girls Down to Size,” in Gender, Race, and Class: A Text-Reader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 258-267.
Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, “Representing Gay Men on American Television,” in Gender, Race, and Class: A Text-Reader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 597-607.
Imani Perry, “Who(se) Am I?”: The Identity and Image of Women in Hip-Hop,” in Gender, Race, and Class: A Text-Reader, eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003): 136-48.
April 5: The Network Society I
Castells, Prologue & Chapters 1-2
April 12: The Network Society II
Castells, Chapters 5-7 & Conclusion
April 19: The Network Society III
Yochai Benkler, “Introduction,” “Peer Production and Sharing,” and “Political Freedom Part 2: The Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere,” in The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).
April 26: Critics of Connectedness
Steven Shaviro, Connected: Or, What it Means to Live in the Network Society (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 3-34.
Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Part I: Nodes,” The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 23-101.
May 3
Paper presentations
