CMNS 210 SYLLABUS: RDGS & PRSNTNS SMR 09
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CMNS 210: History of Communication, SUMMER, 2009:
Pre-requisites: CMNS 110 or 130, or permission of the instructor.
Instructor: Roman Onufrijchuk
TAs: David Newman and Yongsuk Shim
I. Course Description:
This course provides students with a survey of the evolution of media technologies, practices,
and institutions in relation to historical developments in social organization, attitudes about
and expectations of communication, and articulation of individual and group identities. The
course begins with an in-depth examination of communication dynamics or oral cultures and,
on the other hand, literacy and literate traditions. The course then moves to the
establishment of printing, and then the expansion of media forms and institutions with the
coming of electronic technologies.
The course is concerned with the relationships between communication practices and media
forms, the growth of communication theory, historical developments and changes in
institutional arrangements, and the cultural contexts embedding efforts either maintaining
continuity, and/or initiating and fostering social change.
II. Course Requirements:
- In class Midterm (40%)
- Final take home assignment (30%)
- Tutorials (Briefing & documentation 20% + attendance and participation 10% = 30%)
III. Course Texts
1. Briggs, Asa, and Peter Burke. A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the
Internet. Cambridge, UK & Malden, MA: Polity, 2nd ed. 2005. (ISBN: 0745632432)
2. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, New Accents. London;
NY: Routledge, 1988. (ISBN: 0415281296)
3. Fang, Irving. A History of Mass Communication: Six Information Revolutions. Oxford, UK:
Focal Press, 1997. (ISBN: 0240802543)
4. Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing
by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice). Cambridge MSS: MIT
Press, 2008. (ISBN: 026274032X)
IV. Course Schedules:
PART I
WEEK 1
THE “TORONTO SCHOOL" (online, in sidebar): Innis, McLuhan, Havelock, Ong.
Onufrijchuk
“Paraverbal Media” (online, in sidebar)
pp. 1-11
“What are information revolutions?”
pp. xv-xxxiii
WEEK 2
Fang
Zielinski
“introduction: Idea of deep time . . . ”
pp. 1-12
CMNS 210 SYLLABUS: RDGS & PRSNTNS SMR 09
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Briggs & Burke
“Introduction”
pp. 1-12
Ong
“Introduction”
pp. 1-4
Ong
“Orality of language”
pp. 5-15
Ong
“Modern discovery of primary orality”
pp. 16-29
Ong
“Some psychodynamics of orality”
WEEK 3
pp. 31-76
WEEK 4
Fang
“Writing: 1st revolution”
pp. 1-16
Wilford
Who Began Writing? Many Theories, Few Answers
Donald, Merlin
Memory Palaces
Ong
“Writing restructures consciousness”
Annaud , J-J
Name of the Rose (film)
(2:06)
“Printing: 2nd revolution”
pp. 18-40
pp. 77-114
WEEK 5
- Fang
- Briggs & Burke “The print revolution in context”
pp. 13-60
- Ong
“Print, space, closure”
pp. 115-132
- Onufrijchuk
"Comparing and contrasting oral and literate cultures
WEEK 6
Ong
“Oral memory, story line, characterization
pp. 136-152
Briggs & Burke
“The media and public sphere . . . “
pp. 61-87
Briggs & Burke
“From steam to electricity”
pp. 88-99
Fang
“Mass media: 3rd revolution”
pp. 43-99
Onufrijchuk
Definitions in section “A,” Principles & Departures
WEEK 7
Midterm: Readings, see WEEK 7 (The Medici, PBS) in sidebar, NO tutorials
PART II
WEEK 8
Briggs & Burke
“Processes & patterns”
pp. 100-150
Fang
“Entertainment: 4th revolution”
pp. 101-136
Briggs & Burke
“Information, education, entertainment”
pp. 151-215
WEEK 9
Fang
“The tool-shed home: 5th revolution”
pp. 136-187
CMNS 210 SYLLABUS: RDGS & PRSNTNS SMR 09
Briggs & Burke
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“Convergence”
pp. 216-253
Fang
“The highway: 6th revolution”
pp. 189-238
Briggs & Burke
“Multimedia”
pp. 254-268
WEEK 10
WEEK 11
Ong
“Some theorems”
Fang
“Summing up”
pp. 153-176
pp. 239-243
--Tutorial Readings/Briefings
Briefings:
Wk 3 – Zielinski, Ch. 2. “Fortuitous finds instead of . . . “
pp. 13-38
Wk 4 – Zielinski, Ch. 3. “Attraction and repulsion: Empedocles”
pp. 39-56
Wk 5 – Zielinski, Ch. 4. “Magic & experiment: G B della Porta”
Wk 6 – Zielinski, Ch. 5. “Light & shadow . . .: A Kircher”
Midterm
pp. 57-100
pp. 101-158
Wk 7.
