Seminar in Media Studies

SEMINAR IN MEDIA STUDIES

COMM 502 Seminar in Media Studies, Autumn 2003
Thursdays, 3:30 – 6 p.m. Call No. 33056
University of Illinois, Chicago, BSB 1169

Kevin G. Barnhurst, Ph.D., Interim Head, Department of Communication
Office BSB 1148A. Hours Tuesdays 2 – 4 p.m. or by appointment (312) 413-3231 E-mail <kgbcomm()uic.edu>
Web Site http://www.uic.edu/~kgbcomm/

Description

This seminar provides an in-depth, intensive examination and discussions of theories, perspectives, and approaches to media studies. The assignments include extensive readings, four original research problems, and midterm and final examinations.

Purposes

To investigate the symbolic social practices that communication media help sustain.

To examine the political, economic, and cultural implications of those practices.

To understand the history of how scholars have conceptualized and studied the communication media.

These are general objectives; the seminar offers neither information nor facts per se. It is an extended conversation about a series of interesting texts we will share, which will enable us to analyze and research modern media of communication. The course is interactive, with reading, discussion, reflection, and critical thinking equally emphasized, and expected of you. The seminar will help you examine the way people live day to day and the ways people organize and conduct life in a media-saturated society.

Readings

Because the course includes a full range of scholarship in the history of media studies, each session includes a list of articles, chapters, and entire books you are responsible to read. There is a strategy for getting through all this material, which you’ll need to master right away (posted on my internet site plus /didact/html/readsocsci.htm). The readings are listed in chronological order and marked to help you plan. You might start by checking out the overview reading (Ã), and allow extra time for the longer readings (*). All readings are held on reserve at the Morgan Library, but you must start early to get a chance at them. Although reserve readings circulate for longer periods, please check them out for 2 hours maximum, so that others can read them as well. To guide you as you go along, please purchase an overview textbook in media studies (see /didact/html/comm502texts.htm).

Problems

As a key element of the course, you will write four research proposals, each tied to a different school of thought. After reviewing the readings and our discussion, propose a research question dealing with a current issue or problem, but based on the approaches and types of questions the earlier authors might pose and pursue. Write about three pages including the following (with these labels): a brief Introduction to the issue or statement of the problem, a short description of any relevant Literature you would consult or have consulted to position your problem and an indication of what Methods of study you would use, both in relation to the school of thought, and a concluding statement of why the issue has Significance, followed by a list of any References. To help you on the problems, the following book is recommended (available from the UIC bookstore):

Stokes, Jane. How to do Media & Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 2003.

Evaluations

The two take-home exams happen at midterm and during finals week. Several short essay questions may cover any of the readings from the seminar. Questions generally present an issue or social problem related to the media and leave open several options for you to answer based on your areas of interest and strength. In short, each exam is comprehensive — covering all previous material — but also flexible.

Course grades follow this formula: Problems, 40 percent (10 percent each); Participation (your preparation on the week’s readings and contribution to class discussion), 35 percent; and Exams, 25 percent (10 percent for the midterm and 15 percent for the final).

Regulations

Late assignments will be accepted for one week after the original due date, dropping one full grade. If you have an illness or emergency, please meet with me to discuss an appropriate action. Any adjustments in deadlines and assignments will require documentation. Students with disabilities who require accommodations for access or participation in this course must register with the Office of Disability Services at (312) 413-2103 or –0123 (TTY).

If you must miss class due to religious holidays or observances, please notify me well ahead of time so that arrangements can be made that will not disadvantage you in the course.

You must do your own work. Papers must be original work completed for this course alone. Turning in a paper that is the same or substantially the same as work completed for another course is considered academic dishonesty and will result in a failing grade on the assignment. Cite the ideas of others thoroughly and consistently, and provide page numbers for quotations. Students found to have plagiarized the work of others (used their words without giving proper credit), including material from the internet, will receive a failing grade for the course.

