4010 Spring08 Description and Requirements
From Studyplace
For this academic year the two courses (4016 & 4010), History of Communications and Theories of Communication, will be dynamically connected. Either course can be taken independently of the other, but it is the professor's opinion that the full impact of the investigation requires that both courses be taken in sequence. The entire two semester's syllabus will be available by August 15 with only the work expectation outlined for the fall.
Course Description: An Exploration through the Lens of Technological Change of Where We Are and Where We Are Going
The sub-heading of any book is often more informative than the title which is used to market. (As an example my wife just published a book, The Gaslight Effect with the subtitle of How to Stop People from Getting Into Your Head). Similarly, these two survey courses MSTU 4016 and MSTU 4010, have names capable of producing sleep. What they are really about however is exciting and inescapable as the air we breathe. They are explorations of where we are and where we are going. This is particularly important now when most predictions about our future are dire, whether we focus on the the physical world, threatened with collapsing ecologies, or the political world, where the panacea of democracy is struggling to displace its many applications that effectively function as rationalizations for exploitation, or the social world where the scourge of poverty and disease afflicts masses of the world population, or the world of culture where the primeval struggle to understanding ourselves and what we create through our reflective agencies of research and education is afflicted by disinvestment and cynicism in the centers of political power. Central to all these concerns is the role that technology hs played both contributing to the shape of our problems and, at the same time, defining the arena of possibility for solutions. Technology as applied science, is, as some would have, our fate as humans. To understand and shape our destiny is the challenge.
Course Rhythm: The Hermeneutical Circle
All historical research and study is either consciously or unconsciously self-referential, that is, we bring the question and problems of our present to the study of the past. We begin with this acknowledgment and start our study in our present circumstance striving to isolate a beginning set of questions, problems, dilemmas that we will carry with us as we engage the past, specifically related to shifts in media and technology and their influence on culture, politics and economics. Over the year we will fly two sorties into the past, the first focused on the highlights of communication/technology history, including the alphabet, printing press, telegraph and television and the second, more narrowly focused on the tradition of social theory that began in the 19th century as a response to the transformative impact of emerging technologies of communications, production and transportation, often represented as the Industrial Revolution. We will end the first term with a session in which we will return to the questions and problematics of our day developed during the first three classes. The second semester will end with three classes devoted to the analysis of three current events/cultural phenomena, interrogated from the perspective of what we have learned.
Course Requirements
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[edit] 1. Class Participation
Come to class having read or viewed the assigned texts and prepared to engage in discussion on the subject of the week. (25%)
[edit] 2. Class Presentation and Wiki Post
In addition to in-person class participation, each student will be responsible for at least one class presentation on the weekly assignment preceded by a posting on the wiki, which is part of Studyplace.org under courses. The weekly posting will be available Tuesdays at 9:00 AM in the week of the assignment. All students should read these postings before class. Students can respond to these weekly postings in the same wiki and are encouraged to do so. (25%)
[edit] 3. Metropolis Essay
We will be viewing the 1927 silent film, Metropolis, after one of our classes. For those unable to watch the film with the group, it is available at the library and will (eventually) be available for viewing online. Create your own assignment based on the movie, and then execute it using the program VITAL, which will be demonstrated in detail in class. VITAL allows you to select video clips and enmesh them in a text to demonstrate your points. It is up to you to develop your own project, but it should relate in some way to one or more of the major themes that have surfaced in our class discussions. The essay is due on April 23rd. (25%)
[edit] 4. Journal of Useful Ideas
Many of the theorists we will be reading grappled with what they believed were the most urgent dilemmas facing human beings of their time. Our job is not only to try to understand their theories, but to reflect on their usefulness for explaining our current historical moment, the Era of Late Capitalism.
This is your opportunity to keep a running log in which you list concepts from each reading that you find most useful for understanding the challenges you see facing human beings today, or that might suggest solutions to them.
For each text we read, you should include one idea for each of the following two categories:
- 1. General reflections on the human experience. The theorists we will be reading have no shortage of these. Identify one concept per reading that you find especially useful for helping to understand trends you see at work around you or in a wider global context. Explain the idea in your own words and briefly reflect on the insights the concept provides or the dilemmas it helps to explain and/or resolve.
- 2. Ideas that relate to your personal experience or interests. List ideas you find personally useful here, whether as tools for understanding your own experiences or for analyzing contemporary issues that you find particularly interesting.
Obviously, 1 and 2 can and will overlap at times. This is no problem, but for each text we read you should have an entry for both categories. The entries can be brief – a few sentences for each concept – but they should also be concise and insightful. The Journal will be posted in the form of a blog accessible only to our class participants. (25%)
[edit] Required Books
"Mythologies" by Barthes, Roland. Translated by Annette Lavers - Hill and Wang, 1972, ISBN 0374521506
"The Public and its Problems" by Dewey, John. Swallow Press, ISBN 0804002541
