310 - SFU Wiki - Simon Fraser University

Simon Fraser University
School of Communication
Cmns 310
Outline and Course Reading List:
Spring, 2011
Media and Modernity
Jan. 7
Jan. 14
Introduction to the Course
Media and the Making of Modern Societies: An Historical Overview
Reading:
J.B. Thompson, “Media and the Development of Modern Societies,” Ch. 2 in The
Media and Modernity, pp. 44-80.
Jan 21
Western Perspectives on Modernity, Modernization and Modernism
Krishan Kumar, “The Idea of the Modern,” in From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern
Society, pp. 66-100.
David Harvey, “Modernity and Modernism,” in The Condition of Postmodernity, pp.
10-38.
Jan 28
Enlightenment Philosophy, Scientific Rationality, Communications
Theories and the 'Project' of Modernity
Paul Heyer, Chs. 1 and 2, Communications and History, pp. 3-37.
Feb 4
The Media and the Public Sphere in the Social and Democratic Revolutions
Associated with Modernity
John Keane, The Media and Democracy, pp. 2-50.
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, The Media and the Public Sphere in Early Modern
Europe,” ch. 3, in Brigs and Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg
to the Internet, pp. 74-105.
Feb 11
Evolutionary Theories versus Romanticism in Nineteenth Century Western
Theories of Society, Culture and Communication
Paul Heyer, Chs. 4 and 5 in Communications and History, pp. 51-74.
J. David Black, The Politics of Enchantment: Romanticism, Media and Cultural
Studies, pp. 15-35.
Feb 17
Reading Break No Class
Feb 25
The Nineteenth Century Critique of Modern Capitalism, Class Domination and
Ideology

Karl Marx and Friederich Engels “Selected Texts,” in Terry Eagleton (ed.), Ideology,
pp. 23-30.
Robert Heilbroner, “The Materialist Interpretation of History,” Ch. 3 in Marxism: For
and Against.
March 4
From Goethe to Marx: Capitalism as a Force for “Creative Destruction” in
Modernity
Robert Heilbroner, “The Socioanalysis of Capitalism,” Ch. 4 in Marxism: for and
Against.
Marshall Berman, “Marx, Modernism and Modernization,”, Ch. 2 in All That’s Solid
Melts Into Air: the Experience of Modernity, pp. 87-129.
March 11
Media, Mass Culture, and The Origins of the Conservative Critique of Modernity
Salvador Giner, Mass Society, Chs. 2 and 3, pp. 28-69.
March 18
March 25
Guest Lecture
Media and Mass Society/Mass Culture Theory in the Late Nineteenth and Early
Twentieth Centuries
Patrick Brantlinger, Chs. 4 and 6 in Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as
Social Decay, pp. 112-154; and pp. 184-221.
Alan Swingewood, The Myth of Mass Culture, Ch.1, pp. 1-23.
April 1
Combining the Critique of Modernity with the Critique of Early Twentieth
Century Capitalism: The 'Dialectic of Enlightenment:'
Patrick Brantlinger, Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay,
Ch. 7, pp.222-248.
David Held, “The Culture Industry: Critical Theory and Aesthetics, Ch. 3 in
Introduction to Critical Theory, 77-109.
April 8
Utopias, Dystopias, Empires and Ideology: Introducing Modernity as a Contested
Concept Through the Twentieth Century
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Ch. 1, pp.
1-40.
Prasenjit Duara, "The Critique Of Modernity in India And China." In Tan Chung and
Ravni Thakur (eds.). Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for
Understanding China. Ch. 11. http://www.ignca.nic.in/ks_41015.htm and also
circulated by pdf.