This seminar will focus on the historical and philosophical aspects of media and technology. In addition to the traditional historical approach to several media forms, we will focus specifically on a number of methods of the material history and analysis of media forms, the evolution of those media forms, and the ways conditions of material accident and influence affect future media.
The course will focus first on several abstract theories of the material history of media and then dive into specific historical media with those perspectives in mind. As such, the course will be very theory-intensive at first, and then settle into more concrete work about specific technologies. Our focus on digital media will be interwoven with earlier “traditional” media, in order to encourage a perspective of material context rather than a historical progress.
By the end of the course, students will be able to discuss and use several influential theories of media, and to put them to use in the historical, cultural, and material analysis of media—not to mention as inspiration and influence for media design no matter the material.
This is a seminar course. That means students will be expected to thoroughly read a lot of material each week, to discuss that material in class, and to prepare responses to this material that will extend their individual goals.
In addition to attendance, reading, and discussion, students will be required to write five (5) short essays (of 2,000 to 2,500 words each) on specific media forms or objects, drawing from the approaches covered in the readings. Students may choose topics that suit their own interests, and they may choose five very related subjects forming a cohesive whole, or five totally different ones for variety, or even five takes on different aspects of a single medium. To encourage early and frequent work on these essays, and to help students refine them into writing that is good, not just complete, students will be required to begin writing immediately and to share, critique, and review that work on a weekly basis. We will devote a portion of most classes conducing this process.
50% of the final grade: attendance and participation
50% of the final grade: written essays
These books are available at the Engineers Bookstore or via your favorite bookseller. Please note that the Maher book will be published later this spring and thus will not be available immediately.
- Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (MIT)
- Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford)
- Friedrich Kittler, Optical Media (Polity)
- Bonnie Mak, How the Page Matters (Toronto)
- Jimmy Maher, The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (MIT, forthcoming)
- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (any edition)
- Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan Laws of Media: The New Science (Toronto)
- Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost, Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (MIT)
- Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope (Harvard)
- J.P. Telotte, The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology (Illinois)
(The following schedule is tentative and subject to change)
Introductions – Goals – Etc.
Martin Luther King Day
No class meeting (or ideally, a rescheduled class meeting – we will discuss during week 1)
Media Ecology I
McLuhan, Understanding Media
German Media Theory
Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
No class meeting
Media Ecology II
McLuhan and McLuhan, Laws of Media
Science and Technology Studies
Latour, Pandora’s Hope
Digital Media
Bolter and Grusin, Remediation
No class meeting
The Book
Mak, How the Page Matters
Manguel, “Shape of the Book” from The History of Reading (handout)
Spring Break
No Class Meeting
Videogames
Montfort and Bogost, Racing the Beam
Film and Animation
Telotte, The Mouse Machine
Visual Media
Kittler, Optical Media
The Microcomputer
Maher, The Future Was Here
Kittler, “There is No Software” from Literature, Media, Information Systems (handout)
Wrap-Up