Georgetown University
ENGL 640 – Spring 2013
Mass Media and the American Mind
Professor Brian Hochman
bh296@georgetown.edu – New North 324 (W 1:00-3:00)
“Media,” in the words of Friedrich Kittler, “determine our situation.” During the twentieth century, cinema,
radio, and television—as well as that abstract network of information-shaping institutions known simply as
“The Media”—colonized how we came to understand the world around us. Today, in the twenty-first
century, the digital revolution is fundamentally altering how we (or, at least, some of us) produce and
consume cultural information.
This interdisciplinary course uses novels, essays, films, and even a few court cases to examine the centrality of
mass media to modern life. In the process, it also serves as an introduction to major ideas, debates, and
themes in contemporary Literature and Media Studies more generally. Focusing on the United States from
the 1920s to the present (but with some important trips to Germany, Canada, France, Brazil, and the postapocalyptic future along the way), we will consider a wide variety of texts that address the media’s power to
inform and delude, persuade and seduce, galvanize and atomize, terrify and entertain. Novels by Nathanael
West, Sloan Wilson, and Don DeLillo; films by Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, Alfred
Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet, Pixar, and Werner Herzog; theory and criticism by Benedict
Anderson, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Harold Innis, C. Wright Mills, Marshall McLuhan, Jean
Baudrillard, Noam Chomsky, and N. Katherine Hayles—among many others
Required Texts (available at the GU bookstore)
Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust (New Directions)
Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (Da Capo)
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All The President's Men (Simon & Schuster, 2nd Edition)
Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin/Viking Critical Library)
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (Gingko)
selected articles/essays/etc. – available on Blackboard (marked by [*] below)
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Class Policies/Requirements
Learning Goals:
Pitched at the graduate level, this seminar has four main objectives. Over the course of the semester
students who take this class should expect . . .
1. to survey theories and fictions of mass media culture in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries, with a special focus on the United States;
2. to gain a broad but disciplined understanding of the major themes, debates, and approaches
that are central to the field of Literature and Media Studies in its present configuration;
3. to improve their ability to discern how cultural texts shape, and are shaped by, historical
contexts; and
4. to work toward achieving professional levels of writing, research, and critical engagement.
Please note: experience in the field of Film and Media Studies is not a prerequisite for this course. However,
a cursory knowledge of the basic terms and techniques of visual analysis will likely prove helpful as we move
forward. If you feel you need to brush up on the basics, I recommend consulting the handy Yale Film
Analysis Web Site (http://classes.yale.edu/film-analysis/), or any edition of David Bordwell and Kristin
Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction.
Grading and Requirements:
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The majority of your grade for this course is determined by a series of assignments due at the end of
the semester: a 5-6 page abstract (15%), and a 15-20 page final research paper (50%). The remainder of your
grade hinges on a short review essay due in the middle of the semester (15%) and class participation (20%).
(The latter category includes regular attendance, thoughtful contribution to class discussion, and your weekly
work as “inquisitors,” “synthesizers,” and “seekers of things”—more on these designations below.) Since
this course meets just once a week, regular attendance is crucial. Missing more than one or two sessions will
seriously jeopardize your participation grade. If you miss more than three, you should reasonably expect to
fail the course.
General Expectations:
1. Turn in assignments on time. In all cases, late work is not acceptable. My policy is a simple
one: for every day an assignment is late, I will deduct 1/3 of a letter grade. I may make exceptions in
documented cases of personal or familial hardship (illnesses, family emergencies, etc.). But please take note:
the pressures of other exams, papers, or extracurricular activities are not an acceptable excuse for lateness.
Plan now to structure your time wisely—and please don’t hesitate to take advantage of my office hours
(Wednesdays 1:00-3:00, and by email appointment) to help you work on assignments in advance of their due
dates.
2. Attend all film screenings, which take place on Tuesday evenings (6:30-9:00) in the New
South Film Studies Screening Room. This is an integral part of our class. The films on our syllabus both
require and reward close attention and sustained engagement. With this in mind (and as a courtesy to your
fellow classmates), please refrain from using laptops and smartphones in the New South theatre. I highly
recommend bringing a notebook with you so that you can take notes during the screening and jot down your
reflections immediately following it. If you’d like to refresh your memory before class, DVD copies of the
films are available on reserve in the Gelardin New Media Center. (Many are also available on Netflix
Instawatch.)