Wk 8 – Zielinski, Ch. 6. “Electrification, tele-writing . . .: Ritter . . .”
pp. 159-204
Wk 9 – Zielinski, Ch. 7. “The discovery of the pit . . . C Lombroso”
pp. 205-226
Wk 10 – Zielinski, Ch. 8. “The economy of time: A K Gastev”
pp. 227-254
Wk 11 – Zielinski, Ch. 9. “Conclusions . . . cartography . . .”
pp. 255-281
V. Course Notes and Guidelines
1. Seminars: Presentations & Documentation
Beginning in Week 3, we will have two presentations per seminar drawn on their
corresponding weeks from Siegfried Zielinski’s Deep Time of the Media: Toward an
Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means following the sequence listed in the
syllabus; each chapter will be presented by two people or small group.
Presentations should provide a concise summary of the author/s’ key arguments, connect the
chapter to the course literature, media or discussion, as well as furnish the class with some
contextual background (drawn from Fang and or Briggs & Burke, or other academic sources).
All presentations must be documented.
Documentation is made up of a 2-4 page handout including:
1. Author’s key point or thesis
2. The presentation outline followed by,
3. Key quotes from the article, and
4. Questions or points of relationship to other course material for seminar
discussion.
NOTE: Students are required to provide everyone in the seminar with a copy of this
documentation on the day of their presentation.
2. Midterm covers all course material up to and including Week 6 as well as media
CMNS 210 SYLLABUS: RDGS & PRSNTNS SMR 09
component, The Medici (see below). Study questions will be provided in Week 6.
3. Typically, final assignment topics are discussed in class on Week 12, and along with full
guidelines, are posted in Week 13.
4. Much course communication tends to be conducted electronically. Postings will continue to
show up at this URL, and you’ll be informed of new postings either in class or by e-mail. It is
wise to include CMNS 210 in the SUBJECT LINE of your e-mail correspondence with either your
TA or me. Also, please “sign it” (your name at the bottom of your message) as we cannot
connect e-mail addresses and faces all that well.
COURSE RESOURCES (SIDEBAR)
THE “TORONTO SCHOOL"
- Harold Adams Innis (1894-1982) pp. 1-6
- Eric Havelock (1903-1988)
- Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
pp. 1-7
- Walter Ong S.J. (1912-2003)
- Paraverbal Media
BACKGROUNDERS
WEEK 4
- Who began writing?
- Memory Palaces
WEEK 5
- Comparing & contrasting oral and literate
societies
- Principles & Departures
MEDIA
WEEK 6
1. The Name of the Rose circa 1327,
(1986)
WEEK 7
2. The Medici: Godfathers of the
Renaissance, Power vs. Truth
(Youtube), Season I, Episode 4, PBS
(2005)
- Florence Firenze and the Medici (14th to
18thh centuries)
- Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti
Simoni (1475 – 1564)
- Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574)
- Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno (1548
– 1600)
- Galileo Gallilei (1564 - 1642)
FIGURES in the HISTORY of MEDIA &
COMMUNICATION
Empedocles (ca. 490–430 BC)
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum
Gutenberg (c. 1398 – 1468)
Giambattista della Porta (1535? - 1615)
Athanasius Kircher (1601 or 1602 - 1680)
Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776 – 1810)
Johann Alois Senefelder (1771 – 1834)
Abraham Pineo Gesner, (1797 – 1864)
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791 – 1872)
Alfred Lewis Vail (1807 – 1859)
Cesare Lombroso (1835 – 1909)
George-Édouard-Amable Desbarats (1838
– 1893)
Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922)
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931)
Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874 –
1937)
Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866 – 1932)
Aleksei Kapitonovich Gastev (1882-1939)
Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC,
DFC (1897 – 1989)
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