Communication

Systems
Syllabus, Fall 2012, Oliphant Hall 141 Course site: http://csf2012.posterous.com Instructor: Benjamin Peters, PhD Email: ben-peters@tulsa.edu or bjpeters@gmail.com Professor site: petersbenjamin.wordpress.com Cell: 347-426-8236 (only if necessary) Office hours by appointment Facebook friends? Sure thing, after you graduate Communication is everyones panacea for everything. Consultant Thomas J. Peters Course Overview This core course introduces students to foundational theory, history, and research in the field of media and communication studies. The course materials will draw from the writings of communication theorists, cultural critics, sociologists, historians, linguistics, psychologists, technologists, journalists, among others; and the course itself is organized around three foundational questions: What is communication? What is culture? What is technology? Other questions are considered throughout: How do these three relate? How does our answer to these questions, among many others, influence how we approach and deal with changes in the contemporary media environment? Why the preoccupation with communicationand why now? What does our understanding of communication reveal about our tools, sense and sensibilities, connections and culturewhat does our sense of communication tell us about ourselves? Fair Warning: this course expects a lot. In particular, it will expect you to perform and prepare research fit for top undergraduates in the field. Success will come to those who discipline their thinking, speech, and writing. Youll need to write, rethink, rewrite, revise, and repeatand all of your bidding. At the very least, it expects you to take command of sophisticated reading assignments, engage in thoughtful classroom discussion, and excel in the ample written work with historical nuance, theoretical sophistication, and a sense of the rhetorical craft. I do not give grades; you must earn them. A normal distribution of grades will be followed in which C is the average grade, and 95% is the upper limit on written assignments. A rule of thumb: C papers are hearsay (repeat what you heard somewhere else), B papers are here-say (repeat what you learned in class), and A papers are heresy (you tell me what that means. If I told you and you did it, that wouldnt be heretical, now would it?).

Course Requirements Read and Post (High Pass/Pass/Fail. 15%.) We all are expected to develop ways of interacting with courses materials that will optimally support class learning. There is no required textbook for this introductory course; instead, course readings have been selected to showcase a number of short excerpts posted online every week. Every week you will also take, post online, and archive detailed reading notes on both sets of readings for course credit, as explained below. Following C. Wright Mills indispensable chapter On Intellectual Craftsmanship in his Sociological Imagination, you are invited to take a journal of your own notes in conversation with the readings and to post them to the course site every week. Notes should be posted before Friday. The notes can take many formats: you can post your reading notes, draft paragraphs for your paper, post reflections, probes, thoughts, or some other format. To receive credit, and at an utter minimum (e.g., youre sick that week), a post must include at least one quote from the reading. All posts should be written in full sentences. The high standard is to share useful collated material while building conversations among close readers of the material. You have exactly one free response: submitting all nine satisfactory responses will earn eleven out of ten possible points. Given troubled economic times, I have worked hard to keep the readings online and available in class as handouts. However, should you be interested in building your library, please consider compilations of excerpts from classic media and communication studies texts such as these: James Carey, Communication as Culture (any edition), 1986. Paul Heyer, ed. Communication Technologies in History (any edition) John Durham Peters and Peter Simonson, eds., Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts 1919-1968. C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination. Raymond Williams, Keywords Actively Discuss and Open a Discussion (5%) You are expected to prepare for, attend, and participate in all classroom discussions. At some point in the semester, you will be invited to open a course discussion. Date TBA. While the conversation will be friendly and informal, this involves deliberate preparation: a successful opening will effectively summarize the key arguments of the text, suggest connections to and propose questions for furthering ongoing course conversations. In person or in postings, the weeks opener is also responsible for briefly contextualizing other works, including the weeks recommended readings. Research, Write, and Revise (60%) The semester is designed to help you produce a major research paper (or other project if negotiated) of no less than 12 pages. To this end, you are expected to turn in a mid-term project