3. Come to class prepared not only to address all of the week’s assigned readings (this means
printing them out and bringing them with you!), but to contribute to our conversation in thoughtful and
accountable ways. Each week, you will be assigned one of three “roles” to help facilitate class discussion:
A. “Inquisitors” are responsible for kicking off class discussion by sharing a film clip or a
passage from the readings and raising one or two solid questions about it. This is not a formal
presentation. Think “dialogue” rather than “monologue” here. While you should plan to tell
the class why you chose your clip/passage and why you think it is interesting, difficult,
puzzling, poignant, or meaningful, the more important thing is to come up with some
thoughtful questions or points of contention that will help generate discussion. (A helpful
hint on this front: honest questions lead to honest responses.) Whatever you do, you must let
me know, via email, what clip or passage you want to share by 5:00 PM on the Monday before class.
B. “Seekers of Things” are responsible for bringing to class something from outside of
the syllabus that substantively adds to or resonates with the texts under consideration—an
article, an image, a media file, a youtube clip, whatever. Plan on bringing your thing up at
some point during class discussion.
C. “Synthesizers” will write one- or two-sentence summaries of the secondary readings for
a given week (listed below under “contexts” and “critique”). These should attempt to
capture the main thrust of each piece under consideration, but they cannot be longer than
one or two sentences. Email your summaries to me by 10:00 AM on the day of our class meeting. I
will then compile and distribute them for everyone to see. If you aren’t designated to be an
Inquisitor or a Seeker of Things for a given session, your job is to be a Synthesizer.
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I’ll assign dates for your roles in class once enrollment settles. Please take note that class dynamics will vary
from session to session, following people’s particular interests and energies. Inquisitors and Seekers of
Things: don’t be discouraged if you prepare something wonderful and we end up going off in another
direction entirely. This is part of the teaching process; it happens to me all of the time. Far better to have a
productive and energetic class discussion than to stick to a plan. More often than not, the unexpected is a
good thing!
Writing Assignments:
1. Review Essay: Your first writing assignment (due Monday, March 25) is to compose a 3-4
page review essay that considers one of three recent monographs in the field of media theory/media history:
Jussi Parikka’s Insect Media (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), Hanna Rose Shell’s Hide and Seek:
Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance (MIT/Zone Press, 2012), or Jonathan Sterne’s MP3: The
Meaning of a Format (Duke University Press, 2012). The review essay is an important genre of academic
writing. To get a sense of its conventions, I recommend taking a look at a few examples in a major academic
journal (c.f., Project Muse or JSTOR). In short, review essays of this length typically follow a tripartite
structure: 1) summary of the book’s main points/arguments; 2) detailed outline of the book’s main case
studies; 3) evaluation of the book’s significance, scholarly appeal, etc. Students are responsible for obtaining
their own copy of the book they choose to review.
2. Abstract/Final Paper: Your work for this course will culminate in a paper (due Monday, May
8) that can take one of two forms: 1) a 15-20 page critical essay that examines one or two of the primary texts
on our syllabus, or 2) a 15-20 page historiographical review essay that addresses a theme or problem in the
field of Literature and Media Studies, broadly defined. In either case, you are expected to consult a number
of secondary sources in order to help frame and advance your argument, and you must produce a 5-6 page
abstract of your paper topic (due Monday, April 22) before getting started. I’ll say more about the
expectations for the abstract and the final paper as the semester progresses. I’ll also be happy to discuss
potential ideas and approaches during office hours (W 1-3, New North 324).
Plagiarism and Academic Honesty:
The Georgetown University Honor Code—which includes a detailed definition of plagiarism—can
be found on the GU website at http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/honor/system/53377.html. In
short:
Plagiarism is the act of passing off as one’s own the ideas or writings of another. While
different academic disciplines have different modes for attributing credit, all recognize and
value the contributions of individuals to the general corpus of knowledge and expertise.
Students are responsible for educating themselves as to the proper mode of attributing credit
in any course or field….[T]hree simple conventions are presented for when you must
provide a reference: 1) If you use someone else's ideas, you should cite the source; 2) If the
way in which you are using the source is unclear, make it clear; 3) If you received specific
help from someone in writing the paper, acknowledge it….Faculty may use various methods
to assess the originality of students' work. For example, faculty may submit a student's work
to electronic search engines, including turnitin.com, a service to which the Honor Council
and the Provost subscribe. Note that plagiarism can be said to have occurred without any
affirmative showing that a student’s use of another’s work was intentional.
I follow Georgetown’s guidelines for plagiarism. I also submit all student work to turnitin.com, an electronic
search engine that detects instances of plagiarized writing. If you have any uncertainty about the meaning of
plagiarism, please be sure to discuss it with me.
