The
University of Western Ontario
Faculty of
Information and Media Studies
Media, Information
and Technoculture
MIT
204F Fall 2001
Mapping Media and Cultural Theory
Professor: Carole Farber pcecmf@uwo.ca
Faculty of Information and Media
Studies 519-661-2111 ex 88477
Rm 285, Middlesex College
Campus N6A 5B7
E-hours/F2F
hours: Monday 4:30-5:30pm,
Wednesday 4:30-5:30pm or by appointment
Class
Meetings: Wednesday 6-9pm, Middlesex College Rm. 6
“When the most basic
concepts - the concepts, as it is said, from which we begin - are suddenly seen
to be not concepts but problems, not analytic problems either but historical
movements that are still unresolved, there is no sense in listening to the
sonorous summons of their resounding clashes. We have only, if we can, to
recover the substance from which their forms were cast." Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature
(1977)
Course Description:
The course explores traditions within media and cultural
theory, including traditions such as cultural studies, semiotics, hermeneutics,
poststructuralism and postmodernism. These traditions arise from debates around
such issues as: audience/reader activity, diversity, context, texts and textual
determination, ideology and hegemony, discourse, and socio-cultural
constructions.
While theoretical traditions and debates may appear
uninviting as topics, we will endeavour to capture the excitement and
commitment of scholars, artists, reporters, activists, producers, critics, etc.
engaging these different approaches to understanding real issues in media and
technocultural studies.
Course Objectives
In order to prepare
you for further MIT courses, this course is designed to help you:
Directly:
- to critically
analyse and learn to unpack arguments and claims made through various
theoretical perspectives and models used in cultural and media studies;
- to participate in and contribute to
ongoing debates about theory and explanation for media and technoculture
products and processes;
- to gain an understanding of the various theoretical
traditions that informs the interdisciplinary study of media and technoculture;
- to identify and
critically examine representations of (or what passes for) “theory” within various media
- to work collaboratively in
computer-mediated groups
Indirectly:
- to effectively and critically
use computer-conferencing and other learning technologies, both experimentally and in
prescribed ways for theoretical discussion
- to hone and make more effective one’s Internet searches
- to build and contribute to existing databases of internet
sources on cultural and media theories
- to hone writing and communication skills
- to build a broad understanding of computer-mediated
communications
Course
Assignments and Evaluation:
See
appended Calendar for Essay Assignment and Debate Due Dates
1) Two
essay assignments. 30%
2) Digital Diary/Journal Entries:
Research Questions 10%
3) Participation in Class and WebCt
Discussions; Attendance in Class. 20%
4) Collaborative Debate 10%
5) Final Examination 30%
You will
see from the Detailed Weekly Topical Outline and Guide, the reading for the week’s
discussion or the module must be completed before the class meeting for which
it is relevant. The assignments and guidelines for their completion will be
clearly spelled out well in advance of the week they are due. We will be
using WebCt for ongoing discussions and the posting of assignments, etc. All written assignments can be emailed to me within
WebCt or placed on a web page for viewing. Be sure to keep a copy of all work submitted in fulfillment of
this class and make sure that it is dated the date you send or post it. You
all will have the opportunity to use Student Homepages within WebCt, but since
you all have space on the http://publish.uwo.ca server, you are encouraged to use
it for the construction of your site and then link it to your page in WebCt.
Student Homepages function within WebCt is limited. Our course resource site is http://instruct.uwo.ca/mit/204f -- it is filled with resources for our
course – thanks to former MIT student Martin Finestone for providing this.
You are
required to keep a digital diary/journal of your experiences and thoughts as
you move through this course material. You can keep it as an HTML diary or one
within a word-processed text. I suggest
a minimum of 3 entries a week to record your thoughts and reactions to:
readings; things happening of relevance in other classes; things you see going
on around you; reflections on what you are encountering; etc. The Diary/Journal Entries Research
Questions are to carefully sift through your diary/journal at various
prescribed times and formulate from your experience research questions for
which the theories we are exploring are relevant.
Your Collaborative
Debate will be reconstructing a debate in cultural or media theory, with
two members of the group representing one position and two members of the group
representing another position. You will
be able to use online chat to meet and practice, within WebCt.
Online
Discussions and Spaces:
The ongoing discussions for
this class will occur within the online course management system, WebCt. I
expect discussions will take place, either synchronously or asynchronously,
between classes, as ideas and responses occur to participants. There will be a discussion space, live chat
space, interactive whiteboard space, as well as presentation spaces, etc. Notes for your readings as well as other
relevant course material will also be available inside the course space on
WebCt. This system may be accessed
through your regular connections to UWO, or from the General Use Computer Labs
or Library. https://webct.uwo.ca is the login area where you use your UWO
ID and Password to LOGIN to MIT204F as well as any other courses you may be
taking that are mounted within WebCt.
You are free to introduce new topics to the discussion, and required to
participate in the various discussion topics that articulate with the course
outline.
