media history introduction_and_the_book

Media History

Session One:Introduction and the Book

What is this course?


The study of media and their cultural impact


The aesthetic development of media texts


The reasons for media transformations

Reasons for media transformations

AestheticCulturalIndustrialTechnological

What will I learn?

What will I learn?

Unknown histories of the media

What will I learn?

Media's ubiquitous and fundamental role for our lives

What will I learn?

How to relate one media text to its aesthetic, cultural, industrial and

technological context

What the #%&! is a media text?

BookFilmTelevision seriesNewspaperComic bookMagazineMusic albumWebsitePhotographComputer game

Any aesthetic expression in material form

Exam

Written assignment, maximum of six pages

Exam

Deadline April 28th, 10am to Evy

Exam

You choose a media text which you want to analyze, within the

media we discuss in class

Exam

What makes a good exam paper?


Write the full six pages


Situate the media text historically


Consider How is the text's aesthetics representative of its

historical context?


Consider the text's cultural impact


What technological changes were part of this media text's

production?

What are media?

What is a dominant medium?

Discuss for five minutes what our contemporary dominant

medium might be

Can we divide earlier periods by their dominant medium?

Media history as explanation


Chronology


Causality


Individual causes ('Great Men')


Influence


Intertextuality


Periods


Significance


Typicality


All of these change as history changes, as focus changes, as

trends develop, and according to individual emphases.

The Book as Dominant Medium

The book as dominant medium

The Catholic Church's inability to silence Martin Luther is

democratizing


Information monopoly is broken


With the rise of printing, copyright is invented.

Why?


Copyright is established by law in England in 1662


Writers may own content but not the physical form of the book


Book copyright becomes the basis for all other forms of copyright


The printing press standardizes language


The printing press allows critical public debates

Book Culture

Book culture

Early novels are regarded as dangerous and invasive, since women read novels instead of

doing household chores

Book culture

Female authors (George Elliot) had to write under male pseudonyms

Book culture

Novels were serialized in literary magazines; many of Charles

Dickens' novels were published this way

Book culture

With the invention of the typewriter, writing changed and handwriting

became personal

Book culture

As reading becomes a common skill, literature becomes hugely

popular

Book culture

Dime novels became popular entertainment and eventually trash

literature

Book culture

Book culture develops parallel with other media (radio, film and

eventually television) but begins to lose ground

Literary Culture

Literary culture

The literary field become specialized

Literary culture

Awards, writers' guilds and similar arrangements are created

Literary culture

The death of the novel is pronounced several times over

Literary culture

Writers begin to experiment with typography, colors and whitespace

Literary culture

Literary culture becomes unusual

Literary culture

More books are produced than ever before, but there are fewer

readers than ever before

Legacy of the Book

Legacy of the book

Birth of nations

Legacy of the book

Birth of languages

Legacy of the book

Rise of the public sphere

Legacy of the book

Books establish linearity, authority and narrative

Suggestions

Suggestions

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Times of Tristram Shandy, GentlemanMark Z. Danielewski, House of LeavesJonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly CloseSteven Hall, The Raw Shark Texts

media history introduction_and_the_book

Education