SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

CMNS 472-4

BOOKS, MARKETS AND READERS

Prerequisite:

75 credit hours including CMNS 372.


Format For Each Class:

a) Lecture
b) Seminar (student presentations, group discussion, guest panels)


Topics:

You are the Market: A Survey of Who, What, When, Why, Where, How you Read
The Book as Cultural Artifact: Building a Public/Nation of Readers
The Need for Narrative and the Role of the Imagination
The Passion for Reading: A How-to
Creative Consumption: The Editor’s Role from Manuscript to Market
Genre-bending: Trade, Mass Market, and the Romance
Books in Our Schools and the Future of Literary Educations
Reading Together: Book Clubs and the Collective Mind
The Retail Environment: Chains, Independents, New venues and the Net
Public Discourse: Reviews, Bestseller Lists and Prizes
How to Get Ahead in Publishing: The Agent and International Rights
The Future of Books: The Electronic or the Printed Page


Texts:

Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading
Sven Birkerts, The Gutenburg Elegies
Suggested Supplementary Reading
January – April issues of Publisher’s Weekly, Quill&Quire, Canadian Bookseller, BC Bookworld, Prairie Books Now, Atlantic Books Today and book sections of Globe&Mail, National Post and Vancouver Sun
Sam Solecki, ed., Imagining Canadian Literature
Daniel Pennac, Better Than Life
Harold Bloom, How to Read
Paul Grescoe, Merchants of Venus
Geoffrey Nunberg, ed., The Future of the Book
Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination


Assessment:

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).