Week Nine: Entertainment as the Meta-ideology of Television

This week I am asking you to read a section from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. In this section he discusses how politics in the television age is governed by the discourse of show business because entertainment is what he calls the "meta-ideology" of television. Please read the section of the essay entitled "Reach Out and Elect Someone" which starts on page 91 of the document and goes to page 103. I will make a separate version of just the selected pages and post it on the course resource page.

This week's homework assignment was to watch a political advertisement and to make two readings of the advertisement, one a reading from a dominant framework and a second reading from an oppositional framework. Post these readings on your blog.

Week Eight: Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams

Stuart Hall

This week we will have a guest scholar speaking and conversing with us on the work of Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams and Marxist approaches to media studies. The speaker will be Dan O'Reilly Rowe who  is a documentary filmmaker, video artist, and media scholar. His research interests include video game theory and role of computational media in social movements and education. Dan divides his time between the US and Australia, working with non-profits, community organisations, and universities to develop media resources and programs. He holds a Master's in Digital Communication and Culture from the University of Sydney, Australia.

Dan has asked us to read two excerpts which I have emailed to you and which are also linked on the syllabus or available on the course resources page from the link on this page.

Please brink your laptops or a tablet computer. 

Please remember to post your addition to the Medium is the Massage, a page illuminating any insight you have about contemporary media.

Week Six: Responding to Lolita

This week we will be peer-reviewing the written responses to Lolita. You should have your response written and posted on your blog before this week's class session. The recommended approach to the response is to take any quotation or longer passage from the book, quote it and then discuss its implications, context or importance to understanding the characters or themes of the book.  Come to class prepared to read and comment on other responses. Everyone in the class is required to read and respond to Lolita. 

Next week is the mid-term and all blog posts for the first half of the semester are due. Please post on whatever you have read for the semester, this includes your revised response to Lolita. Next week we will be reading The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan. After you read it I would like you to compose your own page that graphically presents an observation or idea that you have about media. Post the page on your blog.