Class:
You will be
expected to attend all classes. This
class is run in a seminar format and so supporting your colleagues and
discussion is crucial. You are expected
to let me know as soon as possible if you are unable to attend a class for
illness (documentation required) or require religious accommodation.
Plagiarism:
(In accordance with policy at UWO and taken from a document
provided by Alan C. Weedon, Dean of Graduate Studies):
"Students must write their essays and assignments in
their own words. Whenever students take
an idea, or a passage of text from another author, they must acknowledge their
debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing
such as footnotes or citations.
Plagiarism is a major academic offence (see Scholastic Offence Policy in
the Western Academic Calendar)."
Plagiarism Checking:
The University of Western Ontario uses software for
plagiarism checking. Students may be
required to submit their written work in electronic form for plagiarism
checking."
Texts and
Resources:
Text:
Simon During (ed)
1999
The Cultural Studies Reader
(2nd Edition). New York: Routledge.
(In Bookstore)
Web theory sites:
Voice of the Shuttle http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/cultural.html
http://vos.ucsb.edu/shuttle/media.html
Sarah Zupko’s Cultural Studies Center http://www.popcultures.com/
Theory Org. http://www.theory.org.uk/
Cyber http://eserver.org/cyber/content2.html
CultureTechnologyLinks
http://www.duke.edu/~wgrobin/ethics/surfmisc.html#pomo
k.i.s.s. of the Panopticon: theory for the rest of us http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home.htm
Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural theory http://www3.oup.co.uk/ywcct/
Cultural Theory http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/phoebe/mosaic/cultural-studies.html
Feminist Theory http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/theory.html
Queer Theory and LGBT Resources http://www.erraticimpact.com/~lgbt/
Cultural Studies Central
http://www.culturalstudies.net/
Spoon Collective philosophical and political http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/
Ctheory http://www.ctheory.com/
Queen’s University Sunsite –memory parlour cultural theory http://sunsite.queensu.ca/memorypalace/index.html
Journals (print and e-journals)
http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/ Critical Inquiry
http://eserver.org/bs/
Bad Subjects
http://eserver.org/cultronix/ Cultronix
http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-pub-cult/ Public Culture
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dif/ differences
http://www.edge.org/ The Edge of knowledge
Other Interesting Places
Grounded Theory Institute http://www.groundedtheory.com/
Grounded Theory in Public Discourse http://www.habermas.org/grndthry.htm
Grounded theory on the Web http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/1491/gtm-19.html
Electronic Bibliography maintained at the Walter Benjamin
org. site http://www.wbenjamin.org/bibliotronic.html
Contemporary theory:
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/postmodern.html
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/semiotics.html
Mick Underwood’s Cultsok database site http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/index.html
Happy Fun Communication Land http://www.rdillman.com/HFCL/HFCLprime.html
Additional Online Texts:
Culture Industry Reconsidered Adorno online http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmnF93/culture_reconsidered.txt
Culture Industry or Mass Deception Adorno Horkheimer http://www.msu.edu/user/sullivan/TangCritTheoryAdornoCultInd.html
The Idea of the Theory of Knowledge as Social Theory Habermas
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/habermas.htm
Anticipating McLuhan in British and Canadian Media
Theory CJC
http://www.wlu.ca/~wwwpress/jrls/cjc/BackIssues/18.4/tiessen.html
Video of Raymond Williams on Culture and Technology
http://sunsite.queensu.ca/memorypalace/parlour/Williams02/
Raymond Williams on Reified Texts http://sunsite.queensu.ca/memorypalace/parlour/Williams06/index.html
Streaming Video Raymond Williams from Roland Collection of
Ideas for our Times http://www.roland-collection.com/rolandcollection/literature/101/W38.htm
Education and the Local
http://sunsite.queensu.ca/memorypalace/mall/Williams0
Bookmarks for Cyborgs http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~glik/marks.html
Cultural Studies West http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/253WEBB.htm
Semiotics http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/semiotics.html#barthes
CyberSemiotic Institute http://www.epas.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/cyber.html
Detailed Weekly Topical Outline and Guide
September 12 Introduction: What we will be doing
in this class
Please read the Introduction to
the Cultural Studies Reader and carefully examine the k.i.s.s. website
(see resources above) -- Think about
what how theory is made and what the job of theory is, visit our website http://instruct.uwo.ca/mit/204f before the next class
Media/cultural examples
September 19 Making and Contesting: Theory is a
human activity
Questions of Definition and
Questions of Action
Carefully examine the Voice of the
Shuttle Website
Construct 3 questions about the
“organization of cultural and media theory” and its intersection with other
domains of theoretical inquiry
Reading:
http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/home6.htm#sowhat
Stuart Hall: “Cultural Studies and
its Theoretical Legacies” Cultural Studies Reader, pp.97-109
Miller, “Contesting Understanding
Comics” http://www.dreamscape.com/jsmiller/mccloud.htm
Media/cultural examples
September 26 Looking at Media and Culture as
Industries
Critical Theory
Reading:
Adorno and Horkheimer, “The
Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” Cultural Studies Reader, pp, 31-41
Bennett, “Putting Policy into
Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 479-491
Examine the relevant resources on
Adorno, Critical Theory – (above and on the instruct site)
Giroux “Cultural Politics and the
Crisis of the University” http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j002/Articles/art_giro.htm (Situating ourselves as part of the
cultural machine)
Culture Industry Reconsidered Adorno online http://hamp.hampshire.edu/~cmnF93/culture_reconsidered.txt
Case Study of a Cultural Industry
October 3 From Adorno to Benjamin: Theorists’ lives/dilemmas, etc.
