Session 1: Orientation

January 11

Tony Bennett, “Theories of the Media, Theories of Society,” M. Gurevitch et al., Eds., Culture, Society and the Media (Metheun, 1982)

Alex Callinicos, “Enlightenment,” in Social Theory (NYU Press, 1999)

Session 2: The Mass Culture Debate II

What are the key positions and arguments of the mass culture debate? What characteristics are associated with "high culture," with "mass culture"? How are these various authors situated in relation to the debate, and in relation to the various traditions we have covered so far? To what extent is the mass culture debate relevant to contemporary study of the media and culture?

January 18

Alex Callinicos, Chap. 10 “The Golden Age” in Social Theory (1999)

Leo Lowenthal, Literature and Mass Culture (Transaction Books, 1984) Ch. 1: "Historical Perspectives of Popular Culture"

Paul Lazarsfeld & Robert Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste and Organized Social Action," in Rosenberg & White, eds., Mass Culture (1957)

Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Continuum, 1987)

Dwight MacDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," in B. Rosenberg & D.M. White, eds., Mass Culture (Free Press, 1957)

Edward Shils, "Mass Society and Its Culture," Daedalus (89) (1960): 288-314

Fredric Jameson, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture," in Signatures of the Visible (Routledge, 1992)

Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” R. Samuel, Ed. People’s History and Socialist Theory (1981)

Sessions 3 & 4: Semiotics and structuralism

What is semiotics and how does its conception of communication compare to other approaches covered thus far? What is a "sign" and how does it come to have meaning? What is "myth"? What is structuralism and how does it conceive of communication and the process of signification? What does it mean to say that structuralism is associated with "the death of the subject"? What are the ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions of semiotics and structuralism? How do they conceptualize the processes of socio-historical continuity and change, and the relationship of structure and agency? How is this approach related to Enlightenment thought? to the liberal tradition? to the mass communication research tradition? to the critical tradition? To what extent is this approach relevant to the contemporary study of media, communication and culture?

January 25

Ferdinand de Saussure, “The nature of the linguistic sign” and “The immutability and mutability of the sign,” in his Course in General Linguistics (McGraw-Hill, 1959).

Jonathan Culler, “Saussure’s Theory of Language,” in Ferdinand de Saussure (Penguin, 1976).

Terry Eagleton, “Structuralism,” in Literary Theory (University of Minnesota, 1996)

Kaja Silverman, “From Sign to Subject,” in The Subject of Semiotics (Oxford, 1983).

Perry Anderson, “Structure and Subject,” in In the Tracks of Historical Materialism

Roland Barthes, “Myth Today,” in Mythologies (Hill & Wang, 1957)

Roland Barthes, “Signifier and signified,” in his Elements of semiology (Hill and Wang, 1967).

February 1

Fredric Jameson, ""The Linguistic Model," in The Prison-House of Language (Princeton UP, 1972)

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (U Chicago P, 1966)

Ch. 1: "The Science of the Concrete"

Ch. 2: The Logic of Totemic Classification"

Umberto Eco, “Towards a Semioligical Guerilla Warfare (1967),” in his Travels in Hyperreality (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1986).

Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy (Monthly Review P, 1971)

John Corner, “Codes and Cultural Analysis,” Media, Culture and Society (2)(1980): 73-86

Stuart Hall, “The Determinations of News Photographs,” in S. Cohen & J. Young, Eds., The Manufacture of News (1973)

Sessions 5 & 6: Cultural studies

What are the roots (intellectual, social, political) of British Cultural Studies? of American Cultural Studies? What do they share and how do they differ in terms of theoretical influences and objects and methods of inquiry? How do they define and understand "culture"? Where do they stand in relation to the "liberal tradition;" the "critical tradition;" and "mass communication research"? To what extent is "ideology" important to these two strands of cultural studies? Where do they stand in relation to the "mass culture debate"? What are some critiques made of each version of Cultural Studies?

February 8

Dan Schiller, Chap. 3 “The Opening Toward Culture” in Theorizing Communication

Norma Schulman, “Conditions of Their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham,” Canadian Journal of Communication (18)(1993): 51-73

E.P. Thompson (1967). "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism." Past and Present 38: 56-97.

Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London, 1957)

Chap. 1: "Who are 'The Working Classes'?"

Chap. 8: "The Newer Mass Art: Sex in Shiny Packets"

Raymond Williams, “Introduction” & Chap. 2 “The Analysis of Culture” in Long Revolution (1961)

Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture (Verso, 1980)

Terry Eagleton, Resources for a Journey of Hope: The Significance of Raymond Williams, New Left Review, #168, March/April 1988.

