INSTRUCTOR:

Prof. Jennifer Petersen

Office Hours: TBA

Office: WIL 222

Email: jenp@virginia.edu

Course Description:

Social concerns about media have a long history. From writing to the printing press to the telephone and TV, media have been implicated in broad social shifts. In this class, we will examine the history of both media technologies and social concerns about these media. We will trace the development of key media technologies throughout history, with a focus on Western Europe and North America. Along the way, we will consider the social, political and cultural factors that shaped the development of the technology. In each, finally, we will consider how people at the time reacted to these formerly “new” media, discussing the hopes and fears people had about what were new technologies. Through this examination, you will come to a better understanding of the technological and institutional shape of media such as print, the telegraph, film, radio and TV. You will also come to understand the many different factors that have shaped the form, regulation, and social meanings of contemporary media.

 

Required Texts

· Czitrom, Daniel. 1983. Media and the American Mind. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. (MAM)

·  Starr, Paul. 2005. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication. New York: Basic Books. (TCM)

·  Electronic course packet, available on Collab, under the resources tab. Readings on Collab are marked in the syllabus with (C).

The texts are available for sale online new and used. All readings must be completed before class on the day they are marked in the syllabus.  I will expect to be able to call on you for summaries and commentary. If it becomes clear that some of you are not keeping up with the readings, I will institute pop quizzes on the readings.

Assessment

Final Exam                                             30%

Mid-Term                                                20%

Short Papers                                          30%

Assignments                                          10%

Participation                                            10%

Short Papers: There will be two short papers (15% each) that ask you to explore a topic or topics in the readings with original research or analysis. These will be due in class and used as basis for discussion.

Mid-Term and Final Exams: These exams are designed to assess your understanding of the reading and course discussions. The exams will use short answer and essay questions; these questions will come from course readings, lectures, and class discussion.

Assignments: Throughout the course, I will assign short assignments. Sometimes this may be brining in a media example to class; other times, it may entail short writing assignments. These assignments are designed to get you looking for examples of concepts explored in class readings or lecture and to make connections between course assignments and contemporary media. They are also intended to be jumping off points for classroom discussion.  These assignments will each be worth 5 points. Your total on assignments will be turned into a percentage and factored into your final grade.

Participation: While this is a lecture class, your participation is required. Beyond the basic level of doing the readings before coming to class, I expect you to volunteer questions and participate in whole class as well as small group discussions. Your participation grade will be based on attendance, contributions to the class, and the level of engagement with the readings in your assignments.

 

POLICIES:

Late Papers: You are expected to hand in all papers and assignments in class the day they are due. “Assignments” will not be accepted late. Papers will be penalized by 10% for every day they are late. In case of emergency, it is your responsibility to contact me to make arrangements before due date.

 

Plagiarism: This course follows UVA’s Honor Code. I expect you to include the pledge on all assignments for this class, unless otherwise noted.  Purchasing papers, using someone else’s words without attribution, failing to cite sources, and turning in work that you have completed for another class are all forms of plagiarism. All infringements will be reported and pursued to the full extent of the Code.

 

Computers in Class:  Because this is a large class, and cramped quarters, I am instituting a computer policy this semester. If you wish to bring your computer to class, I ask that you sit in the first 5 rows of the classroom.

 

Students with Special Needs: Students with special needs should meet with me during the first two weeks of the semester to speak with me so that I can arrange appropriate accommodations.

 

Contacting me: I am happy to answer any questions about the course, requirements, readings, individual work, or general interests after class, in my office hours, or by appointment. My office is 422 Wilson. In general, email is the best way to get in touch with me; however major concerns are often better addressed in office hours. I usually am able to return emails within 48 hours. Please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Week 1: Introduction and Course Themes

Jan. 14        Introduction

Jan. 16        Pre-Modern Communications Media; writing and orality; studying communication media

Read:          Plato, “On Writing” from Phaedrus (C)

Read:          Havelock, Eric, “The Greek Legacy” (C)     

 

Week 2: Media as Social and Cultural Institutions

                           Jan. 21        Perspectives on Studying Media, Technologies and Culture

Read:          Winner, Langdon, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” (C)              

Read:           Innis, Harold,  “The Bias of Communication,” from Bias of Communication (C)

 

                     Jan. 23        Media as cultural institutions, media and power; medieval media

Read:          Curran, James, “Communications, Power, and Social Order,” in M Gurevitch, ed., Culture, Society , and Media (C)

Read:           Briggs, Asa and Peter Burke, “The Print revolution in Context,” A Social History of the Media

 

Week 3: The Print Revolution as a Cultural Revolution

Jan. 28        Printing Press and the development of a reading public; the emergence of “print culture”; printing and the book as cultural change

Read:          Eisenstein, Elizabeth. “Some Features of Print Culture,” The Print Revolution in Early Modern Europe (C)

Read:          Ong, Walter “Print, Space and Closure” in Orality and Literacy (C)                  

 

Jan. 30        The printing press, literacy and national consciousness; imagined communities; media and reflexivity

Read:          Anderson, Benedict. “Cultural Roots” and “The Origins of National Consciousness” Imagined Communities (C)

                                 

Week 4: The Public Sphere and the Press in America

Feb. 4         Print Culture and the Public Sphere: the public sphere in Europe, the public-private divide and the rise of “public culture”; publicity; journalism and politics