From production to consumption
Reading:
McRobbie “ The Place of Walter
Benjamin in Cultural Studies Cultural Studies Reader pp. 77-95
Electronic Bibliography maintained
at the Walter Benjamin org. site http://www.wbenjamin.org/bibliotronic.html
Morris, “Things to do With
Shopping Centres” Cultural Studies
Reader
Pp 391-409
Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project
discussion
http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/panop/benjamin.htm (k.i.s.s. Benjamin)
Observation at a Mall – notes for
analyzing the phenomena
October 10 Bourdieu’s Taste and Raymond
Williams’ Cultural Materialism
Bourdieu, “How to be a Sport’s
Fan” Cultural Studies Reader pp.
427-439.
Taste http://www.people.virginia.edu/~bb3v/symbound/wps/Olivier.html
Giroux, Private Satisfactions and
Public Disorders: Fight Club, Patriarchy, and the Politics of Masculine
Violence http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/FightClub
Williams, “ Advertising: The Magic
System” Cultural Studies Reader pp. 410-424.
How many ways to “read”,
“deconstruct”, “make sense of” , Banner Advertising
October 17 Literary Approaches to Culture and
Media (1) Response and Subjects
Review Is There a Text in This
Class http://www.moock.org/nostalgia/stanfish.html
Radway, “The Institutional Matrix
of Romance” Cultural Studies Reader pp.564-576
Reader-Response http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/readercrit.html
October 24 Literary Approaches to
Culture and Media (2) Semiotics and Hermeneutics
Culler,
“Semiotics and Deconstruction” http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/pub/poetics/art/sem8.html
The Fashion
System Analyzed http://mh.cla.umn.edu/txtimdb2.html
Various
Approaches: http://www.assumption.edu/HTML/Academic/users/ady/HHGateway/Gateway/Approaches.html
Analyze a “Menu”
October 31 Theorizing Horror, Reversals,
Masquerade (DRAG) and Rituals
Queer Theory/Performance Theory
NYC Halloween http://www.mind-force.net/library/01/02_22.htm
Stallybrass and White “ Bourgeois
Hysteria and the Carnivalesque” Cultural Studies Reader pp. 382-389.
Brown, “On Kitsch, Nostalgia and
Ninties Feminism” http://www.middleenglish.org/spc/22.3/brown.html
November 7 Structural,
Post-Structural- Varieties of Discourse Analysis
Luke, Reading Gender and Culture
in Media Discourses and Texts http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/courses/ed253a/Luke/LITLEX1.html
Levi-Strauss -Structural Study of
Myth http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/levi-strauss.html
Lyotard, “Defining the PostModern”
Cultural Studies Reader pp.
142-144.
Foucault, Problem of the
Intellectual http://eserver.org/bs/52/bertsch.html
The “textual and reading” analogy
for other cultural and media events
Examples and discussion
November 14 Discourses of Difference: Foucault,
Butler and Bhabha
Bhabha, “The PostColonial and the
Postmodern: The question of agency” Cultural
Studies Reader pp. 189-207
Butler, “Subjects of
Sex/Gender/Desire” Cultural Studies Reader pp. 340-352
Hooks, “A Revolution of Values:
The Promise of Multicultural Change” Cultural Studies Reader pp. 233-239
Foucault and Internet Discourse http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue2/aycock.html
November 21 Colonial, Post-Colonial –Varieties
of Analytic frames for Domination
Appadurai, “ Disjunction and
Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” Cultural Studies Reader pp,
220-230.
Negative Ecstasy: Itwaru http://www.mind-force.net/library/01/02_22.htm
How to Read Donald Duck, Ariel
Dorfman, etc. Empires old clothes
Chow, “ Listening Otherwise: Music
Miniaturization: A Different Kind of Question about Revolution” Cultural Studies Reader pp. 462-475.
The Last Place http://www.lastplace.com/ Virtual Web Museum Kolkata
Debate: Anthony Giddens re
Globalism http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/giddens/giddens_index.html
November 28 Feminist, Post-Feminist – Varieties
deLauretis, “Upping the Anti (sic)
in Feminist Theory” Cultural Studies
Reader pp. 307-319.
The Guerrilla Girls: Cultural
Conscience http://www.guerrillagirls.com/
Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” Cultural
Studies Reader pp.272-290
December 5 Review Cultural Studies and Media theory Revisited
Debates/Making/Contesting/