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.

Week Two: Heart of Darkness

This week we will be reading and discussing Heart of Darkness. In some interesting ways, Heart of Darkness is very much like the Wizard of Oz a comparison we might develop in class discussion. We will be considering how observing the binaries in any work can be an effective tool for opening up a work for deeper reading, especially for revealing the ideology of a work. This is especially effective when considering a text like Heart of Darkness which explores many conflicts within the characters and their experience. Don't forget to ask the important first question when considering a narrative work which is "Who is telling the story and what do we know about them." That is a very interesting question in this work.

This is a novella so it is short enough to try to finish before coming to class. It is also available as an audio book. Check the course resource page for relevant materials. You can post on your blog before or after class, or both, about your experience with the text. If you have not send me the URL of your personal blog please do so as soon as possible.

Next week we will be reading the common text for all Literature and Media Studies classes this year, The Magicians by Lev Grossman. You need to acquire your own copy of this text. This an excellent work of fantasy writing that makes specific reference to some of the great works in the genre especially The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and of course The Lord of the Rings. But much of the novel takes place in a college that is not unlike art school with all its pitfalls and personal challenges. Many students have liked reading this novel and I think it is a great read for a holiday weekend.

Here is a link to a professional blog post on Heart of Darkness. It is illustrative of the perfect length for a blog post, confines itself nicely to a single major point and explores that point reasonably, giving the reader other places to go, linking them to more possibilities. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/dec/05/theunjustprejudiceagainstc

Harry Potter and Participatory Culture

Harry Potter fan art from holytaco.com

We will finish our regular class meetings with a discussion of the increasing importance of participatory culture and the advent of online communities. As a point of departure we will look at the trans-media narrative of Harry Potter and consider its various extensions into fan narrative. As a reading assignment for this week try to read any fan ficiton from the Harry Potter universe. Also try to read some of the blog kept by Henry Jenkins one of the most important living critics of media and an important theorist about the growth of participatory culture. For example, read his recent post on Samba Schools and participatory culture. His blog his available at the following link:

http://www.henryjenkins.org/

Next week I will be meeting you indivdiually for your final evaluation conferences. Please remember to post on your blog any responses to works you have read this semester and, very importantly, for your final blog entry revise a previous post to represent your writing for this semester in one selected document. Be sure to complete the online course evaluation.