everything.study
21L.015

Children's Literature

3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H · Undergraduate

Analyzes children's literature from a variety of eras and genres, taking even the most playful texts seriously as works of art and powerful cultural influences. Considers the types of stories adults consider appropriate for children, and why; how opinions about this subject have changed over time and across cultures; and the complex interplay of words and images in children's books. Enrollment limited.

Fall 2005 · Introduction to Media Studies

Topics

  • Introduction
  • Media Convergence
  • Media Convergence - What is Jenkins’ Argument? What are Counter Examples?
  • The Society of Spectacle Screening
  • Origins of Media and Media Theory
  • Reading Response Discussion
  • Blade Runner Screening
  • Game Mods (Guest Lecture by Paul Marino)
  • Media is the Message / Simulacra and Simulation
  • Discussion of Media Projects and Modes of Working
  • Working Groups
  • Battle of Algiers Screening
  • Theory of Media: Terrorism as Media Tool
  • History of Media: Kittler
  • eXistenZ Screening
  • Media Lab Field Trip
  • Media Acts
  • Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y Screening
  • Politics of Media: Discussion of Creative Commons License
  • Sonic Outlaws Screening
  • Independent Work Group Meetings
  • Television’s Past, the Actualization of Mass Media
  • Eyes on the Prize Screening
  • Final Project: Class Presentations

Readings

Fall 2003 · Introduction to Media Studies

Topics

  • Introduction to the Course: A Comparative Approach to Media Studies: Storytelling Across Media
  • Media Studies: An Interdisciplinary Field Technology and Meaning: Concepts of “High” and “Low” Culture
  • Lab/Discussion Section: Show and Tell (Media Artifacts) - See Handout Note: Sections meet in extended session for 1.5 hours
  • Approaches to Studying Media: The Concept of Commodity - The Frankfurt School and the Birmingham School Questions of Ownership and Control of Media The Challenge of Cultural Pluralism
  • Applying the Frameworks: Advertising
  • Screening/Discussion Section: The Power of Advertising Documentary Film Screening
  • Key Media Debates: Influence, Representation, Control Guest Speaker: Prof. Mark Lloyd
  • Comparing Oral and Print Cultures: Different Forms of Storytelling
  • Written Media: The Press: Technology, Power and Influence
  • The Rise of Entertainment Culture in Late 19th Century America and the Growth of Modern Mass Media in Early 20th Century America
  • Screening/Discussion Section: The Rise of Modern Mass Media: Early Silent Film in the U.S.
  • The Documentary Mode: Photography and Film Media and Social Reform
  • The Star System: Origins in the Silent Era
  • Screen Culture: Movies and Music
  • Screening/Discussion Section: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Piano Accompaniment and Discussion: Prof. Martin Marks)
  • Sound Genres And Audiences: Storytelling Across Media: Melodrama and Horror
  • The Social Problem Movie: Storytelling Across Media
  • Filmic and Ethnic Images
  • Storytelling Across Media: Film and Colonialism
  • Broadcasting: Radio and Television: The Public Interest, Public Entertainment and the Commercial Imperative
  • TV as Consensus Narrative: Critiques of TV
  • Cable TV and Independent Film
  • Globalization and Media Culture
  • Models of The Digital Revolution
  • Contemporary Issues: Media Convergence and Power in the Digital Age Audiences as Producers and Receivers
  • Discussion Section: Extended Section 7-10
  • Last Day of Class

