Logistics 1: Syllabus

Full-text of syllabus, below:

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Introduction to Media Studies
MEDIA 180 (Sections 001-011, 084, 161)
Spring Semester, 2009
Prof. Stuart Ewen
Dept. of Film & Media Studies
Office: 501C North Building

SYLLABUS

In today’s world, the media are an increasingly pervasive presence in people’s lives. Where¬ver we turn they are with us, supplying us with persuasive, captivat-ing, and sometimes misleading renditions of the world. On the internet, an in-teractive media environment is unfolding and, with e-mail, video chats, search engines, blogs, file sharing, networking sites, etc., more and more human in-teractions are taking place in cyberspace, reweaving the fabric of human inter-action. These arenas are altering conventional assumptions about communica-tion, challenging customary definitions of personal identity, and altering the physics thought, emotion and bodily experience.

This course is meant to provide a clear and critical historical exploration of the media as influential ingredi¬ents of contemporary life. We will examine their roots, the ways they’ve made disembodied experiences increasingly common. We will explore the power that they exert in the world, the forces that shape and have shaped their development, and the ways that they affect the ways that people understand themselves and other people.

In the course, media institutions, technologies, methods, myths and messages will be examined within the social and historical context in which they have grown and changed. Some of our study will focus on media in the United States yet, for them to be more fully grasped, media must also be considered as they’ve taken hold in and influenced the world at large.

Throughout the course you will be expected to analyze and make sense of visual culture: paintings, photographs, movies, videos, and the boundless arenas of fashion and style. This will require you to be more aware of the language of im-ages, the ways that images present the world and convey a point of view and, in the process, may obscure other points of view.

Related to this, the importance of “media literacy” will be central throughout this course, and each of you will be asked to produce some visual projects, just as you would be expected to write essays in a literature or composition course. As many Film & Media Studies courses aim to educate students in creative ap-proaches to public expression, these assignments are calculated to get you to explore ways you can use media tools to effectively convey ideas, outlooks and knowledge.

Course Mechanics:

Every Monday and Wednesday, between 12:10 and 1:00 PM we will meet for a lecture session in Room 615 of the West Building. In lecture, general course themes will be introduced and developed. These sessions will also be used for a number of film and video screenings, as indicated the class schedule below. Lecture topics and readings that must be read by the date of each lecture are also listed in the schedule.

General Requirements:

During lectures you are expected to be attentive and, when called for, to par-ticipate. Turn cell phones off before class begins. If you are using a computer in class, it should only be used for note taking. Please treat each other, and the learning environment, with respect.

In addition to lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays at 12:10, everyone enrolled in this course is enrolled in a discussion section that meets at other times. At-tendance and participation in discussion sections is required. If you do not at-tend, you will not pass the course. Section leaders for the course are:

Section 001 Ariana Souzis
Section 002 Ariana Souzis
Section 003 Jennifer Jacobs
Section 004 Jennifer Jacobs
Section 005 Dylan Gauthier
Section 006 Dylan Gauthier
Section 007 Chloe Smolarski
Section 008 Chloe Smolarski
Section 009 Elizabeth Knafo
Section 010 Elizabeth Knafo
Section 011 Leslie Synn
Section 084/161 Leslie Synn

Get to know your discussion leader, learn her or his name, and find out when he or she has scheduled office hours. If you have questions, things you want to dis-cuss, or need help with the course, your discussion leader should be there for you. Section leaders will announce their contact information and office hours when you meet in discussion section. Section leaders will also be giving you specific written or other assignments for submission to them.

Required Readings:

The following books are required reading for all students in the course. They are available at Shakespeare & Co., on Lexington Avenue, between 68th and 69th Streets, across the street from the main entrance to Thomas Hunter Hall. You may also want to check Amazon to see if you can get free shipping on your total order and save some money on books for the course:

• Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.
• Stuart Ewen, All Consuming Images. (1999 Edition, listed as ‘ACI’ in the schedule below) The first week’s readings from this book are available for library reserve download online. See below for access details.
In addition to these books, there are a number of required “Online Reserve” readings (listed after the letters ‘OR’ in the schedule below). You can gain access to these readings and download them without cost as PDF’s from the Li-brary Reserve page on the Internet. It is strongly recommended that you print these out for reading and reference.

Instructions for Downloading Readings from Electronic Library Reserve:
Step 1: Go to http://hunter.docutek.com/eres
Step 2: Select Electronic Reserve & Reserve Pages.
Step 3: Select Any course Field Contains and type in “Ewen,” or Course Pages by Instructor. Then select the professor’s name, “Ewen,” in the pull down menu. Click on Search.
Step 4: Select MEDIA 180.00 for Spring 2009.
Step 5: When the copyright agreement box appears, type in the course specific password, which is ewen180, with no spaces or caps.
Step 6: Then click accept.
Step 7: Select the title needed by clicking on the PDF icon to its left.
Step 8. This takes you to the Document Info page, and you can click to down-load the document at the bottom of that page.
Step 9. Print out articles for reading, note-taking and future reference. As the mid-term and final examinations are “open book” exams, these printouts may be of considerable use.

Readings are an essential part of this course. If you do not do them and are not prepared to discuss them, it will negatively affect your performance in this class. Readings must be completed by dates indicated in the schedule of classes that begins on the next page. To do well in this course, your exams, papers, and class participation must exhibit a functioning knowledge of assigned readings.