proposal, a major draft of this paper, and, on the last day of the semester, the final draft of the paper itself. Each of these will be graded and should be developed in conversation with your peers and professors before submission. If you are thinking about possible major paper topics the first time you read this sentence, then you are on time; and if you are thinking about ways that your work in this and other courses could turn into a research platform for your major studies, then you might even be one step ahead. Midterm Paper Proposal (Percentage grade. 15%. Plus comments.) The proposal should be three full pages or more (four recommended) and should include the following four parts: problem description and significance, literature review, research methods, and timeline. One, describe your object of study, its significance, and the fundamental questions or stakes you aim to cover in your research. What is it and so what? If you have a novel approach or hypothesis, what is it, and why does it matter? If you are building off of other research models, what are they, and why those? Do you have a concrete example to hook the reader? Two, briefly review the relevant scholarly literature on the topic. The review should both narrow and widen the readers view on the topic: it should flag key works central to your narrow research problem and it should also signal other works in adjacent fields that add relate to the larger stakes of your problem. Three, briefly describe and defend your research methods. What techniques and tools will you use to address your research problem? Textual analysis, archival research, interviews, programming, laboratory experiment, something else? And why are these methods optimal? What do you expect they will reveal? What limitations do they come with? What special resources to you expect to need to accomplish this project? How are you going to get them? Four, outline a timetable to the completion of your project. What are the key steps research, writing, revision, etc.and by what date will you be done with each step? Major Paper Draft (High pass/pass/fail. 5%. Plus comments.) Write at least five pages of your major paper draft. To pass, it needs to suggest a coming argument, to read coherently, and to have been revised and proof edited at least once. If passing, you will enter the last month of this semester with a half of a paper in hand. Major Paper (Percentage grade. 40%. Comments upon request only.) The major paper is the capstone assignment of the course. The body of the final paper should be at least ten pages in length (not including bibliography) and approaching publishable quality for undergraduate papers.

As for the content or scope of the assignment, you have the opportunity to craft your own assignment and thus, in consultation with me and your peers, to mold the shape of this course. Ill leave this open to discretion and discussion, but here are a few general models and specific proposals to start the conversation: One. Write a historical paper. Identify a group of actors, texts, or events within the several periods studied and analyze their contributions to the ways that digital communication and culture have changed over a specific period of time. How do the subjects of your study affect the modern conception, construction, and constitution of communication and culture? What are the stakes of your analysis for the relationship between information society and information technology? Two. Write a comparative paper. Identify a group of actors, texts, or events withinor beyondthe several places studied and analyze their contributions to the ways that communication and culture have changed across two or more specific locales. How do the subjects of your study affect the modern conception, construction, and constitution of communication and culture? What are the stakes of your analysis for the relationship between information society and information technology? Three. Propose your own model. It could be a combination of historical and comparative papers. It could be a team paper with a course peer. Or you could propose and defend your own ideal project in conversation with me. Or it could be a small group project, an individual project, a course project, a community-based project, a play scripts, a short film or animation, architecture or other art project, a computer program, or anything else that meets instructor and course approval. (Talk with me before you draft the project proposal.) This third model is especially intended for students who already invested in other projects in progresse.g. senior theses, etc.and want to dovetail their efforts. A smattering of other guidelines: write multiple drafts. Use non-scholarly web resources sparingly. (This is especially true for new media research!) Does your hypothesis and argument sufficiently account for the conditions under which your argument holds, the implications that follow, and alternative explanations? Have you sufficiently explored those arguments opposing your best-informed instinct? Favor is given to topics from a time before you were born, and a double dose for those focusing beyond twentieth-century America. Your paper should be specific in time, place, and topic. Not OK: Marx and Silicon Superstructure Theory; OK: Marx and Silicon Superstructure Theory: Rereading Werner Jacobi Integrated Circuit Patent Application as a Gramscian Book of Sand. Not OK: Leibniz and Libertarianism; OK: Leibniz and Libertarianism: Parallel Attempts to Develop a Universal Arithmetic Ethic, 1650-1700 and 19502000. Not OK: Feminizing the Computer. OK: Cyborgs, Frankensteins, and Geeks: Feminizing the Computer Programmer in the Works of Donna Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, and Nathan Ensmenger. If stumped, please consider writing a traditional scholarly book review. Under the book review option, you should choose, with instructor approval, a significant work or set of significant works or books relevant to the course and write a substantial, scholarly book review embedding that works into a larger conversation.

