CMS.801
Media in Transition
Fall 2012
This course centers on historical eras in which the form and function of media technologies were radically transformed. It includes consideration of the "Gutenberg Revolution," the rise of modern mass media, and the "digital revolution," among other case studies of media transformation and cultural change. Readings are in cultural and social history and historiographic method.
Readings
- [R&G] Rosenberg, Daniel, and Anthony Grafton. Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline . Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. ISBN: 9781568987637.
- [Poe] Poe, Marshall T. A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet . Cambridge University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780521179447.
- Ong, Walter J. “The Orality of Language.” In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word . Routledge, 1982, pp. 5–15. ISBN: 9780415027960.
- Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “Defining the Initial Shift,” and “Some Features of Print Culture.” In The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 12–62.
- Clanchy, Michael T. “Looking Back from the Invention of Printing.” In Literacy in Historical Perspective . Edited by Daniel P. Resnick. For sale by the Supt. of Docs., 1983, pp. 7–22. ISBN: 9780844404103.
- Chartier, Roger. “Urban Reading Practices, 1660-1780.” In The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France. Princeton University Press, 1987, pp. 183–239. ISBN:9780691054995.
- McDermott, Joseph P. “The Making of an Imprint in China, 1000–1800.” In A Social History of the Chinese Book: Books and Literati Culture in Late Imperial China. Hong Kong University Press, 2006, pp. 9–42. (notes 196–211). ISBN: 9789622097827.
- Brokaw, Cynthia. Commerce in Culture: The Sibao Book Trade in the Qing and Republican Periods. Harvard University Asia Center, 2007, pp. 1–19, and 535–70. ISBN: 9780674024496.
- Reed, Christopher A. “Gutenberg and Modern Print Culture: The State of the Discipline II.” Book History 10 (2007): 291–315.
- Smith, Henry D. “The History of the Book in Edo and Paris.” In Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era . Cornell, 1994, pp. 332–52.
- Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction . CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010. ISBN: 9781453722480.
- SES #: 6 · TOPICS: Page and Stage to the Late Nineteenth Century · READINGS: Peters, Julie Stone. The Theater of the Book 1480-1880: Print, Text, and Performance in Europe . Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 1–90, 147–200 and 257–312. ISBN: 9780198187141.
- Schwartz, Vanessa. “Cinematic Spectatorship Before the Apparatus: The Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-siècle Paris.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life . Edited by Leo Charney, and Vanessa Schwartz. University of California Press, 1996, pp. 297–319. ISBN: 9780520201125.
- The Silent Cinema Reader . Edited by Lee Grieveson, and Peter Krämer. Routledge, 2003. ISBN: 9780415252843.
- Musser, Charles. “Moving Towards Fictional Narratives: Story Films Become the Dominant Product, 1903–1904.” pp. 87–102.
- Blair, Ann, and Peter Stallybrass. “Mediating Information, 1450–1800.” In This is Enlightenment . Edited by Clifford Siskin, and William Warner. University Of Chicago Press, 2010, pp. 139–63. ISBN: 9780226761480.
- [R&G] pp. 96–247. Browse earlier chapters.
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗Historical OpenCourseWare
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.