1995
– hypertext
I have included the subject guide below. This is the first time I taught anything specifically related to hypertext and we included it as an addition into an existing third year advanced communication studies subject. This lead to a specific subject in subsequent years.
Advanced Seminar
COURSE GUIDE
Duration: One semester
Offered: 13 weeks
Mode: Internal
Contact Hours: One one-hour lecture, one one-hour tutorial, one one-hour laboratory
Non-contact Hours: Eight (dossier reading, lab practice, research for assessment submission).
Pre-requisites: Five semesters of communication subjects
Assessment: One research essay, maximum 3,000 words (60%) due Friday 3rd November. Class participation (40%). There shall be two projects required to be completed in the Hypertext Lab component of the subject: A Storyspace Web
Gradings: HD, DI, CR, PA, NN
Prescribed Text: Subject reading list
Teaching Staff: Mick Counihan (co-ordinator), Adrian Miles, Bruce Berryman
Subject Aims and Content: The subject functions as a final, advanced unit to complete the communications major requirements of the B.A. (Media Studies). As such it is designed to draw upon, and extend, the range of topics, issues and research approaches covered in previous communications subjects. In particular the subject aims to develop the capacities of students to deal with complex social problems in an analytical, non-reductionist and inter-disciplinary fashion.
The focus of the unit is the concept of communication revolutions. Put crudely, our central question is "What difference does a new technology/technique of communication make?" By contrast with the short-term, individualistic and behaviourist orientation of much media effects research, our concern is with the ways in which, and extent to which , new communications technologies transform the social (cultural, economic, etc.) environment.
For example, what impacts do such technologies have on
- definitions of, relations between, public and private spheres
- the dimensions of power relations and forms of political practice
- conceptions of time (relations between the present, the past and the future) and space (here and there, centre and periphery, etc.)
- constructions of the body, the individual self, modes of social interaction
- work/leisure patterns
- age, gender and class distinctions
- cultural hierarchies (high/low, elite/popular, etc.)
The subject is divided into two blocks:
A. (Weeks 1-6) Introduces various versions, and critiques, of `communications revolution' theories and sketches in some arguments about the historical impacts of new technologies (specifically, the printing press and the first wave of electronic communications). Are general distinctions between oral, print and electronic media of communication productive or misleading?
B. (Weeks 7-12) Considers contemporary arguments regarding digitised information technologies in relation to:
(a) the characteristics of consumer society; and
(b) debates over post-modernism. Is print culture doomed? Do new technologies fundamentally transform earlier electronic media or merely act as extensions of them?
Subject Organisation: This year we are introducing a new practical, laboratory-based component to The Advanced Seminar. This is designed both to augment the student skills that the course seeks to develop and to focus some of the broader thematic concerns of the subject itself. The new component deals with hypertext writing and publication. After an introduction in Week One, the class will be divided into three groups for the instructional labs in hypertext markup language which will run from Week 2 to Week 6 in the PowerMac Laboratory (6.4.06).
Hopefully, after this initial instructional period, the class can re-form into project groups to work on Hypertext and World Wide Web publication in the latter half of the semester. But, this is an experiment and we'll play it by ear.
Due to the introduction of the labs the normal two hour classes will be converted to one hour tutorials for the duration of the semester.
Lecture/Tutorial Schedule:
BLOCK A
1 17 July Introduction
2 24 July Communication epochs:
the McLuhan-Ong thesis
3 31 July Communications technologies:
cultural contexts
4 7 August From scribal to print cultures:
the initial impacts of printing
5 14 August The uses of print:
reading publics and print genres
6 21 August Early electronic media:
the electronic mythos
7 28 August Communication technologies and domestic consumption
BLOCK B
8 4 September Digital information and technological convergence
9 11 September Images of interactivity
10 18 September Hypermedia and postmodernism
[25-29 September MID SEMESTER VACATION]
11 2 October Hypertext: reconfiguring authors, texts and audiences
12 9 October Internet and virtual communities
13 16 October Reassessing communications revolution
Assessment: (1) Major essay (60%) 2,500 - 3.000 words due Friday 3 November.
Sample topics will be circulated but students are encouraged to formulate their own topics dealing with issues raised during the course.
(2) Class participation (40%) relates to exercises to be done in tutorial and laboratory sessions.
readings:
Meyrowitz, J. 'Medium Theory.' In Crowley, D, and Mitchell, D. (eds.) Communication Theory Today. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994. pp. 50-77.
Marvin, C. 'Experts, Black Boxes, and Artifacts: New Allegories for the History of Electronic Media.' In Dervin, B. et al (eds.) Rethinking Communication Vol. 2. Sage Publications, California, 1989. pp. 188-98.
Poster, M. 'A Second Media Age.' Arena. New Series, 3, 1994. pp. 49-91.
Leed, E.J. 'Communications Revolutions and the Enactment of Culture.' Communication Research. Vol. 5. No. 3. July 1978. pp. 305-19.
Gell, A. 'Newcomers to the World of Goods: the Muria Gonds.' in Appardurai, A. (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986. pp. 113-5.
Carpenter, E. Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me. Bantam, New York, 1974.
Michaels, E. The Aboriginal Invention of Television: Central Australia 1982-1986. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra, 1986.
Calvino, I. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller. Pan, London, 1982.
Hirst, P, and Woolley, P. Social Relations and Human Attributes. Tavistock, London, 1982.
McLuhan, M. Understanding Media. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1964.
Eisenstein, H. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983.
Williams, G.W. The Craft of Printing and the Publication of Shakespeare's Works. Associated University Presses, New Jersey, 1985.
Darnton, R. The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History. WW. Norton, New York, 1990.
Ong, W. Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology. Cornell University Press, London, 1976.
Hunter, I. 'Providence and Profit: Speculations in the Genre Market.' Southern Review. Vol. 22, No. 3, 1989.
Carey, J. Communications as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Unwin Hyman, Boston, 1989.
Livingstone, K. 'Australia's 19th century Communication Revolution.' Australian Journal of Communication. Vol. 20, No. 1, 1993.
Silverstone, R. Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. Routledge, London, 1994.
Gray, A. Video Playtime: The Gendering of a Leisure Technology. Routledge, London, 1992.
Boddy, W. 'Archaeologies of Electronic Vision and the Gendered Spectator.' Screen. Vol. 35, No. 2. Summer, 1994.
Meyrowitz, J. 'Socialization in an Electronic Age.' Daedalus. Vol. 113, No. 3, 1984.