4016 Fall07 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
1 - Come to class prepared to engage in discussion on the subject of the week. 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 will be 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. There will be an orienting question for each week in the syllabus. Students can respond to these weekly postings in the same wiki and are encouraged to do so. (20%)
2 - Do one book report focused on using fiction as a lens to get a clearer understanding of the way that macro historical events realize themselves in the complex lives of individuals and the imaginations of writers. First select a novel from the following list of books, all of which fit into the ambit of the topic "globalization" grossly defined. Your job is to juxtapose the human experience represented in the novel against the world of generalizations that characterize the discourse on globalization. (20%)
One book is not a novel but is included because of its novel-like qualities: Kidder, Tracy, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Book List I - Globalization
Ali, Monica, Brick Lane, United Kingdom: Black Swan, 2003.
Houellebecq, Michel, Platform (Translation from Frank Wynne), New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 2003.
Kidder, Tracy, Mountains Beyond Mountains.
Kureishi, Hanif, The Black Album, London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995.
Mda, Zakes, The Heart of Redness, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2000.
Roy, Arundhati, The God of Small Things, New York: Random House, 1997.
Rushdie, Salman, Fury, New York: Random House, 2001.
Rushdie, Salman, Shalimar the Clown, New York: Random House, 2005
Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss, New York: Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2006
Lahiri, Jumpa, Namesake, New York: Mariner Books, 2004.
3 - In Media and Globalization (London, 2005), Tehri Rantenen invents a new technique called "mediaography" to explore the impact of communications technologies on the lives of individuals in families. It is an effort to relate the social experiences of people to the global picture. Using the historical matrix from the first three chapters Rantenen's book, do a mediagraph investigation of your family (this should be a write-up of 3-5 pages).
The first three chapters are here
The whole book is here (The Media and Globalization, Rantanen, Terhi, SAGE Publications, 2004, ISBN-13: 9780761973133
Though probably unnecessary, here is a short guide highlighting useful parts:
- P.12-- intro to mediagraphies
- P.15 --materials and methods
- P.20-26-- history of mediated globalization
- P.26-- Six Stages of Media and Communications
- P.28, 29-- Combining Macro and Micro
- P.30-45-- three family examples
- P.46-- Time, Place and Space
- P.56-69-- three family examples
Use the family examples, especially the charts, to help frame your own family mediagraphy. The charts are not intended to be authoritative but to provide orientation for your family analysis. If for some reason, you choose not to write on your family, please pick another(20%).
4 - Read, Deibert, Ronald's, Parchment, Printing and Hypermedia (http://www.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/cul/resolve?clio6170921). In this book, Deibert crafts a new way of explaining the way technology acts as a cause. In a 5-page essay, explain and critique that analysis. This book will also act as a good introduction to a range of questions of consequence to our study (20%).
5 - Select a small group with whom you regularly work and do the Tacit Knowledge Survey (http://pocketknowledge.tc.columbia.edu/home.php/viewfile/30140) with them and analyze the results. (Tacit Knowledge Survey (based) on reading of Infotopia, see class 9/19). Most groups have as their primary resource the human knowledge and intelligence within each person. Unfortunately, it is often the case that groups, even extremely purposeful ones, fail to derive the potential benefits of this collective internal subjective "wealth." This survey will give you the opportunity to explore this conundrum in the context of your own experience. (20%)
[edit] Required Books
"Complete Greek Tragedies Vol. I: Aeschylus" by Grene, David - University of Chicago Press, Lattimore translation, ISBN 0226307646
"Complete Greek Tragedies: Sophocles II" by Sophocles - University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226307867
"Complete Greek Tragedies: Euripides, No.4" by Euripides - University of Chicago Press, Lattimore translation
"Globalization: A Very Short Introduction" by Steger, Manfred B., - Oxford University Press, ISBN 019280359
"White Noise" by DeLillo, Don, - Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, ISBN 0140077022
