Humanities 490.21: Contemporary Media Theory
T: 930-1220, NH 304
Professor Jon Beller
Associate Professor, English and Humanities and
Critical and Visual Studies
jbeller@pratt.edu
Office hours: 1230-200 and by appt., 415 DeKalb
Course Description:
Under the rubric of “contemporary media theory” this course investigates the
technological, economic, material, communicative, psychic, and organizational changes
experienced by humans and their kin during the long twentieth century. Media theory is
an emerging field that is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It has come into being
alongside what is now perceived as the convergence of prior media towards digitization.
Fields of inquiry that inform media theory include political economy, computational
theory, cognitive theory, linguistics, film theory, urban studies, art history, semiotics,
ideology critique, political science, psychoanalysis and aesthetics, and, more recently,
biology, physics, and genetics among others. Increasingly, paradigms of communication
and informatics are working their way through the human sciences, and
analogously/simultaneously through the human itself (ourselves). In the study of media
theory, nothing less than human being is at stake. Briefly then, this course explores the
transformation of society and consciousness by and as media technologies during the
long 20th century; students will read some of the most influential works of media analysis
written during the past century as well as explore cutting edge analysis generated during
the last 20 years.
Course Goals:
Students will become conversant with methods of conceptualization and analysis that cast
the traditional questions of politics, culture, communication, language, representation,
justice and society into an emergent framework of analysis that understands media and
technology to be a significant and to some extent decisive transformation in the situation
of actually existing “humanity.”
Student Learning Objectives:
In this course students are expected to be able to understand and articulate relations
between media apparatuses/platforms and the ideas, images, and energies that they
convey. What are some of the specific characteristics of photography, audio recording,
cinema, language? Students are also expected to begin thinking mediologically, that is, to
begin to be able to use the explanatory power of media theory to explain a variety of
Media Theory Syllabus / page 1 of 6
social phenomenon. These might include the changing characteristics of the senses,
interiority and subjectivity, historical transformations of language function, the role of
capital in shaping history and organizing socio-political inequality, the rise of
cybernetics, certain aspects of racism and sexism, the situation of the imagination, etc. In
short, students are expected to develop a historical-materialist approach to questions of
culture, knowledge and politics, and to be intellectually and otherwise empowered by the
range and potentials of such an approach.
A Note: Our meetings for this course will be on Tuesdays. You are expected to attend all
of them. Time in class will consist of a combination of lecture, discussion, student
presentations and a few film screenings. I will offer remarks on the reading and/or film
while endeavoring to leave space and time for you to shape the direction and structure of
the discussion. It is in keeping with the critiques offered by many of these texts that,
given the current formation of society and its institutions, liberatory knowledge cannot be
delivered as a monologue. Alongside this critique is the ethos that learning is a collective
process that thrives best when many voices are heard. In order for such polyvocality to
work in our particular academic context, you must come to class prepared to offer
readings and synthesis of the texts assigned for that week. You should use your reading
notebook as a way of preparing for these discussions. Please have at least two prepared
comments for each text under discussion.
Requirements:
I)
II)
III)
IV)
V)
Reading and Viewing Notebook (20%): Each week you are to write one to
two pages on the text read and/or film screened. These writings may simply be
summary and a few reflections, or they may be more elaborately argued
interpretations. One paragraph about each assigned reading should end with
the formulation of a comment or two that you would be willing to offer in
class. You may also outline readings in your notebook as well as keep a
record of your thoughts and insights in whatever form works for you. The
Reading and Viewing Notebook is one of your primary workspaces for this
course. It should be a resource for you when preparing for the mid-term and
final assignments and when organizing your thoughts for the weekly
lecture/discussion section. Please note that in this class the following is taken
as axiomatic: in order to be able to write on each text you have to have read it.
Mid-term exam (30%): There will be a mid-term take-home exam required for
this course. Plagiarism will result in failure of the course.
Final Paper (30%): There will be a ten-page final paper for this course on a
topic that you develop during the semester. Students are encouraged to do
some independent research for this project. Proper citations required.
Plagiarism will result in failure of the course.
Class participation (10%): This category involves being present (in a variety
of senses) and having interesting things to say that are directly pertinent to
course materials.