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Schedule of Readings/Screenings/Assignments
(subject to change in the course of the semester, if necessary)
Jan. 15
Course Introduction
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Citizen Kane (1941), dir. Orson Welles
Jan. 22
The “Invention” of the Media
text:
Citizen Kane (1941), dir. Orson Welles
context:
Edward Sapir, “Communication” (1931) [*]
Harold Innis, Empire and Communications (1950), 21-31 [*]
Harold Innis, The Bias of Communication (1951), 33-60, 156-189 [*]
critique:
Raymond Williams, Keywords, 72-73, 203-204 [*]
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 1-46 [*]
James Naremore, “The Magician and the Mass Media” [*]
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 6:30-9:00 Screening: Triumph of the Will (1935, selections), dir. Leni Reifenstahl; The Great
Dictator (1940), dir. Charles Chaplin
Jan. 29
Media, Masses, Propaganda
text:
Triumph of the Will (1935), dir. Leni Riefenstahl
The Great Dictator (1940), dir. Charles Chaplin
context:
Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928), 1-61, 92-114 [*]
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
(1936) [*]
Lee and Lee, “The Fine Art of Propaganda” (1939) [*]
critique:
Frank Scheide, “The Great Dictator and Chaplin’s Tramp” [*]
Feb. 5
Adventures in the Culture Industry: Hollywood (I)
text:
Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (1939)
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Sunset Boulevard (1950), dir. Billy Wilder
Feb. 12
Adventures in the Culture Industry: Hollywood (II)
text:
Sunset Boulevard (1950), dir. Billy Wilder
context:
Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament” (1927) [*]
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry” (1944) [*]
André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (1945), “The Myth of
Total Cinema” (1946) [*]
Hortense Powdermaker, “Emerging from Magic” (1950) [*]
critique:
Morris Dickstein, “Sunset Boulevard” [*]
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Feb. 19
Conformity, Consumption, and Mass Society
text:
Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955)
context:
Lazarsfeld and Merton. “Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Social Action”
(1948) [*]
Katz and Lazarsfeld, “Between Media and Mass” (1955) [*]
C. Wright Mills, “The Mass Society” (1956) [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: The Manchurian Candidate (1962), dir. John Frankenheimer
Feb. 26
The Extensions of Man
text:
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), dir. John Frankenheimer
context:
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964), 3-32, 297-337 [*]
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage (1967)
critique:
Matthew Jacobson and Gaspar Gonzalez, What Have They Built You to Do?, 30-51 [*]
Mar. 12
Watchdogs and Whistleblowers
text:
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All The President's Men (1974)
context:
New York Times Co. v. United States (1971) [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: The Conversation (1974), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Mar. 19
Sound and Sense
text:
The Conversation (1974), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
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context:
R. Murray Shafer, The Soundscape (1977), 3-12, 88-99 [*]
Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema (1982), 1-29 [*]
Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1986), 1-101 [*]
critique:
Dennis Turner, “The Subject of the Conversation” [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Mar. 25
3-4 PAGE REVIEW ESSAY DUE
 5:00-6:30 Lecture: Laura Mulvey, “Hitchcock’s Blondes”
Mar. 26
Special Case Study: Alfred Hitchcock
text:
Vertigo (1958), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
critique:
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) [*]
Tania Modleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much, 1-16, 87-100 [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Network (1976), dir. Sidney Lumet
Apr. 2
Box Populi (I)
text:
Network (1976), dir. Sidney Lumet
context:
Raymond Williams, Television (1974), 1-25, 121-138 [*]
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (1981), 1-42 [*]
Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), 1-29, 83-113, 142-154 [*]
Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent (1988), 1-86, 297-308, xi-xix [*]
Apr. 9
Box Populi (II)
text:
Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)
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context:
David Foster Wallace, “E Unibus Pluram” (1993) [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Wall-E (2008), dir. Andrew Stanton
Apr. 16
“New” Media
text:
Wall-E (2008), dir. Andrew Stanton
context:
Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation (1999), 2-50 [*]
Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (2001), 19-61 [*]
Alan Liu, “Transcendental Data” (2004), 49-84 [*]
D.N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (2007), 1-31 [*]
critique:
Vivian Sobchack, “Animation and Automation” [*]
 6:30-9:00 Screening: Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011), dir. Werner Herzog
Apr. 22
5-6 PAGE ABSTRACT DUE
Apr. 23
Course Wrap-Up: Media Archaeologies
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011), dir. Werner Herzog
May 8
15-20 PAGE FINAL PAPER DUE