MSTU4016-08/Description

From Studyplace

For this academic year the two courses (MSTU4016 & MSTU4010), History of Communications and Theories of Communication, will be dynamically connected. Students can take either course independently of the other, but the full impact of the investigation results by taking both courses in sequence. The MSTU4016 Syllabus gives the agenda for the two semesters with only the work expectation outlined for the fall.

The Objective

To develop a sense of Where We Are and Where We Are Going by reflecting on changes in communications technologies.

Despite soporific titles, MSTU 4016 and MSTU 4010 concern exciting issues that are as inescapable as the air we breathe. They seek to situate where we are and and to anticipate where we are going. Doing so is now particularly important because most predictions about our future are dire, concerned that collapsing ecologies threaten the physical world, fearing that rationalizations for exploitation dupe all, subverting the political world, aghast that the scourge of poverty and disease afflicting masses of humanity may break apart the social world, and worried that the perennial struggle to understand and control our human creations will falter, sapped by ignorance and blinded by greed, leaving us without meaning or purpose in the cultural world. In all these concerns, changes in the technologies of communication have shaped the problems and, at the same time, defined apparent possibilities for solutions. Technology as applied science, is, as some would have it, our fate as humans. To understand and to shape our destiny is the challenge it puts to us.

Course Rhythm

The Hermeneutical Circle

All historical research is self-referential, either consciously or unconsciously: that is, we bring the questions and problems of our present to the study of the past. Historical inquiry should begin with this acknowledgment and start its study in present circumstances, raising initial questions, problems, dilemmas through which it engages the past. In our historical inquiry, we start with current shifts in media and communications technologies and the influence these shifts may be having on culture, politics and economics. Over the year, we will use these concerns to interrogate the past in two ways. In the Fall, we will highlight important transitions in communications history, reflecting on the cultural effects of the speech, writing, images, print press, the telegraph, film, radio and television. In the Spring, we will concentrate more narrowly 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

Class Participation (50%)

Each week we will concentrate on a specific topic, defined by a leading question and short readings. Come to class prepared to engage in these discussions, having thought about the question and having read the required reading thoughtfully. All should come to each class prepared to participate in querying the topic, sharing ideas, questions, and information. In addition to in-person class participation by all, each student will be responsible for introducing, partly online and partly in class, the topic for one of the weekly meetings. This will require doing some extra reading for the topic and posting on the course wiki information, questions, and ideas that will inform a productive discussion. This weekly posting should be available Tuesdays by 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. We will base evaluation of class participation half on overall participation in class discussion and half on the introductory postings and presentations.

Two Reflective Papers (50%)

We ask you to submit two reflective essays, 1500 words maximum, one starting from your unconstrained choice, the other developing ideas in response to your reading of one or more works on the class bibliography.

due October 29 and December 10