OUTLINE

Aug. 26 (Tuesday). Introduction & Orientation
Distribution of textbooks for the following assignment:

Orientation Assignment. You will be provided three textbooks, one advanced, one intermediate, and one basic. (See the Textbook List: http://tigger.uic.edu/~kgbcomm/didact/html/comm502texts.htm.) Write a one-page comparison to share. Due Sept. 4.

Sept. 4. Overview of Media Studies

Ã *Delia, Jesse. "Communication Research: A History." In Handbook of Communication Science, pp. 20–98. Ed. Charles R. Berger and Steven H. Chaffee. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1987.

Part I. Pre-20th Century Antecedents to Media Studies

Sept. 11. Enlightenment and Eighteenth Century Media

Ã Heyer, Paul. "The Eighteenth Century." Communications & History: Theories of Media, Knowledge, and Civilization, pp. 3–48. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

*Locke, John. "Of Words." An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. Ed. & Abbr. John W. Yolton. London: Everyman, 1993. See Book iii, pp. 225–79.

*Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Essay on the Origin of Languages. 1773. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

*Innis, Harold. "The English Publishing Trade in the Eighteenth Century." The Bias of Communication, pp. 142–55. 1951. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Concept of Enlightenment." Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 3–42. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. Chapter 1.

*Foucault, Michel. "Speaking." The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, pp. 78–124. New York: Pantheon, 1971.

Nineteenth Century Rise of the Social Sciences

Comte, Auguste. "Population Increase and the Law of Three Stages." Sociological Theory, 4th ed., pp. 592–94. Ed. L. Coser & B. Rosenberg. New York: Macmillan, 1976.

*Marx, Karl. "Alienated Labor" and "The Materialist Conception of History." The Portable Karl Marx, pp. 131–46, and 163–71. Ed. Eugene Kamenka. New York: Penguin, 1983.

Durkheim, Emile. "Sociology in France in the Nineteenth Century." On Morality and Society, Selected Writings, pp. 3–22, 230. Ed. Robert N. Bellah. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

*Weber, Max. "Politics as a Vocation" and "Science as a Vocation." From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, pp. 96–99, 129–56. Ed. and Trans. H. H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills. 1958. London: Routledge, 1991.

*Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Trans. George Walsh & Frederick Lehnert. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967. See especially, "Subjective and Objective Meaning" and "Transition to the Analysis of the Constituting Process," pp. 31–44.

Part II. Early 20th Century Social Studies

Sept. 18. The Great War and Its Aftermath

*Mock, James R., and Cedric Larson. Words that Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Relations, 1917–1919. 1939. New York: Russell & Russell, 1968. See especially, "The American Mind in Wartime," pp. 3–18; and "Blueprint for Tomorrow’s CPI," pp. 337–46.

Royce, Josiah. "Provincialism." Race Questions and Other American Problems, pp. 57–108. New York: Macmillan, 1908. Chapter 3.

*Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. 1927. New York: Macmillan, 1945. See especially, Chapter 1, "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads," pp. 3–32; Chapter 16, "The Self-Centered Man," pp. 161–74; and Chapter 17, "The Self-Contained Community,: pp. 263–75.

Lasswell, Harold. "Propaganda." Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, pp. 521–27. New York: Macmillan, 1937.

Bourne, Randolph S. "Twilight of the Idols." War and the Intellectuals: Essays, 1915–1919, pp. 53–64. New York: Harper & Row, 1964. Chapter 6.

Early Social Science Research in the United States and Britain

*Fenton, Frances. The Influence of Newspaper Presentations Upon the Growth of Crime and Other Anti-Social Activity. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1911. (96 pages)

*Munsterberg, Hugo. The Film: The Silent Photoplay in 1916, A Psychological Study. 1916. New York: Dover, 1970. See especially, Foreword, pp. v-xv; and Chapter 1, pp. 1–17.

