Media Studies and Literary Criticism

As a student of literature, you might ask the question, "How can focusing on media be useful for reading literature and producing literary criticism?" Any answer to this question seems cliché at first glance: literature is a form of media. We all use media, from speech to pencils and paper and smartphones. So what? Humans are tools users: that's our nature.

If we look a little bit closer at the rhetorical question I just posed, a key word appears that will help point to the relationship between not only media and literature, but media and art: useful, use, user. Media has a very practical dimension: we use it to get things done. I speak in order to be heard; I listen in order to gain information. I write in order to remember; I use my smartphone for x, y, z.

An object's "use" or utility (see Central Concepts, or CC) is historically situated: why don't most people "use" horses to travel anymore? Why don't most people write letters any more or listen to the SONY Walkman? Why do we still have universities when there is accessible information on the internet? On the other hand, why do we still read religious texts (The Qu'ran, Torah, Bible) when there is Darwin's theory of evolution? Why do we value Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks so much that we put them in archives and museums, yet at the same time make disposable copies for wall posters, notebooks, and screensavers? Or, why do we read Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609) in EL 101 but not Esther Inglis' A New Yeeres Guift (1606) from the same time period?

We will explore some of these question as we engage the changing social and cultural dynamics between an object's (CC) use and disuse, its emergence and disappearance, or its value (CC). An object's use is uniquely tied to a specific set of problems it can solve or advantages it can offer: these advantage/disadvantage and problem/solution binaries are tied to both technology (CC) and media (CC). These are problems that appear differently in diverse cultures (CC), and are highly determined by the medium itself. The horse offers the advantage of speed and distance while solving the problem of limited mobility; even so, the train and car are faster (velocity, CC). Letter writing solves the problem of communicating over distance, yet print produces more copies (quantity, CC), and email is faster and even more quantifiable. The SONY Walkman solved problem of portable music (hmm, was it a problem?), yet MP3's are more portable, more integrated into other cultural objects (smartphone). The university solved the problem that the Catholic church was in control of knowledge in the 12th century; yet the internet is not face to face (orality, CC), which still gives the university a social if not epistemological advantage. Shakespeare's Sonnets helped elevate the English language to an equal among European languages, but so did Esther Inglis's visual poetry. However, Inglis' poetry was written and she was a woman, while Shakespeare's was printed and he was a man.

This course will introduce students to some formal aspects of how literature functions as media (speech, writing, typography, electrical and bio writing) in relation to what is seemingly "natural" about cultural habits. In addition, as you have already seen, this course will provide students with critical tools (central concepts and methods) to not only apply media studies to literary criticism, but to use literary criticism to expand upon the current field of media studies. Focusing on an object or practice's "use" allows us to engage much more than the content of medium. Media allows us to focus on the very possibility of this advantage/disadvantage and problem/solution dynamic and how different media both limit and expand one's imagination (CC) of the possible and impossible.

What is Media Studies?

Communication Media

Historically, the academic study of media has largely focused on questions such as how accurately (or with what degree of "bias") the medium reflects reality, and in what ways they shape this reality. In this model, the key issues have been concerned with the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries and the effects of institutional structures, patterns of ownership, and professional norms on the nature of media messages, and with their effects on their audiences (Bennett, 212). This is the "success or failure" model of media in communication departments or even in our own copywriting certificate program that engage advertising, private and public institutions and their messages, as well as political influence on messaging.

Since media is always a form of communication (CC) or exchange of information, media studies have found a home in communication departments at universities around the world. These communication models tend to focus on the practical side, or how people get things done: 1) interpersonal communication, or one-on-one talking and rhetoric, where things like tone, body language, and speech are analyzed; 2) mass communication, which includes one-to-many and many-to-many communication acts, with a particular interest in mediated communication, such as with the radio, television, press, and internet; 3) Organizational communication, where one looks at how people organize their information exchanges to maintain and facilitate group behavior; 4) Intercultural communication, which looks at the exchange of information and ideas across different cultural groups or subgroups (Media Studies 101).

Theories of Media

The other main perspective on these issues has come to be known through theories of media. This is an approach which focuses not on the individual or institutional structure of media organizations, or on the content of their messages, but on their form. The issue then is how to distinguish the ways in which different media, or different modes of communication – such as spoken language, writing, print, or electronic visual media – will tend to privilege particular modes of understanding and interaction in human communication. This approach is most commonly associated with the work of McLuhan (1964), who famously argued that "the medium is the message" (Bennett, 213)

There are now many branches of academic study that focus on the theoretical side of media-- philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, history of science, art, technology, and medicine, literature and literary criticism, and many more--in order to elaborate the formal relationship between how individuals and cultures use (or are used by) media, how media shape social and psychological habits, and the relationship between the body (CC) and media, to name but a few.

Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, eds. New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005.

from Media Texthack Group. Media Studies 101: A Creative Commons Textbook. 2014. Retrieved Sept. 10, 2018. https://mediatexthack.wordpress.com/