Final Exam (Percentage grade. 20%) A final comprehensive exam, administered during the second to last week of class, will test your mastery of basic and foundational concepts, problems, and details covered in the course and all attending materials. It will include multiple choice and true-and-false questions designed to reward those who consistently engage course materials with discipline and effort.

Class Schedule and Preliminary Reading Assignments Week 1: (August 20, 22, 24) Course Introduction: Read: C. W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, On Intellectual Craftsmanship. Monday: Syllabus review, opening remarks, introductions Wednesday: Discuss reading, review course goals. Friday Lab: college skills Due: Post 1 Foundations of Communication Week 2: (August 27, 29, 31) Communication Monday: Charles Horton Cooley, The Process of Social Change from Political Science Quarterly Wednesday: Lewis Mumford, The Paradox of Communication from Technics and Civilizations Friday: John Durham Peters, "The Problem of Communication" Due: Post 2 Week 3: (NO CLASS September 3, September 5, 7) Mass Media M: Marshall McLuhan, Technology and Political Change, from International Journal W: C. Wright Mills, The Mass Society from The Power Elite. Due: Post 3 Week 4: (September 10, 12, 14) New Media M: Norbert Wiener, Information, Language, and Society from Cybernetics W: Introduction to New Media from Heyer, ed. Communication Technologies in History. F: Lev Manovich, Database as a form of Genre from The Language of New Media Due: Post 4

Interlude: Media A Priori Week 5: (September 17, 19, 21) Space and Time M: James Carey, Time, Space, and the Telegraph W: Hartmut Winkler, Space and Time from Geometries of Time. F: John Peters, The Irreducibility of Touch and Time Due: Post 5 Week 6: (September 24, 26, 28) Materiality and Media M: Harold Innis, Media in Ancient Empires W: John Perry Barlow, A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace F: Friedrich Kittler, There is No Software. Due Friday, 24: Mid-Term Project Proposal Communication, Culture, and Technology Week 7: (October 1, 3, 5). Culture M: Raymond Williams, Culture from Keywords W: James Carey, A Cultural Approach to Communication F: One-on-one proposal consultations (times TBA) Due: Post 6 Week 8: (October 8, 10, 12) Art and Techne M: Leo Tolstoy, excerpts from What is Art? W: Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" F: Recommended: Stewart Hall, Encoding/Decoding, in During, The Cultural Studies Reader, pp. 507-517. Due: Post 7 Week 9: (October 15, 17, 19) Technology and Cultural Codes M: Eric Schatzberg, Technik Comes to America: Changing Meanings of Technology before 1930 Technology and Culture 47 (July 2006): 486-512. W: Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology." Due: Post 8 Week 10: (October 22, 24, 26) Code and Law M: Lawrence Lessig, excerpt from Code and Other Cyber Laws W: Simon Sighn, excerpt from The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code Breaking F: Recommended: Claude Shannon, A Mathematical Theory of Communication Due Friday, 26: Major Paper Draft

Coda Week 11: (October 29, 31, NO CLASS November 2) Stereotypes M: Walter Lippman, The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads from Public Opinion, 3-20. W: James Carey, The Cultural Approach to Communication. F: NO CLASS Due: Post 9 Week 12: NO CLASS November 5, 7, 9 (Professor Peters on scheduled trip) Review for exam on your own. Week 13: (November 12, 14, 16) Final Exam. M: Review for exam in class W: Final exam in class F: Exam results review Week 14: NO CLASS November 19, 21, 23 (Thanksgiving Break) Week 15: (November 26, 28, 30) M: Peer-Review Workshops W: Peer-Review Workshops F: In class party. Due Friday, November 30: Final paper Assignments and Grading Scale Classroom Participation..........20 pts: Attendance, posts (10), open a day (5) Midterm Paper Proposal.15 pts: See description below Major Paper Draft.....5 pts: Seven pages, minimum Major Paper....40 pts: Twelve pages, minimum Final Exam..20 pts: In-class, multiple choice, comprehensive. Other Necessary Details Assignment Style and Submission Guidelines All assignments should be typewritten in plain, proof-read English, in a regular font and size (e.g. Times new roman, 12) and, except for posts to the course site, submitted by email to benpeters@utulsa.edu on double-spaced on standard-sized paper, with pages numbered and 1 inch margins. Assignments without name and date and title may not receive credit. Please follow any formatting style. So long as the whole paper follows a consistent, complete, and clear formatting pattern, it will suffer no style penalty. This includes footnotes, endnotes, and bibliography. For those wanting more guidance, three widely-used style manuals follow: The Chicago Manual of Style. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations.