Readings

  • LEC #: 1 · TOPICS: Introduction to the Course: A Comparative Approach to Media Studies: Storytelling Across Media · READINGS: “Imaginary Social Relationships” through Media Narratives across Different Cultures and Media
    Reading assignment
  • McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Introduction by Lewis Lapham. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999 and pp. 3-47.
    Listed reading
  • Mukerji, Chandra, and Michael Schudson. “Introduction: Rethinking Popular Culture.” In Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Edited by C. Mukerji, and M. Schudson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp. 1-8.
    Listed reading
  • Kellner, Douglas. “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture.” In Gender, Race and Class in Media. Edited by Gail Dines, and Jean Humez. Thousand Oaks, Ca.: Sage, 1995. Pp. 5-17.
    Listed reading
  • Horkheimer, Max, and Theodore Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In The Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum, 1995. Pp. 120-167.
    Listed reading
  • Debord, Guy. “The Commodity as Spectacle.” In Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Books, 1977. Pp. 1-18 and 42.
    Listed reading
  • Williams, Raymond. “Culture.” In Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
    Listed reading
  • Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” In Culture, Media, Language. Edited by Stuart Hall, et al. London: Hutchinson, 1980.
    Listed reading
  • Jhally, Sut. “Image-Based Culture: Advertising and Popular Culture.” In The World and I . Washington, D.C.: Washington Times Corp., 1990.
    Listed reading
  • Kellner, Douglas. “Reading Images Critically: Towards a Postmodern Pedagogy.” Journal of Education 170, no. 3 (1988).
    Listed reading
  • Goldman, Robert. “Constructing and Addressing the Audience as Commodity.” In Reading Ads Socially . London: Routledge, 1992.
    Listed reading
  • Williams, Raymond. “Advertising: The Magic Game.” In Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 1980.
    Listed reading
  • Schudson, Michael. “The Emergence of New Consumer Patterns: A Study of the Cigarette.” In Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York City: Basic Books, 1986. Pp. 178-208.
    Listed reading
  • Schiller, Herbert. “Not Yet the Post-Imperialist Era.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 8 (1991): 13-28.
    Listed reading
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “Some Features of Print Culture.” In Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Pp. 42-91.
    Listed reading
  • Radway, Janice. “Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading.” In Daedalus , Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 113, no. 3 (Summer 1974). Reprinted in Jessica Munns and Gita Rajan. A Cultural Studies Reader: History, Theory, Practice. London: Longman (1995): 334-350.
    Listed reading
  • Hall, Stuart, et al. “The Social Production of News.” In Media Studies: A Reader. 2nd. ed. Edited by Paul Marris, and Sue Thornham. New York City: NYU Press, 1999. Pp. 646-652.
    Listed reading
  • Habermas, Jurgen. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.” In Critical Theory and Society: A Reader. Edited by Stephen E. Bronner, and Douglas Kellner. New York: Routledge, 1989. Pp. 136-142.
    Listed reading
  • McChesney, Robert W. “ Journalism, Democracy, … and Class Struggle .” Monthly Review 52, no. 6 (November 2000): 1-15. ↗
    Listed reading
  • Lipsitz, George. “This Ain’t No Sideshow.” In Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990. Pp. 3-12.
    Listed reading
  • Singer, Ben. “Modernity, Hyperstimulus and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life . Edited by Leo Charney, and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Pp. 72-99.
    Listed reading
  • Gunning, Tom. “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)credulous Spectator.” In Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. Edited by Linda Williams. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Pp. 114-133.
    Listed reading
  • Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1969. Pp. 217-251.
    Listed reading
  • Sontag, Susan. On Photography. (Excerpt)
    Listed reading
  • Dyer, Richard. Stars. (Excerpt)
    Listed reading
  • Sklar, Robert. Movie-Made America. (Excerpt)
    Listed reading
  • Budd, Michael. “The German Film Industry and the Making of Caligari.” In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari . Edited by Mike Budd. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Pp. 8-25.
    Listed reading
  • Marks, Martin. “Music and the Silent Film.” In The Oxford History of World Cinema . Edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 183-192.
    Listed reading
  • Gorbman, Claudia. “Why Music? The Sound Film and Its Spectator.” In Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1987. Pp. 53-69.
