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Coms 200 | History of Communication Syllabus

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Coms 200 | History of Communication Syllabus COMS 200 | HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION SYLLABUS Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University Instructors: Farah Atoui & Liza Tom Wednesdays and Fridays 4:05 - 5:25PM EST Winter 2021 Land acknowledgment: McGill University is situated on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst nations. We recognize and respect the Kanien’kehà:ka as the traditional custodians of the lands and waters on which we meet today. Contact Details Instructor: Instructor: Teaching Assistant: Farah Atoui (she/her/hers) Liza Tom (she/her/hers) Ann Brody [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Office hours: Office hours: Office hours: Monday 2-3pm Thursday 10-11am TBC COURSE DESCRIPTION This course is a critical overview of the sociopolitical histories of modern communication technologies that shaped the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus is on the conditions that produced these modern tools of communication as well as on their social and political ramifications. The course examines an array of technologies, media forms and institutions—from railway and telegraph networks, to early film, photography, radio and the museum—through a postcolonial lens, and maintains a comparative approach to communication that reads against the idea of Western modernity and technological progress. By focusing on the relation between culture and power, the course aims to shed light on the role played by these technologies and media in re/producing and expanding (colonial) power relations, structures, and ideologies, as well as on their emancipatory potential for various historical contexts. The course also explores recurring cultural anxieties about gender, race, class, and national sovereignty that have shaped the production, circulation and use of modern communication technologies. The aim of this course is to provide a historical perspective on contemporary technologies and media to better understand some key themes that dominate current media debates, such as surveillance, governance, ideology, propaganda, fake news, the politics of representation, and the ecological impact of communication technologies. COURSE DELIVERY AND LOGISTICS MyCourses: McGill’s myCourses portal will be used to store all course materials, including course readings, recorded lectures, lecture presentations, and the course documents (syllabus, reading schedule, grading rubric, and various guides). We will also use myCourses for assignments, as well as to make announcements and answer questions in the discussion forum. Class delivery: We will have two sessions every week. They will both be live. We strongly encourage all of you to attend all sessions synchronously whenever possible. The Wednesday sessions are primarily for lectures, followed by a short session for questions and discussion. They will be recorded and be made available on myCourses for those who cannot attend them live. The Wednesday recordings on myCourses will be automatically captioned on upload. We will also upload our presentations after class for your reference. In the Friday sessions students will be given prompts and questions by the instructors to discuss among themselves in Zoom break-out rooms and will then regroup with the instructors and other students to collectively talk through key concepts and take-aways. This session will not be recorded. Readings: All readings are available as pdf files or links via myCourses: please refer to the weekly schedule for the list of assigned readings. All texts are important for class and can come up in questions in the midterm. There is also an “Additional Resources” file with other readings on class topics that we found interesting or relevant. These are for your reference only and are optional. Discussion Forum: We encourage you to bring up questions on the course material (readings/lecture concepts) in class, so that we can collectively discuss them. If that is not possible, please post your question in the “Course Readings and Lectures” forum on myCourses (under the Discussions section) so that your fellow students can engage with your question and benefit from the answers. Emails: Please go through your reading schedule and syllabus documents for answers to questions on assignments, deadlines, and weekly readings; please also check myCourses for announcements, the course calendar, and the “Readings and Lectures” discussion forum. If you have questions outside these topics, use email. We will respond within 48 hours unless it is the weekend, in which case we will respond on the following Monday. We would prefer that you use office hours rather than email to discuss your assignments. Syllabus and evaluation changes: In the event of extraordinary circumstances beyond the University’s control, the content and/or evaluation scheme in this course is subject to change. REQUIREMENTS AND EVALUATION Assignments [% of final grade]: 2 x reading responses: 30% (15% each) Midterm examination: 25% Hypothesis and sources statement for the final essay: 15% Final essay: 30% 2 x reading responses [30% (15% each)]: Twice during this term you will write a reading response to a reading from one of the weekly modules and submit it on the Sunday prior to the Wednesday lecture in which we discuss the reading. You will be asked to pick your readings and submit your choice to the TA, by email, by January 17th. The response should be 350-500 words and should highlight what you found most interesting/challenging/important in that reading. The response should briefly summarize the ideas discussed by the author and give some sense (through a short analysis) of why you think it is interesting, challenging or important. The two readings cannot be from the same weekly module. Your reading responses should be submitted under the “Reading Responses” forum in the discussion section of myCourses. Please make sure you post your response within the relevant weekly module. For example, if your response is to Franz Fanon’s “This is the Voice of Algeria” (from the February 17th Radio module lecture), you will have to submit the response by February 14th (the Sunday before that module). In your post, specify the author to whom you are responding in the title. For example: ‘[Fanon] A response to “This is the Voice of Algeria”.’ Post this response in the Reading Responses forum under the topic “Week 6: The Radio”. Midterm examination [25%]: The midterm examination will consist of essay questions. You will be given the option to pick two essay questions out of four. The exam is focused on course material and class topics and is meant to evaluate your understanding of readings and lectures, and your ability to engage with the important theoretical and practical debates that this course addresses. The suggested word count is 650-750 words per question. Due date: Monday February 22, 2021. You will be provided with the questions on Friday February 19th after class, and you are required to submit your responses by Monday 5pm. Hypothesis and sources statement for the final essay [15%]: The hypothesis is a statement that identifies your object of study for the final paper and shows how you will construct your arguments. State your chosen communication tool and its use clearly in the hypothesis. Highlight your main arguments — what is your hypothesis, how do your chosen texts support your arguments, what specific event/effect/use do you want to examine and why — in the abstract. This exercise is for us to get a sense of your topic and its feasibility, and for you to develop writing and argumentation skills. You will be given feedback based on topic feasibility, main arguments, writing, and choice of sources. Once you pick a topic for your hypothesis statement, you have to stay with it for your final essay. Also provide two peer-reviewed/scholarly sources (with a 2-3 lines summary of each) that you will use for your essay. These sources cannot be from the reading schedule; you can use material from the additional resources document, or other work by authors in the reading schedule. The hypothesis should be around 500-700 words (not including your annotated sources list). Due date: Sunday March 14, 2021. Final essay [30%]: For your final essay, pick a communication tool/media form introduced prior to the Internet-and-PC age—it could still be in use today—and develop a historical account of a specific political, cultural, ecological, economic use, or ramifications of its use. For this assignment, we will regard the start of the Internet-and-personal-computing-age as 1980, so any communication technology that was developed before is a potential option. Think about these questions when framing your essay: how did people/institutions/governments use this communication tool/media form, and to what end(s)? What were the ramifications/uses of the technology? We define “ramification/use” broadly here. It can mean anything—organizing protests, starting a newsletter, sharing news, exchange of information, propaganda or advertising, changing intimate and personal interactions, representation, unequal access, or environmental impact. The aim of the essay is to place communication technologies within their particular historical, cultural and socio-economic contexts, and to think about how such technologies are embedded in popular culture, kinship, nation-building, politics, ecological change, war etc. Try to make your chosen example as specific as possible. For instance: if your example is how newspapers influence elections, pick one particular newspaper in a particular geographic location to show how that happened. You can pick a technology, media or institution from any of our discussions, but cannot develop a historical account that we have already substantially discussed in class (for example: you can pick the telegraph, but your focus cannot be anti-colonial rebellion in India, which we discuss in class). The word count is 2000 words (10% over or under is fine). This does not include references or footnotes.
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