Classroom Participation Thoughtful participation and diligent preparation will be rewarded. I reserve the right to give, as discretion dictates, surprise quizzes in class on the assigned reading material and classroom discussion. Any penalties received will come out of the participation grade. ADA Policy Students with special needs as outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act: Academic accommodations will be provided when appropriate documentation is presented. Contact the Center for Student Academic Support in Lorton Hall for details. The Center for Student Academic Support will inform the instructor as to what special accommodations must be provided. Student Etiquette Students are expected to be attentive during class and not to disrupt the learning process. Everyone is encouraged to participate in class discussions as directed by the instructor. Students are also encouraged to ask the instructor questions about the course material. Here is a list of activities that can disrupt the learning process: 1. Forgetting to turn-off your cell phone during lecture, quiz, or exam time. 2. Habitual tardiness. 3. Leaving and re-entering the classroom during lecture, quiz or exam time. 4. Engaging in conversation not relevant to the classroom activities. Exams will have assigned seating as directed by the course instructor. Any refusal to abide by the policies outlined in this document could result in any of the following: no credit for an assignment, a failing grade for the course, or dismissal from the university. Two Unexcused Absences The final grade will be reduced by one grade letter degree every three unexcused absences. For example, the third unexcused absences will turn a B into a C; the sixth, a C into a D; etc. Absences will be considered unexcused unless documented by a religious leader, doctor, mortician, or similar before the absence or, only in the case of genuine emergencies, immediately following the absence. Excused absences for religious holidays should be planned with the instructor during the first two weeks of the course. No Incompletes, No Make-Ups, No Late Policy I will not give incompletes except in the case of a severe personal crisis (a coma qualifies, barely). I do not want to give incompletes; you do not want them. Please plan subsequently. Make-up work will be given only in the case of documented excused absence. The same applies for late work: an on-time, imperfect assignment will fare far better than an improved one after the due date (and grade). An on-time reading response assignments will be posted before that Thursdays class. An on-time paper will be submitted by 11:59 pm of the listed due date. No Plagiarism To plagiarize is to use a source and to not attribute use to it. Do not do it. Plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty will result in a failing course grade, as well as possible further academic discipline. See the University of Tulsa Undergraduate Academic Misconduct Policy

for more details. http://www.utulsa.edu/academics/colleges/Henry-Kendall-College-of-Arts-andSciences/Advising/AcademicMisconductPolicy.aspx Addendum This syllabus is not a contract. I reserve the right to adjust it in conversation over the semester.
A Few Books in Communication and Media Studies (Dont Stop Here!) Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. Babe, Robert. 2000. Canadian Communication Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Beniger, James. 1986. The Control Revolution. Benkler, Yochai. (2006) The Wealth of Networks: How Production Networks Transform Markets and Freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Blondheim, Menahem. 1994. News over the Wires: The Telgraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844-1897. Boorstin, Daniel. The Image. Bruns A (2008) Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Carey, James. (1989) Communication as Culture. Cmiel, Kenneth. 1996. On Cynicism, Evil, and the Discovery of Communication in the 1940s. Journal of Communication. Carr NG (2008) The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google. Castells, Manuel. The Internet Galaxy Chandler, Inventing the Electronic Century: The Epic Story of the Consumer Electronics and Computer Industries (2001) Chandler, Alfred. 1977. The Visible Hand. Couldry, Nick. 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. Czitrom, Daniel. Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan. Darnton, Robert. The Case for Books. (About books online, as well.) The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. Douglas, Susan. Inventing American Broadcasting. Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Eisenstein, Elizabeth. (1982) The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York. Fischer, Claude. To Dwell among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City. Galloway, A. (2006) Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. MIT Press. Gary, Brett. 1999. The Nervous Liberals: Propaganda Anxieties from World War 1 to the Cold War. Gitlin, Todd. 1978. Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm. Theory and Society. Goody, Jack. (1986) The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Habermas, Jurgen. [1962] 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Hardt, Hanno. 1992. Critical Communication Stuides: Communication, History and Theory in America. Havelock, Eric. Preface to Plato, or The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences. Hindman M (2009) The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Illouz E (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Jeanneney, Jean-Noel. Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge (2007) Jensen, Joli. 1990. Redeeming Modernity. Kittler, F. (1997) Literature, Media, Information Systems. London: Routledge.