February 15

Stuart Hall, "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms," Media, Culture and Society, 1980: 33-48

Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of 'Ideology': Return of the Repressed in Media Studies," pp. 56-90, M. Gurevitch, T. Bennett, J. Curran, J. Woollacott (eds.), Culture, Society and the Media (London: Metheun, 1980)

S. Hall, et al., “Introduction” and Chap. 3 “The Social Production of News,” in Policing the Crisis (Holmes & Meier, 1978)

Paul Willis, “Introduction,” “Penetrations,” “Limitations” & “The Role of Ideology” in Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs (Saxon House, 1977)

James Carey, "Mass Communication Research and Cultural Studies: An American View," pp. 409-425, J. Curran, M. Gurevitch, Ja Woolacott, (eds.), Mass Communication and Society (Sage, 1977)

Alan O'Connor, "The Problem of American Cultural Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 6 (1989):405-413

Janice Peck, "Itinerary of a Thought: Stuart Hall, Cultural Studies, and the Unresolved Problem of the Relation of Culture to 'Not Culture'," Cultural Critique (48) (Spring 2001): 200-249

Sessions 7 & 8: Political Economy

What are the foundations of media research and theory known as "the political economy of communication"? What characterizes a political-economic approach to media studies (e.g., intellectual roots, relationship to research traditions, objects and methods of inquiry, key positions and arguments)? How does its approach to culture compare to the approach found in cultural studies (both British and American variants)? How does this tradition aid in our understanding of debates and outcomes in communication policy in general, and in how we conceive of the role(s) of citizens in modern society?

February 22

Smythe, Dallas. “On the audience commodity and its work,” in Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada, pp.22-51. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1981.

Elaine Meehan, “Conceptualizing Culture as Commodity: The Problem of Television,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 3 (1986): 448-457

James O’Connor, “The process of consumption,” from his Accumulation Crisis, pp. 149-187. Basil Blackwell, 1984.

Excerpts on “commodification” from G. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

David Harvey, “The political-economic transformation of late twentieth century capitalism,” Part Two of The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, 1989), pp. 121-197.

March 1

Dan Schiller, “How to Think About Information,” in Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, ed., The Political Economy of Information (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988).

Vincent Mosco, “Commodification,” in The Political Economy of Communication (Sage, 1996).

Nicholas Garnham, “The Media as Cultural Industries,” in Emancipation, the Media and Modernity (Oxford UP, 2000).

Andrew Calabrese, “Toward a Political Economy of Culture,” in Andrew Calabrese and Colin Sparks, ed., Toward a Political Economy of Culture.

“Colloquy,” in Critical Studies in Mass Communication (12) (1) (March 1995) (exchange between Nicholas Garnham, Lawrence Grossberg, James Carey & Graham Murdock)

E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971), 76-136.

Session 9: MIDTERM EXAM/ NO CLASS MEETING on March 8

Session 10: Post-structuralism and Postmodernism

What is poststructuralism (its primary theorists, key premises, objects and methods of inquiry)? What is its relationship to structuralism? to critical theory? What is its approach to communication and signification? What is "discourse" and how does it differ from "signs"? What have been poststructuralism's contributions to and impacts on the study of media, culture and communication? What is postmodernism (as an aesthetic, a body of theory, a description of society)? What are its major premises and theoretical stances? How is it related to critical theory, to structuralism, to poststructuralism? What are its contributions to the study of communication, media and culture? What are some critiques of poststructuralism and postmodernism?

March 15

Dan Schiller, Chap. 4 “The Contraction of Theory” in Theorizing Communication (1996)

Alex Callinicos, Chap. 11 “Crack-Up?” in Social Theory (1999)

David Harvey, “Postmodernism” in The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, 1989)

Terry Eagleton, “Post-Structuralism” in Literary Theory (Blackwell, 1996)

Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in Writing and Difference (Chicago, 1978)

Jean-Francois Lyotard, “The Postmodern Condition” in C. Lemert, Ed., Social Theory (Oxford, 1993)

Michel Foucault, “Power as Knowledge” in C. Lemert, Ed., Social Theory (Oxford, 1993)

Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review (146)(1984): 53-92

Session 11: SPRING BREAK/NO CLASS MEETING on March 22

Session 12: Social Class and Media

What is the relevance of social class for media studies? How is class conceptualized within Marxian and Weberian traditions? What are their similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses? How have these two traditions of thinking about social class been incorporated and applied in media research and media theory?

March 29

Andrew Milner, Class (Sage, 1999)

Sessions 13 & 14: Gender, Race and Media

For what reasons (historical, theoretical, political) have questions of gender/sexuality and race/ethnicity become significant for social theory and media/communication studies? In what ways have attention to issue of race and gender helped reconfigure thinking about communication, culture and media? What are feminism's contributions to our understanding of media production, texts and audiences? What does it mean to say feminism is "plural"? What does it mean to say race is an ideological, rather than biological, category? How would the liberal tradition, the mass communication (effects) tradition, the critical tradition, structuralism/semiotics, and poststructuralism go about conceptualizing and studying questions of race and gender as they relate to the media?