    Listed reading
  • Copland, Aaron. “Film Music.” In What To Listen For in Music . New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 47-152.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 18 · TOPICS: The Social Problem Movie: Storytelling Across Media · READINGS: Lab/Discussion Section: Screening: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) .
    Reading assignment
  • LEC #: 19 · TOPICS: Filmic and Ethnic Images · READINGS: Selections, Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema. Edited by Lester Friedman. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
    Reading assignment
  • Andrew, Dudley. “Adaptation.” In Concepts in Film Theory. New York: Oxford, 1984. Pp.96-106.
    Listed reading
  • Lab/Screening/Discussion Section: The Man Who Would Be King.
    Listed reading
  • LEC #: 21 · TOPICS: Broadcasting: Radio and Television: The Public Interest, Public Entertainment and the Commercial Imperative · READINGS: The Trouble With Television ↗
    Reading assignment
  • Fiske, John. “Bardic Television.” In Reading Television. London and New York: Methuen, 1978. Pp. 85-100.
    Listed reading
  • Thorburn, David. “Television As an Aesthetic Medium.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4 (1987): 167-173.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Is TV Acting a Distinctive Art Form?” The New York Times (14 August 1977).
    Listed reading
  • Arnheim, Rudolf. “A Forecast of Television.” In Film as Art. Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 188-198.
    Listed reading
  • Williams, Raymond. “Programming: Distribution and Flow.” In Television and Cultural Form. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1993 (rpt: 1976). Pp. 72-112.
    Listed reading
  • Uricchio, William. “ The Trouble With Television .” In Screening the Past: An International Electronic Journal of Visual Media and History 4 (1998). ↗
    Listed reading
  • Grey, Herman. “The Politics of Representation in Network Television.” In Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for ‘Blackness’. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Pp. 70-92.
    Listed reading
  • Screening/Discussion Section: Episode 1, Six Feet Under (HBO 2001). “1961”, If These Walls Could Talk 2 (HBO 2000).
    Listed reading
  • Wyatt, Justin. “From Roadshowing to Saturation Release: Majors, Independents and Marketing/Distribution Innovations.” In The New American Cinema . Edited by Jon Lewis. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998. Pp. 64-86.
    Listed reading
  • Lewis, Jon. “Money Matters: Hollywood in the Corporate Era.” In The New American Cinema. Pp. 87-121.
    Listed reading
  • Condry, Ian. “Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture.” In Urban Life . Edited by G. Gmelch, and W. Zenner. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2001.
    Listed reading
  • Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy.” In Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pp. 27-47.
    Listed reading
  • Screening/Discussion Section: Monsoon Wedding (2001).
    Listed reading
  • Murray, Janet. Hamlet On the Holodeck. New York: Free Press, 1997. Pp. 273-283.
    Listed reading
  • Gilder, George. Life After Television. New: Norton, 1994. Pp. 35-49.
    Listed reading
  • Katz, John. “The Birth of a Digital Nation.” In Media Rants: Postpolitics in the Digital Nation. San Francisco: HardWired, 1997. Pp. 50-58.
    Listed reading
  • Landow, George. “Reconfiguring Narrative.” In Hypertext. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1992.
    Listed reading
  • Hodges, M., and R. Sasnett. “New Views in Education.” In Multimedia Computing: Case Studies from the MIT Project Athena. Reading, Ma. Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pp. 29-37.
    Listed reading
  • Murray, Janet. “Restructuring Space, Time, Story and Text in Advanced Multimedia Environments.” In Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia and the Social Construction of Knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992. Pp. 319-345.
    Listed reading
  • Schank, R., M. Jona. “Empowering the Student: New Perspectives on the Design of Teaching Systems.” Journal of the Learning Sciences (January 1991): 7-35.
    Listed reading
  • McChesney, Robert. “Oligopoly: The Big Media Game Has Fewer and Fewer Players.” The Progressive. (November 1999): 1, 20-24.
    Listed reading
  • Jenkins, Henry. “Welcome to Bisexuality, Captain Kirk: Slash and the Fan-Writing Community.” In Textual Poachers: Television Fan and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. 237-265.
    Listed reading
  • ———. “Out of the Closet and Into the Universe: Queers and Star Trek.” In Science Fiction Audiences . Edited by John Tulloch, and Henry Jenkins. New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp. 237-265.
    Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Prereq: None U (Spring) 3-0-9 units. HASS-H; CI-H

Sources