Lasch, Christopher. 1991. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics Law and Hassard. Actor Network Theory and After Latour, Bruno. Science in Action Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies were New. Marx, Leo. Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. Merton, Robert K. [1946] 2004. Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive. Moglen, Eblen. Anarchism Triumphant: Free Software and the Death of Copyright Ong, Walter. 1982. Orality and Literacy. Pool, Ithiel de Sola. The Social Impact of the Telephone. Postman, Niel. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Rochlin, Networks and the Subversion of Choice. Rogers, Everett. Diffusion of Innovations. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, 2004. Schnatz Gossip, Letters, Phones: The Scandal of Female Networks in Literature and Film (2008), Schudson, Michael. (1978) Discovering the News. Schudson, Michael. Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion. Shirky C (2008) Here Comes Everybody. New York: Penguin Press. Streeter, Thomas (2010). The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet. Surowiecki J (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Little, Brown. Terranova T (2004) Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. Tilly, Charles. Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (1984) Turner, F. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, andthe Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago UP. Weber S (2004) The Success of Open Source. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Webster, Frank. Cybernetic Capitalism Weizenbaum, Joseph. 1976. Computer Power and Human Reason. Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. And 1958. Culture and Society. Zittrain J. The Future of the Internetand How to Stop it. Or Ubiquitous human computing, etc. A Few Books on Media, Technology, and History Bazerman, The Languages of Edisons Light Benjamin, Illuminations Bergson, Time and Free Will Bernays, Propaganda Budiansky, Air Power Campbell-Kelly and Aspray, Computer Canales, A Tenth of a Second Cook, A Brief History of the Human Race Crary, Techniques of the Observer Czitrom, Media and the American Mind Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel Dyson, Darwin Among the Machines Edgerton, The Shock of the Old Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change Elias, The Civilizing Process

10

Galloway, The Exploit Gitelman, New Media, 1740-1915 Goudsblom, The Domestication of Fire Grandy, The Speed of Light Hacking, The Taming of Chance Hall, Encoding/Decoding Havelock, The Muse Learns to Write; Preface to Plato Innis, Empire and Communications; The Bias of Communication; other works. John, Spreading the News Johns, The Nature of the Book Johnston, The Allure of Machinic Life Kaplan, The Nothing that is: A History of Zero Kittler, anything Kris and Speier, German Radio Propaganda, Latour, anything Lazarsfeld and Merton, The Communication of Ideas (Popular Taste chapter especially) Lem, The Cyberiad Lievrouw & Livingstone, Handbook of New Media Maines, The Technology of Orgasm Martin, Hello Central? Marvin, When Old Technologies were New McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy; Understanding Media Mills, The Power Elite Mumford, anything. Needham, Science and Civilization in China Oldenziel, The Cold War Kitchen Peirce, Chance, Love, Logic Peters, Speaking into the Air Pool, Forecasting the Telephone Renfrew, Archaeology and Language Seife, Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea Sobel, Longitude Standage, The Victorian Internet Sterne, The Audible Past Stiegler, Technics and Time Streeter, Selling the Air Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity Wallace, A Compact History of Infinity Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reasons White, Medieval Technology and Social Change Wiener, Cybernetics, The Human Use of Human Beings, God and Golem. Yalom, The History of the Chess Queen Zerubavel, The Seven Day Circle Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media

11