Hnrs 200H: Thinking Critically About New Media

(to be submitted to the UWGEC as a Tier 2 Humanities general education course)

 Course Objectives 

By the end of this course, you will have a thorough understanding, both of what gets classified as “new media” today and what might be regarded as “new media” of past eras. You will have a more nuanced sense of the way in which different media relate to each other. And you will grasp the political and economic stakes in contemporary debates that turn on the role of new media.  

Course Description 

Since the 1960s, so-called “new media” have come to play an increasingly prominent role in everyday life. These days, young people have as much trouble imagining a world without the internet as their counterparts in the early twentieth-century did imagining a world without electricity and indoor plumbing. Computer technology has radically reconfigured the experience of culture, from the way games are played to the way music is heard. Even a relatively new medium like cinema, itself barely over a hundred years old, may not exist much longer in its traditional form. The Digital Age predicted decades ago has clearly arrived. 

Yet the excitement generated by these changes, both culturally and financially, leads many to overstate their reach. As the surprising resurgence in consumer interest in vinyl records indicates, reports of a particular medium’s demise are often exaggerated. Sometimes an “antiquated” technology, like the printed book, demonstrates the very qualities – portability, durability, wirelessness – that the makers of new technology aspire to achieve. Truly understanding new media requires more than celebrating their novelty. We need, instead, to pay closer attention to their relationship with older media. In particular, we must recognize that their newness is rhetorical, a consequence of the approach we take to them rather than a simple matter of fact. To this end, it is crucial that our examination of new media reflect on historical precedent, bearing in mind what happened when books, records and film were themselves considered new. 

This course is intended to meet those demands by framing engagement with the contemporary “mediascape” with a range of historical materials. Whether exploring the crisis in the music industry initiated by file-sharing with reference to the early years of the phonograph or player piano reels, or reflecting on the way in which discussion of Nintendo’s Wii intersects with early theories of the cinematic body, we will strive to see to think across the divide between new and old media, as well as the distinctions made between different media today. Our goal, in the end, is to develop the skills necessary to navigate the complexities of our own time without forgetting that previous generations confronted similarly overwhelming technological change.  

NOTE: Much of the material encountered in the course will come in the form of short readings compiled into electronic collections organized around particular themes. Also, many of the books on the syllabus will only be read in excerpts, made available via electronic course reserve. This means that, although the reading list may seem long, the number of pages actually required will not be an excessive burden. You should expect to read approximately 200 pages per week.  

It is extremely important that you come to class and come prepared. Attendance will be taken at each class session. You are only permitted two unexcused absences. For each unexcused absence beyond that number, you will lose 5% off your final grade for the course.  

You are expected to participate regularly in class discussion. If you are shy, you may need to prepare a question or comment in advance, so that you have something to contribute. It is not enough to simply come to class every day!   

There will be one take-home midterm. It will require you to respond to two essay questions from a list of four. You should devote the same amount of time for the midterm as one class session. There will also be a final exam, consisting of a take-home and in-class component. The former will be exactly like the midterm. The latter will ask you to give shorter responses to a series of questions intended to provoke speculative thinking on your part.

You will write four papers for a letter grade in this course. The first, serving as a diagnostic essay, will ask you to reflect on the syllabus. All students are required to complete that paper, which will be due during the second week of classes. Your second paper, covering our introductory unit on the film Blade Runner and the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, on which the film is loosely based, will also be required of all students. For the remaining two papers, you will choose from four different paper topics tied to different units in the course. Although the topics will be weighted equally from the standpoint of grading, it may be to your advantage to complete ones that come earlier in the semester, so that you don’t have as much due towards the end of the course. 
 

Grade Breakdown: 

Diagnostic essay        10% of your final grade

Six-page paper #1     15 % of your final grade      

Midterm exam:          15% of your final grade

Other six-page papers  15% of your final grade each (x2)

Final exam:               20% of your final grade

Class participation:  10% of your final grade 
 

Academic Honesty: 

Please consult your Student Handbook in order to be fully informed about the university’s policy on academic honesty. All the work you submit in this course must reflect your own intellectual labor or your elaboration on the work we do collectively during class time. If you draw upon outside sources, be sure to cite them adequately. Come see me if you have any questions about this or other matters related to academic honesty. 

I. INTRODUCTION: MEDIATING MEDIA 

Week #1  

• Overview of Course 

• Blade Runner,  Ridley Scott, director (fiction film) 

• Electronic collection of readings on Blade Runner’s original and re-releases 

Week #2  

Paper #1 due (Critical Response to Syllabus – Four Pages – required for all students)  

• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,  Philip K. Dick (novel) 

• electronic collection of readings on the relationship between literature and film, with emphasis on adaptation 
 

II. REMAINDERS: THE FATE OF THE BOOK 

Week #3 

• electronic collection of readings about libraries of the ancient and medieval world 

• electronic collection of readings about libraries in the modern age 

• electronic collection of readings about libraries in the information age 

• excerpts from The Coming of the Book, Henri-Jean Martin and Lucien Febvre (non-fiction) 

• excerpts from Marshall McCluhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy (non-fiction) 

Week #4 

• Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (short story) 

• excerpts from Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (novel) 

• excerpts from Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace 

Week #5 

Take-home midterm handed out 

• W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz (novel) 

• electronic collection of readings about memory, documentary evidence and archives 
 

III. THE PERSISTENCE OF VISION: MOTION PICTURES AS NEW MEDIA AND OLD 

Week #6 

Take-home midterm due 

• screening of various short films from the early years of cinema 

• electronic collection of readings on the early years of cinema 

• excerpts from The Cinema of Attraction, Tom Gunning and André Gaudreault (non-fiction) 

• excerpts from The Cinema of Attraction Reloaded, Wanda Streuven, editor (non-fiction) 
 

Week #7  

• Dziga Vertov, Man With a Movie Camera (film) 

• “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin (non-fiction) 

• excerpts from Techniques of the Observer, Jonathan Crary (non-fiction) 

Week #8 

• electronic collection of readings on YouTube and related sites featuring “user-generated content” 

IV. THE DISEMBODIED BODY: PASSIVE AND ACTIVE RESPONSES TO MEDIA 

Week #9 

• excerpts from Rodney Brooks, Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us 

• excerpts from The Video Game Theory Reader, Mark J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, editors 

• electronic collection of readings on first-person shooter games 

• electronic collection of readings on the Nintendo Wii 
 

Week #10 

• God Jr., Dennis Cooper (novel) 

• Zork (text-only adventure video game)

Week #11 

• electronic collection of readings on the player piano and the early years of the phonograph 

• excerpts from The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, Jonathan Sterne (non-fiction); 

• electronic collection of readings on the introduction of the compact disc and the comparison of analog and digital recording 

• excerpts from Greil Marcus, The Weird, Old America 

Week #12 

• The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture and Coolness, Steven Levy (non-fiction) 

• excerpts from Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, Michael D. Ayers, editor (non-fiction 

•  electronic collection of readings on file-sharing 

• electronic collection of readings on digital music players such as the iPod 
 

VI: FREE FOR ALL?: NEW MEDIA, POLITICS AND THE MARKETPLACE 

Week #13 

• excerpts from Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (non-fiction) 

• excerpts from The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Siva Vaidhyanathan (non-fiction) 

• electronic collection of readings on the early years of commercial activity on the internet 

• electronic collection of readings on the “Dot Com era” boom and bust 
 

Week #14 

• Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture (non-fiction) 

• electronic collection of readings on open-source culture 

Week #15 

• excerpts from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire and Multitude (non-fiction) 

• review of course 
 

Final Exams