Exams, Assignments, Grades:

Over the course of the semester there will be two exams: a Mid-Term and a Final. Both will require you to write thoughtful responses to several short essay ques-tions. Dates for both are found (in bold type) below. In addition, there are three take-home assignments. Pertinent dates for these are also found (in bold type) below. Please note that the first take-home assignment is being distrib-uted at the first lecture session, February 2, 2004.

Course grades will be based on the quality of your performance on these exams and assignments, also on your attendance participation and work in discussion sections. Questions regarding a grade-related issue must be raised directly with your Discussion Section Leader.

The following guidelines will be applied to your final course grade:

Mid-Term Exam 20%
Final Exam 25%
Assignments 30% (10% each)
Discussion Section 25% (based on attendance, participation, section coursework)

You may reach Prof. Ewen by email at: sewen@gc.cuny.edu

Schedule of Classes

January 26 (M) Lecture: Course Mechanics and Introduction.
Read: Ewen, All Consuming Images (ACI), “Introduction to the New
Edition,” “Shoes for Thought,” and Part One, Chapter 1, “Images Without Bottom.”
First Take-Home Assignment Distributed (page 7, below)

January 28 (W) Film: “Style Wars.”
Read: Begin Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

February 2 (M) Lecture: Media in the Modern World.

February 4 (W) Lecture: Fahrenheit 451, Text and Context
Read: Complete Bradbury by this class.

February 9 (M) Lecture: The Rise of Print
Read: Online Reserve (OR), Frederick Douglass, “Learning to Read
and Growing in Knowledge”; John Ross, “Exer-cises in the
Restoration of History”; Jean Wheeler-Smith, “Frankie Mae.”

February 11 (W) Lecture: The Lexicon of Power

February 16 (M) No Classes—President’s Day

February 18 (W) Lecture: Literacy and Democracy
Read: Complete all readings from February 9.

February 23 (M) Lecture: Image and Power in a Changing World
Read: ACI, Part One, Chapters 2 and 3.

February 25 (W) Lecture: Aesthetics and Social Change
Read: OR, Ewen and Ewen, “The Ends Justify the Jeans.”
First Take-Home Assignment Due

March 2 (M) Film: Stanley Nelson, “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords”
(Part One)
Second Take-Home Assignment Distributed

March 4 (W) Film: Stanley Nelson, “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords”
(Part Two)
MID-TERM EXAM QUESTIONS DISTRIBUTED

March 9 (M) Lecture: Photography and the Evolution of a Vis-ual
Vernacular.
Read: OR, Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereo-scope and
The Stereograph”; Lewis Hine, “Social Photogra-phy.”

March 11 (W) MID-TERM EXAMINATION

March 16 (M) Lecture: Personal Salvation and the Culture of
Self-Improvement.
Read: OR, Benjamin Franklin, “Continuation of the Account of my
Life…,” selection from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin;
Horatio Alger, Ragged Dick.

March 18 (W) Lecture: Tales of Before and After
Read: Complete Alger, also read OR, Malcolm X,
and Alex Haley, “Saved,” selection from The Autobiography
of Malcolm X.

March 23 (M) Film: Buster Keaton, “Sherlock, Jr.

March 25 (W) Lecture: Visual Rhetoric and the Rise of the Mov-ies
Read: OR, Hugo Münsterberg, “The Psychology of
the Photoplay.”

March 30 (M) Lecture: Changing Relations Between Image and Audience
Read: OR, Ewen and Ewen, “Immigrant Women and the
Rise of the Movies.

April 1 (W) Lecture: Becoming An Image: Identity in Flux
Read: All in OR: Andrew Adam Newman, “The True Story of a
Bogus Blog.” Adweek. May 5, 2008; Michelle Jana Chan, “Identity in a Virtual World.” CNN Online, June 14, 2007; Shannon McRae, “Coming Apart at the Seams: Sex, Text and the Virtual Body.”; Ju-dith Donath, “Being Real” (2000).
Suggested: see also “Identity and Body in Cyber-space” http://www.greenlloyd.com/bodyincyberspace.htm.

April 6 (M) Film: Jason Simon, “Vera.”
SECOND ASSIGNMENT DUE

April 8 (W) No Classes—Spring Recess

April 13 (M) No Classes—Spring Recess

April 15 (W) No Classes—Spring Recess
April 20 (M) Lecture: Advertising as a Way of Life
Second Take-Home Assignment Due
Read: All Consuming Images, Part Four.

April 22 (W) Lecture: The Social Roots of the Consumer Culture
Read: Complete ACI, Part Four.
Third Take-Home Assignment Distributed

April 27 (M) Lecture: The Political Elements of Style
Read: All Consuming Images, “Conclusion.”

April 29 (W) Lecture: The Rise of Public Relations
Read: OR, Selections from Walter Lippmann, Ed-ward
Bernays, “The Engineering of Consent.”

May 4 (M) The Grooves of Borrowed Thought
Read: OR, Stuart Ewen, “Visiting Edward Ber-nays.”

May 6 (W) Film: “The Century of the Self” (First Part)

May 11 (M) Lecture: Public Relations and Public Life: Is De-mocracy
Possible?
Third Take-Home Assignment Due

May 13 (W) Final Exam Questions Distributed and Discussed