*Mass Observation. Worktowners at Blackpool: Mass-Observation and Popular Leisure in the 1930s, pp. 1–15, 229–39. London: Routledge, 1990. See also Madge, Charles, and Tom Harrison, eds. First Year’s Work, 1937–1938, by Mass-Observation. London: Harrisson, 1938.

*Lashley, Karl S., and John B. Watson. A Psychological Study of Motion Pictures in Relation to Venereal Disease Campaigns. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board, 1922. (86 pages)

*Charters, W. W. Motion Pictures and Youth. New York: Macmillan, 1931. (66 pages)

Sept. 25. The Chicago School of Sociology

Ã Joas, Hans. "Pragmatism in American Sociology." Pragmatism and Social Theory, pp. 14–51. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. (Chapter 1.)

*Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2 Vols. New York: Knopf, 1927. See especially, "Methodological Note," pp. 1–86; "The Wider Community and the Role of the Press," pp. 1367–97; and "Conclusion," pp. 1822–27.

*Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self & Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1934. See especially, "Democracy and Universality in Society," pp. 281–9; and "Obstacles and Promises in the Development of an Ideal Society," pp. 317–28.

*Dewey, John. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1927. See especially, Chapter 3, "Search for the Great Community," pp. 143–84.

*Cooley, Charles H. Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. See especially, Part II, "Communication," pp. 61–103. New York: Schocken Books, 1963.

*Park, Robert E. "The Crowd and the Public." The Crowd and the Public, and Other Essays, pp. 3–83. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

*Blumer, Herbert. Movies and Conduct. 1933. New York: Arno Press, 1970. See especially Chapter 10, "Schemes of Life," pp. 141–91.

Problem 1. Chicago Sociology. Due Sept. 25.

Part III. Mid-20th Century Social Studies

Sept. 25. Emergence of the Dominant Paradigm: The Columbia School and Yale Program

Ã *Barton, Allen H. "Paul Lazarsfeld and the Invention of the University Institute for Applied Social Research." In Organizing for Social Research, pp. 17–83. Ed. Burkart Holzner and Jiri Nehnevajsa. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1982.

*Lazarsfeld, Paul. Radio and the Printed Page. 1940. New York: Arno Press, 1971. See especially, pp. 3–47, 329–33.

*Merton, Robert, Marjorie Fiske, and Patricia L. Kendall. The Focused Interview: A Manual of Problems and Procedures. 2d Ed. 1956. New York: Free Press, 1990. (interview)

*Lazarsfeld, Paul, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet. The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948. See especially, pp. 1–9, 150–58. (survey panel)

*Hovland, Carl I., Arthur A. Lumsdaine, and Fred D. Shefield. Experiments in Mass Communication. Studies in the Social Psychology in World War II, American Soldier Series, Vol. 3. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949. See especially, pp. 3–16, 247–79. (experiment)

*Lasswell, Harold D., Nathan Leites, et al. Language of Politics. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1949. See especially, Chapter 3, "Why Be Quantitative," pp. 40–52. (content analysis)

Lazarsfeld, Paul F. "An Episode in the History of Social Research: A Memoir." The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960, pp. 270–337. Ed. Donald Fleming & Bernard Bailyn. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Oct. 9. The Critical Theory Response to Quantitative Research

Ã Gitlin, Todd. "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm." Mass Communication Review Yearbook, Vol. 2, pp. 73–122. Ed. G. Cleveland Wilhoit and H. DeBock. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1981.

Sproule, J. Michael. "Propaganda Studies in American Social Science: The Rise and Fall of the Critical Paradigm." Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 60–78.

Lazarsfeld, Paul. "Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communications Research." Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 9.1 (Spring 1941): 2–16.

Cook, Deborah. "The Sundered Totality: Adorno’s Freudo-Marxist Paradigm." The Culture Industry Revisited, pp. 1–26. New York: Herder & Herder, 1972.

