| Prof. John Durham Peters Office: 125 BCSB, Phone: 353-2258 (voice mail) e-mail: john-peters@uiowa.edu |
Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. and by appointment. A sign-up sheet is available on my door. Right before class is, unfortunately, not good this semester, due to preparation pressures. |
Media studies has a short history but a long past. Though the name is not more than three decades old, the central intellectual problems of media studies have been pursued in a variety of intellectual traditions over the course of the twentieth century (and before). Looking backwards, we are in a good position to discover ancestors in the American progressives (Chicago), the effects tradition (Columbia), critical theory (Frankfurt), and British cultural studies (Birmingham). This class attempts to give a guided tour through this thicket and to help you become familiar, comfortable, and even fluent with theoretical vocabulary and questions that have been historically important in the formation of media studies.
Of all the times in history to be studying the mass media, this is probably the best. Not only the dizzying technological and economic upheavals within the media industries themselves make it so, but also the outpouring of theory, argument, and research on the mass media from diverse academic fields. Theories about mass communication have never been more plural--or more contentious. The area of knowledge we provisionally call “Mass Communication Theories” is an unsettled terrain, something of a frontier, and frontiers are known for adventures and dangers, lawlessness and open vistas. This course does not pretend to offer more than a survey of important landmarks. It will deal with central traditions of study, topics of debate, and conceptual problems in media studies, with a bias toward the United States. You will not learn everything you need about mass communication theories, let alone social theory. Recent work is slighted in this course (but not in other courses). Your development into a social theorist of media, culture, and society will likely take your entire program at least.
I assume that mass communication theory is best understood as a branch of social theory. Not only does mass communication theory historically mimic the main currents of social theory, but the concept of communication is central to efforts to understand modern societies: indeed, the attempt to theorize “society” and “communication” arise in the same moment, as reflected in Cooley’s Social Organization, for instance. The class aims to help you begin to theorize about mass communication and society and to introduce you to a variety of positions. Part of the Iowa tradition is that every scholar, whatever his or her particular method, area, or topic, should be a theorist, and a theorist is (to give a minimalist definition), one who argues, gives reasons and makes connections to larger problems. Theory is not only something that people do in their armchairs; it is an art that every scholar, if not citizen and human, should cultivate. “All anthropoi naturally desire to know,” said Aristotle. This class is an invitation to theory.
Our approach will be historical. A chief way to study theory is via the history of theory. All theory is a rapprochement with the past of theory. Further, historical narration, as many recent theorists have claimed, is both a political and intellectual task. It is not a matter of stringing events or milestones together, but of claiming a lineage, and thus staking a claim to the present. Readings for this class have been chosen for cartographic rather than cutting-edge qualities--their ability to help anchor a cognitive map of ideas.
This class also aims to help serve as a preparation for the qualifying examination in media studies. It is something of a theory survival course. It aims to introduce you to the vocabulary and intellectual style and basic issues of social theory in general, to the world of theoretical talk in which you will be immersed here. We will also pursue, in passing, what could be called the philosophy of scholarship--why we should theorize, publish, teach, and what it is all for. The personal resources that give rise to theory are precious and need fostering.
The only letter grade you will receive is the final grade of the class, but I will provide written commentary on all work, much in the manner that scholars normally do. You may freely consult with me any time during the semester for a sense of your standing.
No Incompletes will be given, as the assignments are small and spread out. No one plans to get an incomplete: I want you to actively plan not to. (Since there is no large paper due, this course doesn’t lend itself to incompletes in any case.) Plus/minus grading will be used for the final grades.
The following books have been ordered at Iowa Book and Supply (on the corner of Clinton and Washington: go the basement). We will not read all of any of them, so you may choose whether to invest in their purchase. All, however, are worthy installments in the library of a media scholar so buying them is recommended if you can afford it. A few article-length readings will be distributed as well.
Carey, Communication as Culture
In addition, two books will be made available at cost:
The schedule could change as the semester evolves, but any changes will be announced in advance (if in doubt, assume that the schedule below is correct). Readings are to be done before the class meeting on the date listed please.