                     Read:          Habermas, Jurgen, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article” (C)

Read:          Starr, Paul “Early Modern Origins” (TCM)

 

Feb. 6         The Press in America: freedom of the press; journalism in early America; the penny press and yellow journalism; the expansion of the reading public

Read:          Starr, Paul. “New Foundations” and “America’s First Information Revolution” (TCM)

Paper #1 Due

 

Rise of the Network

Week 5 Wiring the Nation

Feb. 11      The Telegraph: development of the telegraph; cultural perceptions of the telegraph; space, time and the telegraph; communication and community

Read:     Starr, “The First Wire” (TCM)

Feb. 13      SNOW DAY

 

                      

Week 6: Reach out and Touch Someone

Feb. 18      The Telegraph in pre-war thought; the telegraph, journalism, and the centralization of power

Read:          Carey, James “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph” from Communication as Culture (C)

Read:          Czitrom, “Lightning Lines” (MAM)

 

Feb. 20       The Telephone: The first telephones; building the network; cultural assumptions and concerns; communication and community continued

Read:          Marvin, Carolyn “Community and Class Order,” from When Old Technologies were New (C)

 

 

Week 7: From Networks to Mass Culture

Feb. 26      The Network and Regulation: regulation, cultural and infrastructural impact of the telephone, the network and power

Read:          Starr, “New Connections” (TCM)

 

Media and Modern Forms of Power: Commercial Institutions

Feb. 28      Early photography; visual culture; mass production, “democratization,” and consumer culture

Read:          Decherney, “Copyright Dupes: Piracy and New Media in Edison v. Lubin (1903)” Film History 19(2): 109-124

 

Week 8: Moving Pictures

Mar. 5        Early Cinema: cinema as a symptom of industrial culture; the new popular culture

Read:          Czitrom, “American Motion Pictures and the New Popular Culture” (MAM)

 

Mar. 7        Movies and audiences; regulation

Read:          Elizabeth Ewen, “City Lights: Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies”

 

March 10-16: Spring Break

 

Week 9:           Mid term

Mar. 18     No Class

Mar. 20          Mid-Term

                   

Week 10:       From Etherial Hearth to Mass Culture

Mar. 25     Early Radio: radio and the transformation of distance; amateur operators; spiritualism; radio and the imagined community

Read:          Douglas, Susan “The Social Construction of American Broadcasting, 1912-1922”

Read:          Starr, “The Constitution of the Air (1)” (TCM)

 

Mar. 27          Social turmoil in the 20s and 30s; regulation and the triumph of the commercial model; radio networks; radio as popular, consumer culture

Read:          Czitrom, “The Etherial Hearth” (MAM)

Read:          Starr, “The Constitution of the Air (2)”

 

Week 11: Television and Consumer Culture

Apr. 1         Broadcasting as centralized control; public opinion; the idea of media effects; studies in propaganda

 Read:          Starr, “Coda” (TCM)

 Read:          Douglas, “The Invention of the Audience,” from Listening In              

Optional: Cantril and Allport, “The Influence of Radio on Mental and Social Life” (Excerpted from Psychology of Radio [1935]), In Mass Communication and American Social Thought (C)

 

 Apr. 3         Early TV: Radio with pictures; the networks; television as visual and immediate; early news and liveness; audience measurement

Read:          Karnick, “NBC and the Innovation of Television News, 1945-1953,” from Connections: A Broadcast History Reader, ed. Hilmes (C)

 Week 12:     Public and Private TV

Apr. 8         Television and the division of public and private space; TV as a consumer object; suburbia and mass culture; gender and genres

Read:          Haralovich, “Sitcoms and Suburbs: Positioning the 1950s Homemaker,” from Connections: A Broadcast History Reader, ed. Hilmes (C)

Read:          Spigel, Lynn, “The Suburban Home Companion: Television and the Neighborhood Ideal” from Welcome to the Dreamhouse (C)

 

Apr. 10      Cultural Concerns over Content; The Great Society; the public sphere and television; permutations on the public/private divide

Read:          Newton Minow, “The Vast Wasteland,” online (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm)

Read:          Oullette and Lewis, “Beyond the ‘Vast Wasteland’” from The Television Studies Reader, ed. Robert Allen (C)

Paper #2 due

 

Week 13:   TV and Political Style; Cable and New Channels

Apr. 16      Media, reflexivity and notions of the self, Publicity and Privacy in a highly mediated age; visual media, politics, and scandal; new modes of public performance

Read:          Thompson, “The Transformation of Visibility” from The Media and Modernity

 

Apr. 18      Cable TV as a democratizing force?

Read:          Streeter, “The Cable Fable Revisited: Discourse, Policy, and the Making of Cable Television” Critical Studies in Media Communication

        

Week 14: Computers and Networks

Apr. 22      A brief history of computing

Read:          Ted Friedman, “Charles Babbage and the Politics of Computer Memory"

Read:          Light, Jennifer “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture. 40(3): 455-483.

 

Apr. 24      Computing and the Internet

Read:          Streeter, Thomas, “Romanticism and the Machine: The Formation of the Computer Counterculture"

 Read:          Brand, Stewart, “We Owe It All to the Hippies,” Time Magazine (1995) (C)                

 

Week 15: new media and history

Apr. 29      Wrap-up

Read:          TBA

 

 

Friday, May 9, 9:00-12:00: FINAL EXAM