Adorno, Theodor W. "Culture Industry Reconsidered." The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, pp. 85–92. London: Routledge, 1991.

———. "Culture and Administration." The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, pp. 93–113. London: Routledge, 1991.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 120–67. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.

Oct. 16. Mid-term exam (take-home) due. No class.

Part IV. The Political Communication Tradition

Oct. 23. The Rise of the Limited Effects Model

Ã Chaffee, Steven H., and J. Hockheimer. "The Beginnings of Political Communication Research in the United States: Origins of the ‘Limited Effects’ Model." In The Media Revolution in America & Western Europe, pp. 267–96. Ed. Ev Rogers & F. Balle. Norwood NJ: Ablex, 1985.

*Katz, Elihu, and Paul F. Lazarsfeld. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Communication. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955. See especially, Introduction, Part I: Chapters 1, 2; Part II, Chapters 1, 13–15, and pp. 1–30, 321–34.

*Klapper, Joseph T. The Effects of Mass Communication. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1960. See especially, Chapters 1, 2.

*Schramm, Wilbur. Men, Messages, and Media. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. See especially, Chapters 1, 2, and 7–14.

Hallin, Daniel. "The Passing of the ‘High Modernism’ of American Journalism." Journal of Communication 42.3 (Summer 1992):14–25.

*Dayan, Daniel, and Elihu Katz. Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1992.

*Patterson, Tom. 1993. Out of Order. New York: Knopf, 1993. See especially, Prologue, Chapters 2, 4.

Oct. 30. Mainstream Research Challenges to the Minimal Effects Model

Greenberg, Bradley S., and Joseph R. Dominick. "Racial and Social Class Differences in Teen-Agers’ Use of Television." Journal of Broadcasting 13.4 (Fall 1969): 331–43.

McCombs, Maxwell E., and Donald L. Shaw. "The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media." Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (1972): 176–87.

Blumler, Jay, and Elihu Katz. "Utilization of Mass Communication by the Individual" and James W. Carey and Albert L. Kreiling, "Popular Culture and Uses and Gratifications: Notes Toward an Accommodation." The Uses of Mass Communication: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research, pp. 19–32, 225–48. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1974.

Gerbner, George, et al. "The Demonstration of Power: Violence Profile No. 10." Journal of Communication 29.3 (Summer 1979): 177–98.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. "Introduction" and "The Hypothesis of Silence." The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion, our Social Skin, pp. vii–xi, 1–8. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. (See Ferment issue.)

*Iyengar, Shanto, and Donald R. Kinder. News that Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Problem 2. Political Communication. Due Nov. 6.

Part V. The Rise of Cultural Studies

Nov. 6. The Mass Culture Debates of the 1940s and 1950s

Kronenberger, Howe, and David Riesman, eds. "Editorial Statement" and contributions by Newton Arvin, James Burnham, Allan Dowling, Leslie A. Fiedler, Norman Mailer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Philip Rahv, David Riesman, Mark Schorer, and Lionel Trilling. Symposium: Our Country and Our Culture. Partisan Review XIX (1952): 282–326.

*Rosenberg, Bernard, and David Manning White, eds. Mass Culture: Popular Arts in America. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957. See especially, Dwight MacDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," pp. 59–73; Henry Rabassiere, "In Defense of Television," pp. 368–74; and Leslie A. Fiedler, "The Middle Against Both Ends," pp. 537–47.

The Rebirth of Cultural Studies in the 1970s

Ã *duGay, Paul, Stuart Hall, et al. "Making Sense of the Walkman." Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, pp. 8–40. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997.

Hoggart, Richard. "The Scholarship Boy." The Uses of Literacy: Changing Patterns in English Mass Culture, pp. 238–59. 1957. London: Chatto & Windus, 1971. Chapter 10.

Clarke, John, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts. "Subcultures, Cultures, and Class." In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, pp. 9–79. Ed. Stuart Hall & Tony Jefferson. London: HarperCollins Academic, 1976.

