SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION
CMNS 482-4

MARSHALL MCLUHAN -- MEDIA POET, MEDIA PUNDIT

Schedule:

Wednesdays, 18:30-21:20, room HC2235.

Overview:

The work of Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan remains an enigmatic yet enduring force within academic circles and throughout the popular press. Despite his worldwide acclaim, however, many of McLuhan’s most compelling ideas are often misrepresented or simply ignored by the mass media. Many in the academic community remain ambivalent, even hostile, to McLuhan’s work. Nevertheless, McLuhan offers students of media a unique theoretical perspective rich in historical allegory, charged with poetic insight. As a result, the work of Marshall McLuhan will continue to make an important contribution to the field of communication for years to come.

This directed reading course is intended to offer students an opportunity to better understand McLuhan’s major ideas and formulations through close readings of his work, active seminar participation, and self-directed research. In addition to looking at McLuhan’s original writings, we will also look into the McLuhan phenomenon of the late 1960s and its revival with the advent of the Internet in the 1990s.

Students interested in this course should contact the instructor for further information.

Prerequisites:

Two upper division CMNS courses and consent of the instructor.

Required Readings:

(not ordered by the SFU Bookstore)

McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media. Reissued in 1994 by MIT Press (ISBN: 0262631598).
Other readings to be discussed during week one of class.

Requirements:

Students will be expected to actively participate in seminar discussions, make one or more presentations to the group, and complete a final paper. Specific details will be discussed during the first week of classes.

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to "Intellectual Honesty," and "Academic Discipline" (see the current Calendar, General Regulations Section).