August |
|
| 24 | Introduction and Overview |
| 31 | Why Theorize? Read: Habermas, “Knowledge and Human Interests” (handout) |
| September | |
| 7 | Progressive Communitarians Read: Cooley, Social Organization, chaps. 1-10, especially 6-10, plus skim around. Read: MCAST, pp. 13-20, nos. 1-5. |
| 14 | The Fate of the Public: Dewey & Lippmann Read: Lippmann, Public Opinion, epigraph, chaps. 1, 16, 17, 25-28. |
| 21 | Vistas of/from the late '20s and 1930s Read: MCAST, nos. 7-20, pp. 79-90. |
| 28 | The Rise of Administrative Research, especially at Columbia Read: MCAST, nos. 21-24, 26, 29, 31, 34, 35, 37, 38, 41 |
| October | |
| 5 | Critical Research at Columbia: Mass Persuasion Read: Merton et al., Mass Persuasion (including introduction by Simonson). |
| 12 | Critical Theory, I Read: MCAST, nos. 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 68. |
| 19 | Critical Theory, II Read: Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, sections
TBA. |
| 26 | Mass Society Theory in the 1950s Read: MCAST, nos. 40, 43, 44, 50, 52, 53, 55. |
| November | |
| 2 | Weather from the North: The Toronto School Read: MCAST, nos. 42, 49, 51. |
| 9 | 1950s Landscapes Read: MCAST, pp. 263-274, nos. 45, 46, 47, 48, 54, 56, 57, 58. |
| 16 | 1960s Landscapes Read: MCAST, nos. 59- 67. |
| 23 | No Class: Thanksgiving Break |
| 30 | British Cultural Studies (late 1950s through 1970s) Read: Williams, Culture and Society, Conclusion plus any one chapter. |
| December | |
| 7 | Summing Up: Pasts and Futures Read:
Carey, Communication as Culture, chaps. 1, 4, 8. |
Your task is to write a book review of some more or less classic book in mass communication theory. The book should be at least thirty years old. A book review, in general, must characterize the topic, approach, and style of the book, offer an evaluation of its quality and contribution, and deal with any issues the book might raise. You can see examples of book reviews in many scholarly journals, such as Journal of Communication or Quarterly Journal of Speech, which both have extensive book review sections.
Doing a review of a book whose impact is already made requires something of a different approach than a regular review. For older works of social science and social theory, it is often useful to be able to comment on how the book fits into, deviates from, or commences a tradition of research or thought (“Every great work of art,” said Walter Benjamin, “either founds or destroys a genre”). This means that you should know something about the larger context of ideas and interests in which the book made its splash. I can recommend outside sources for specific books if you'd like, but your main task is to read the book critically rather than to do extensive research about it. Knowing something about the context will help in reading, but the book itself should be the focus of the assignment.
Another thing that makes your task a bit different from a current book review is that you are rereading the book. In a sense, your job is to say what is still alive and what is dead in the book/style/approach/ method (etc.) that you are examining.
You may also choose a journal and dig into its past and see what you can learn about styles of thinking and political commitments over the ages. Obviously close reading of an entire journal would be impossible, but you can learn a great deal about the history, trends, fashions, themes of a field thus.
Some of these books do not explicitly deal with “communication” or “mass communication,” but all have relevance for them. Your reviews should show me how these works speak to issues of mass communication. I am of course open to other suggestions besides the following, however; this list does not pretend to be an exhaustive catalog of the options.
I can also make some recommendations for texts in French, German, Italian, or Spanish if you would like.
Please don't forget the option of reviewing a journal. Let me know what journal you have in mind. In any case, it should be old enough to have a substantial history.
SOME JOURNALS
Good journals for mass communication theory, which you should be familiar with in general and which may help spark ideas for this assignment, are:
Many other journals will carry useful articles such as the following (an idiosyncratic list):
E-Mail the Department of Communication Studies: commstudies-inquiry@uiowa.edu -
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March 29, 2006
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