Readings

Required Readings

Buy at Amazon Dines, Gail, and Jean Humez, eds. Gender, Race, and Class In Media. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994. ISBN: 9780803951648.

Buy at Amazon Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York, NY: Viking, 1985. ISBN: 9780670804542.

Buy at Amazon Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. New York, NY: Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 9780679746041.

Mangold, James. Girl, Interrupted. Film, 1999.

Perelman, Leslie, James Paradis, and Edward Barrett. The Mayfield Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing.

You should also have on hand a college dictionary and thesaurus such as Buy at Amazon The Oxford English Dictionary. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780198612582.


Lec # Topics readings

Unit One: First Essay - Writing Focus: Living In the Age of the Image; Close Textual Reading

1

Introduction to the Class as a Writing Community And to the Academic Study of Mass Media

Buy at Amazon Caughey, John. Excerpt in Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780803214217.

Buy at Amazon Jhally, Sut. "Image-Based Culture: advertising and popular culture." Excerpt in Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Edited by Gail Dines, and Jean Humez. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994. ISBN: 9780803951648.

2

Image Culture and Media Artifacts

Advertising, Media Literacy and Close Reading

Discussion: Notebook Assignment

Kellner, Douglas. "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 5-17.

"Advertising." Introduction in Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 71-75.

Jhally, Sut. "Image-Based Culture: advertising and popular culture." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 77-87.

3

Writing as Process: Prewriting, Drafting, Revising Advertising: A Case Study of Mass Media

Goldman, Robert. "Constructing and Addressing the Audience as Commodity." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 88-92.

Kellner, Douglas."Reading Images Critically: Toward A Postmodern Pedagogy." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 126-132.

4

Strategies of Close Reading: Ads as Representative Texts: Finding Patterns

Seiter, Ellen. "Different Children, Different Dreams." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 99-108.

Steinem, Gloria. "Sex, Lies and Advertising." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 112-120.

Kilbourne, Jean. "Beauty and the Beast of Advertising." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 121-125.

Documentary Film: Killing Us Softly 3. Media Education Foundation, 2000.

5

Strategies of Close Reading: Constructing Arguments About Advertising Texts

Living in Consumer Culture Theories of Social Control and Social Reflection

Buy at Amazon Ewen, Stuart. Excerpts in Captains of Consciousness. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1977. ISBN: 9780070198463.

Buy at Amazon Schudson, Michael. Advertising: the Uneasy Persuasion. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1986. ISBN: 9780465000807.

6

Writing Workshop: Peer Review of Drafts

Buy at Amazon Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York, NY: Viking, 1985. ISBN: 9780670804542.

7

Using Secondary Sources: Library Workshop

Unit Two: Second Essay - Writing Focus: Working with Primary and Secondary Sources; Crafting Individual and Group Identities in the Age of Mass Media and Consumer Culture

8

The Individual in the TV Age: Working With Primary Source Data: Interviews, Letters, etc.

The Art of Interviewing

Buy at Amazon Caughey, John. Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. ISBN: 9780803214217.

9

The Individual in the Media Age: Growing Up on TV (cont.)

Buy at Amazon Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York, NY: Viking, 1985. ISBN: 9780670804542.

10

The Individual in the Media Age: The Interview Transcript as Primary Source

Identifying Key Passages

Fiske, John. "Gendered Television: Femininity." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 340-347.

Rapping, Elaine. "Movie of the Week." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 445-453.

Pettegrew, John. "A Post-modernist moment: 1980s Commercial Culture and the Founding of MTV." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 488-498.

11

The Individual in the Age of Television and Mass Media: Interpreting Interview Material Within the Context of Secondary Sources

Gerbner, George. "Television Violence: The Power and The Peril." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 547-557.

Gray, Herman. "Television, Black Americans and the American Dream." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 430-437.

Butsch, Richard. "Ralph, Fred, Archie and Homer: Why Television Keeps Recreating the White Male Working-Class Buffoon." In Gender, Race, and Class in Media. pp. 403-412.

12

The Individual in the "Digital Revolution"

Discuss: Assigned Readings

Managing and Citing Sources

Issues of Structure

Bookending: Intros and Conclusion

13

Generating Hypotheses from Case Studies: From Individual Lives to Social Patterns

Hypothesis Exercise

Television Analyses

14

Workshop, Draft, Essay 2

Unit Three: Writing Focus: Comparative Analysis: Print Into Film

15

From Print to Film: Thinking Critically About the Potentialities of Different Media for Storytelling

Literature, Film and the Depiction of Madness

Buy at Amazon Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. New York, NY: Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 9780679746041.

16

From Print to Film: Questions of Comparative Analysis

Discuss: Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

17

Film Showing: Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold,1999)

18

From Print to Film

Discuss: Novel and Film, Girl, Interrupted

19

Writing About Film

Film as Language

Discuss: "Reading Films Critically"

20

Incorporating Secondary Sources on Film and Print-to-film Adaptation

Types of Writing About Film

Small Groups: Scene Analysis Exercise

21

Workshop: Draft, Essay 3

Revision Strategies

22

Advanced Revision: The Potential of Publication

Discuss: Assigned Readings

23

Course Evaluations

Portfolio Preparation

24

Advanced Revision Workshop: Essay 1, Essay 2

25

Student Readings

Course Overview

26

Final Class

Student Readings

Submission of Portfolios