Jason Mittell’s Media Technology & Cultural Change

Jason Mittell is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College. He previously taught Communication at Georgia State University and received a Ph.D. in Communication Arts at University of Wisconsin – Madison.

He is currently teaching Media Technology & Cultural Change (syllabus)

Media technologies are linked to a variety of changing social structures, cultural impacts, individual psychologies, and aesthetic norms. This course will explore how new media impact society at particular historical moments. The first portion of the course will focus on “old” new media – technological innovations such as printing, comics, and television. The remainder of the course will look at today’s new media – computers and converging digital technologies – to see continuities and ruptures. We will focus on the social construction of technology, and how media technologies help foster our sense of identity and social reality.

Readings include:

A Rape in Cyberspace, Julian Dibble

Blogging as Journalism, J.D. Lasica

Consuming Communication Technology, Hugh Mackay

Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig

Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray

Hot Dates & Fairy-Tale Romances, Mia Consalvo

Hyperidentities, Miroslaw Filiciak

Images of Media, Joshua Meyrowitz

In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson

Language of New Media, Lev Manovich

Life on the Screen, Sherry Turkle

Medium Theory, Joshua Meyrowitz

No Sense of Place, Joshua Meyrowitz

(The) Playboy Interview, Marshall McLuhan

Sexual Selves on the WWW, Susannah Stern

Technological Pleasure, Andrew Mactavish

Watching a Game, Playing a Movie, Sacha Howells

Web Theory, Rob Burnett & David Marshall

Writing is a Technology, Walter Ong