April 5

Gaye Tuchman, "Introduction: The Symbolic Annihilation of Women by the Mass Media," in G. Tuchman, A. Daniels & J. Benet, eds., Hearth and Home: Images of Women in the Mass Media (Oxford UP, 1978)

Noreene Janus, “Research on Sex-Roles in the Mass Media: Toward a Critical Approach,” Insurgent Sociologist (7)(3)(1977): 19-31

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen 16(3) (Autumn 1975): 6-18

Juliet Mitchell, "The Longest Revolution," New Left Review 40 (Nov.-Dec. 1966): 11-32

E. Ann Kaplan, "Feminist Criticism and Television," in R. Allen, ed., Channels of Discourse (U North Carolina P, 1987)

Elizabeth Long, "Feminism and Cultural Studies," Critical Studies in Mass Communication,” (December 1989): 427-435

Michele Mattelart, "Women and the Cultural Industries," In R. Collins, et al., eds., Media, Culture and Society (Sage, 1986)

Teresa L. Ebert, “The Romance of Patriarchy: Ideology, Subjectivity, and Postmodern Feminist Cultural Theory,” Cultural Critique (Fall 1988): 19-57

Nancy Hartsock, “Rethinking Modernism: Minority vs. Majority Theories,” Cultural Critique (Fall 1987): 187-20

April 12

Robert Miles, “On Signification,” in Racism (Routledge, 1989)

Edward Said, “Introduction,” in Orientalism (Vintage, 1979)

Michael Omi & Howard Winant, “Racial Formation” in Racial Formation in the United States 2^nd ed. (Routledge, 1994)

Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racist Ideologies and the Media," in G. Bridges & R. Brunt, Eds., Silver Linings (Lawrence & Wishart, 1981)

Michael Omi, "In Living Color: Race and American Culture," in I. Angus & S. Jhally, Eds., Cultural Politics in Contemporary America (Routledge, 1989)

Paul Gilroy, Chap. 1 “Race, Class and Agency,” in There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack (Chicago UP, 1987)

Hazel Carby, “White Women Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood,” in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back (Hutchinson, 1982)

Justin Lewis, “The Power of Popular Television: The Case of Cosby,” in Ideological Octopus (Routledge, 1991)

Jimmie L. Reeves & Richard Campbell, “Reaganism: The Packaging of Backlash Politics,” in Cracked Coverage: Television News, the Anti-Cocaine Crusade, and the Reagan Legacy (Duke University Press, 1994)

Sessions 15 & 16: Globalization, Digital Politics and Media

How have theorists conceptualized the role of communication technologies/media/mediated culture within international political, economic, social and cultural relations? What paradigms/research traditons inform these conceptualizations? What is globalization and what role do media and communication technologies play in this process? What is "cultural imperialism" and how has it been understood in media studies? How does the question of democracy fit into this domain of research? What are the key questions raised by the study of international communication and globalization?

April 19

Daniel Lerner, “The Grocer and the Chief,” from The Passing of Traditional Society.

Everett Rogers, "Communication and Development: The Passing of the Dominant Paradigm," Communication Research (3) (2) (April 1976):213-240.

Frantz Fanon, “On national culture,” from The Wretched of the Earth (1959).

W.W. Rostow, “The Five States of Growth: A Summary,” from The Stages of Economic Growth (1968).

Excerpt from Rist, The History of Development.

“Development Communication,” Encyclopedia of Communication.

UN Millennium Declaration

World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration and Plan of Action (two items).

Andrew Calabrese, “The MacBride Report: Its Value to a New Generation,” Quaderns del CAC [quarterly journal of the Catalonian Broadcasting Council] (in press).

April 26

Armand Mattelart, “Against Global Inevitability,” Media Development 46(2), (1999), 3-6.

Ulrich Beck, “Democracy Beyond the Nation-State: A Cosmopolitical Manifesto,” Dissent (Winter 1999), 53-55.

Andrew Calabrese (1999). Communication and the end of sovereignty? Info, 1(4), 313-326.

Andrew Calabrese (2004). The promise of civil society: A global movement for communication rights. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 18(3), 317-329.

Dan Schiller, "The Neoliberal Networking Drive Originates in the United States," in Digital Capitalism (Boston: MIT Press, 1999).

Pierre Bourdieu, “The Politics of Globalization” Le Monde. February 20, 2002. (Originally published January 24, 2002.

John Tomlinson, “Deterritorialization,” Globalization and Culture (Chicago, 1999).

Excerpt from Said, Culture and Imperialism.

Aijaz Ahmad, “Literature Among the Signs of Our Time,” In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (Verso, 1992).