In-class Presentation (10%): Each student will make a 20 minute presentation
to the class that either comments on, complements, or adds to the topics of this
Media Theory Syllabus / page 2 of 6
course. You are expected to give an adequate account of the text you have
chosen to work with but also to view the presentation as an opportunity for
you to bring up questions, themes, or issues that you find most compelling
with respect to the course topic. You may read something you have written,
speak from notes or off the cuff, show a clip, or any combination of the above.
Because of the complexity of scheduling these presentations you must adhere
to the date, time and time limit for your presentation.
Required Texts:
A. Course Reader (available at Pratt Copy Center)
B. The Following Books (at Amazon.com, search “Jon Beller’s Contemporary Media
Theory Course” in Listmania – sorry, but the Pratt Store just would not be able to handle
this list):
1. The New Media Reader by Noah Wardrip-Fruin
2. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
3. 1984 (Signet Classics) by George Orwell
4. Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
5. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception by Paul Virilio
(Optional)
6. The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the
Spectacle (Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture) by Jonathan Beller
7. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Writing Science) by Friedrich A. Kittler
8. New Philosophy for New Media by Mark B.N. Hansen
(Optional)
9. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles
10. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Electronic Mediations) by Lisa
Nakamura
11. A Grammar of the Multitude (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) by Paolo Virno
12. Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai
13. Gamer Theory by McKenzie Wark
14. The Politics of Aesthetics by Jacques Ranciere
15. Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews by Jacques Derrida
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Schedule of Class Meetings:
Unit 1: Prosthetics, Cybernetics, Capital
Week 1
Tuesday Jan. 15
Introduction to the class.
Man with a Movie Camera, d. Dziga Vertov
Week 2
Tuesday, Jan. 22
George Orwell, 1984
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass
Deception” (from Dialectic of Enlightenment, Reader)
Week 3
Tuesday Jan. 29
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Reader)
Andre Bazin, “What is Cinema” (1-22, Reader)
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(Illuminations)
Week 4
Tuesday Feb. 5
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” (NMR)
Alan Turing, “Computing, Machinery and Intelligence (NMR)
Norbert Weiner, “Men, Machines, and the World About” (NMR)
Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto” (NMR)
Week 5
Tuesday Feb. 12
Marshall McLuhan, “The Medium is the Message” and “The Galaxy Reconfigured”
(NMR)
Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Constituents of a Theory of the Media” (NMR)
Jean Baudrillard, “Requiem for the Media” (NMR)
Week 6
Tuesday Feb. 19
No class – take home assignment on Media Theory Blogs:
The Pinocchio Theory, Elusive Lucidity, Le Colonel Chabert, $, etc.
Week 7
Tuesday Feb. 26
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema (optional)
Film Screening of Debord’s SOS
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Week 8
Tuesday Mar. 4
Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production
Week 9
Tuesday Mar. 11
Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
Erika Badya Muhammed, “Electrocultures”
Lila Abu-Lugod, “Bedouins, Cassettes and Technologies of Public Culture” (Reader,
optional)
Charles Hirschkind, “The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in
Contemporary Egypt” (Reader, optional)
Take-home Midterm Exam
Week 10
Mar. 16-24: Spring Break
UNIT 2: New Media/Post-Human
Week 11
Tuesday Mar. 25
Katherine Hayles, How We Became Post-Human
Mark B. N. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media (optional)
Take-home Midterm Exam Due
Week 12
Tuesday Apr. 1
Alexander G. Weheliye, ““Fennin:” Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular
Music” (Reader)
Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies” (Reader)
Joel Dinerstein, “Technologies and Its Discontents: On the Verge of the Posthuman”
(Reader)
Week 13
Tuesday April 8
Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race
Mackenzie Wark, Gamer Theory
Week 14
Tuesday Apr. 15
Sianne Ngai, Ugly Feelings
Jacques Derrida and Bernard Steigler, Echographies of Television
Media Theory Syllabus / page 5 of 6
Week 15
Tuesday Apr. 22
Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude
Week 16
Tuesday Apr. 29
Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics
Week 17
Final Essay Due: Monday May 5th. Email your essay to jbeller@pratt.edu.
Media Theory Syllabus / page 6 of 6