Introduction to media and communication studies A.

Course convenor

András Müllner

Course content

This course offers an introduction into media and communication studies using a selection of works written by key authors of the field. It also explores concepts of visual and acoustic media that were developed in the 20th century, but continue to be central even today.

Indicative reading

Walter J. Ong: “‘Media’ versus human communication”, in W.O.: Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, Routledge, London and New York, 1982

Jean Baudrillard: Simulacres et Simulation; in English: Simulacra and Simulation, tr. Sheila Faria Glaser, University of Michigan Press, 1994

Jorge Luis Borges: Del rigor en la ciencia, in English: On Exactitude in Science

André Bazin: Ontologie de l’image photographique; in English: The Ontology of the Photographic Image, tr. Hugh Gray, Film Quaterly, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Sommer, 1960), pp. 4-9., internet: http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Bazin-Ontology-Photographic-Image.pdf

Vilém Flusser: Für eine Philosophie der Fotografie, in English: Towards a Philosophy of Photography, tr. Anthony Mathews, Reaktion Books, 2000

Walter Benjamin: Kleine Geschichte der Photographie, in English: A short history of Photography, tr. Phil Patton, in Artforum 15, 6 (February, 1977), pp. 46-51

Sergei Eisenstein: The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, in Film form: essays in film theory, tr. Jay Leyda, Harcourt, Brace, 1949

Walter Benjamin: Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit (1936), Gesammelte Schriften. Band I.2. Abhandlungen. Herausgegeben von Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1980., p. 471-508.; in English: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, internet: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Bertolt Brecht: Radiotheorie – Der Rundfunk als Kommunikationsapparat. Rede über die Funktion des Rundfunks; Vorschläge für den Intendanten des Rundfunks; Radio – eine vorsintflutliche Erfindung? Alle in: Werke, Bd. 21, Schriften I, Berlin u.a. 1989.  Der Flug der Lindberghs. Ein Radiolehrstück für Knaben und Mädchen, in: Werke, Bd.3, Stücke III, Berlin u.a. 1989., internet: http://www.uni-due.de/einladung/Vorlesungen/ausblick/bre_radio.htm;

in English: The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication,” in Neil Strauss and Dave Mandl (eds.): Radiotext(e), New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993, pp 15-17.

Niels Werber: Media-Theory after Benjamin and Brecht: Neo-Marxist?, tr. Almut Müller, in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht – Michael Marrinan (eds.): Mapping Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Digital Age, Stanford UP, Stanford, California, 2003, 230-238.