Hall, Stuart. "Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems." In Culture, Media, Language, pp. 15–47. Ed. Stuart Hall, D. Hobson, et al. London: Hutchinson, 1980.

Carey, James W. "Communication as Culture." Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society, pp. 13–68. Boston: Unwin-Hyman, 1989.

*Clarke, John. "Introduction." New Times and Old Enemies: Essays on Cultural Studies in America, pp. 1–19. New York: HarperCollins Academic, 1991.

Grossberg, Lawrence. "The Formations of Cultural Studies: An American in Birmingham." Bringing It all Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies, pp. 195–233. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.

McRobbie, A. "Settling Accounts with Subculture: A Feminist Critique. 1980. Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen, pp. 16–34. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991.

Balsamo, A. "Public Pregnancies and Cultural Narratives of Surveillance." Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, pp. 80–115. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.

Nov. 13. The 1980s Ferment in the Field

Ã *Theme Issue: Ferment in the Field. Journal of Communication 33.3 (Summer 1983): 4–5, 51–2, 92–5, 103–16, 128–40, 157–65, 174–84, 249–57, 257–61, 311–13, 330–41, 355–62. See also Whitney, D. Charles. "Ferment in the Field," Communication Research 12.1 (January 1985): 133–43.

Problem 3. Cultural Studies. Due Nov. 20.

Part VI. Late 20th Century Social Studies

Nov. 20. Media Ecology & Globalization (Discussion leader TBA. Prof. Barnhurst will be out of town).

Ã Various authors. "Definitions" and "Reading List." Media Ecology Association Web site: http://www.media-ecology.org/mecology/ (Short definitions plus booklist and abstracts.)

Ã Held, David, and Anthony McGrew. "The Great Globalization Debate: An Introduction." In The Global Transformations Reader, pp. 1–50. Cambridge: Polity, 2000.

*McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

*Ong, Walter. Orality & Literacy. London: New Accents, 1982. See especially, "The Orality of Language," pp. 5–15; "Print, Space, and Closure," pp. 117–38; "Oral Memory, the Story Line, and Characterization," pp. 139–55; and " ‘Media’ Versus Human Communication," pp. 175–77.

*Meyrowitz, Joshua. 1985. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

*Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking, 1985; New York: Penguin, 1986.

*Herman, Edward S., and Robert W. McChesney. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. London: Cassell, 1997.

McChesney, Robert W. "U.S. Media at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century." Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times, pp. 15–77. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

Nov. 27. Thanksgiving Day. No class.

Dec. 4. New Technology and the Future of Media Studies

Morris, Merrill, and Christine Ogan. "The Internet as Mass Medium." Journal of Communication 46.1 (Winter 1996): 39–50. From Symposium: The Net, pp. 4–124.

Jones, Steve. "Understanding Community in the Information Age." Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, pp. 10–35. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. Or, alternatively, Jones, Steve. "Information, Internet, and Community: Notes Toward an Understanding of Community in the Information Age." Cybersociety 2.0: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community, pp. 1–35. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1998.

Sterne, Jonathan. "Thinking the Internet: Cultural Studies vs. The Millennium." In Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net, pp. 257–83. Ed. Steve Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999.

Baym, Nancy K. "Conclusion." Tune in, Log on: Soaps, Fandom, and On-line Community, pp. 197–218. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2000.

Rule, James B. "From Mass Society to Perpetual Contact: Models of Communication Technologies in Social Context." In Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, pp. 242–54.

Manovich, Lev. "What Is Digital Cinema?" In The Digital Dialectic: New Essays in New Media, pp. 173–92. Ed. Peter Lunenfeld. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Problem 4. Media Ecology, Globalization, or Technology. Due Dec. 9.

Dec. 5. Final deadline for previous assignments (no late work accepted after this date).

Dec. 11, 3 p.m. Take-home exam due. No class.