Comprehensive Readings

Below is my list of readings for my Comprehensive Examination in Communication & Culture. The list was designed as an exemplary study of some of the key themes in the field. Please forgive the bibliographic errors.

Major General – Communication & Culture: Communication, Technology, and Politics

Administrative School

  • Katz, Elisha. (1957) “The Two-Step Flow of Communication.” Public Opinion Quarterly 21: 61-78.
  • Lasswell, Harold. (1960) “The Structure and Function of Communication in Society.” In Mass Communications. Wilbur Schramm, (Ed.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 117-30.
  • Lazarsfeld, P. and R. Merton (1948). Mass-Communication, popular taste, and organized social action. The Communication of ideas. L. Bryson. New York, Harper & Brothers: 95-118.

Canadian Communication Theory

  • Barney, D. (2000). Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy in the Age of Network Technology. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
  • Carey, James. “A Cultural Approach to Communication.” Communication 2.1 (1975): 1-22.
  • Grant, G. P. (1969).”In Defense of North American”  Technology and Empire: Perspectives on North America. Toronto,: House of Anansi. (pp. 15-40)
  • Innis, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
  • Kroker, A. (1984). Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis/McLuhan/Grant. Montréal: New World Perspectives.
  • McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Mentor, 1964.

Critical Theory & The Frankfurt School

  • Adorno, Theodor W. “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” Media Studies: A Reader. Ed. Paul Marris and Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 2000. 31-37.
  • Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility.” Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001. 48-70.
  • Debord, Guy. “The Commodity as Spectacle.” Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas Kellner. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001. 139-43

British Cultural Studies

  • Hall, Stuart. “Encoding/Decoding.” Culture, Media and Language. Ed. Stuart Hall et al. London: Hutchinson, 1973. 128-38.
  • Radway, Janice. “Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading.” Mass Communication Review Yearbook 5 (1985): 337-361
  • Williams, R. (1961). The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.
  • Discourse Theory
  • Barthes, Roland. (1957). “Myth Today” (Annette Lavers, Trans.). In Mythologies (pp. 107-159). New York: Hill and Wang.
  • Foucault, Michel. (2003). “Truth and Power”. In Paul Rabinow & Nikolas Rose (Ed.), The Essential Foucault (pp. 300-318). New York: The New Press.
  • Kittler, Friedrich. (1990). Discourse Networks (Michael Metteer, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Assemblage (Material-Semiotic/STS) Theory

  • Haraway, Donna  (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149-181). New York: Routledge.
  • Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.
  • Wise, J.M. (1997). Slouching Toward Tralfamadore: The Modern Episteme, Beyond the Modern, Episteme: Space and Agency in the Land of the Cyborgs, Living in a Deleuzian World in Exploring Technology and Social Space (pp. 3-84). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hegemony and Ideology

  • Althusser, Louis. (1994). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In Slavoj Zizek (Ed.), Mapping Ideology (pp. 100-140). London: Verso.
  • Gramsci, A. “(i) History of the Subaltern Classes; (ii) The Concept of Ideology; (iii)  Cultural Themes: Ideological Material.”  in Media and Cultural Studies:Keyworks.  Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner. Ed. New York,NY: Blackwell, 2001  (p. 43-47).
  • Hall, Stuart (1985). “Signification, Representation and Ideology: Althusser and the Post-Structuralist Debate” in Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 2(2), 91-114.
  • Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. (2001). The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas. In Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner (Ed.), Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks (pp. 39-42). New York: Blackwell.

Phenomenology / Heideggerian

  • Heidegger, Martin. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology. In The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays (pp. 3-35). New York: Harper.
  • Winner, L. (1986). Do Artifacts Have Politics? The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology (pp. 19-39). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Political Economy of Communication and Culture

  • Anderson, Benedict . (1991). Chapter 3: The Origins of National Consciousness. In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (pp. 37-46). London: Verso.
  • Grossberg, Lawrence. “Cultural Studies Vs. Political Economy: Is Anybody Else Bored with This Debate?” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. 2nd Edition. Ed. John Storey. London: Prentice Hall.  613-624.
  • Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2002). “A Propaganda Model” in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books. (pp. 1-36)
  • Mosco, V. (1996). The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
  • Smythe, Dallas. (2001). On the Audience Commodity and Its Works. In Meenakshi Gigi Durham & Douglas Kellner (Ed.), Medial Cultural Studies: Keyworks (pp. 253-317). New York: Blackwell.
  • Wajcman, J. (1991). Feminism Confronts Technology. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Major Specific – Politics & Policy: Media & Democracy

Theories of Democracy

  • Dahl, R. A. (1971).”Chapter 1: Democratization and Public Opinion”, “Chapter 2: Does Polyarchy Matter?”, & “Chapter 10: The Theory: Summary and Qualifications” in Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven,: Yale University Press. (pp. 1-32,202-207).
  • Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, 2004, Multitude, chapter 3.3: ‘Democracy of the Multitude’, pp.328-358.
  • Mouffe, C. (2005). “Feminism, Citizenship, and Radical Democratic Politics” in The Return of the Political. London: Verso. (pp.74-90).
  • Macpherson, C. B. (1965). The Real World of Democracy. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
  • Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press.
  • Schmitt, C. (1985). “Preface to the Second Edition (1926): On the Contradiction between Parliamentarism and Democracy” in The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge: MIT Press. (pp. 1-17).
  • Schumpeter, Joseph. 1975, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York, Harper&Row, chapters 21-22, (pp. 250-283).
  • Drury, S. B. (1988). The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
  • Wolin, S. S. (2004). Postmodern Democracy Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Expanded ed., pp. 581-606). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

The Democratic Subject: Machines, Masses, Movements, and Publics

  • Baudrillard, J. (2007). In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (New ed.). Cambridge: Semiotext(e).
  • Bimber, B. (1998). “The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community, and Accelerated Pluralism.” Polity 31(1): 133-160.
  • Dewey, John. (1927). The Public and Its Problems. Chicago: Swallow Press.
  • Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). “1933: Micropolitics and Segmentarity” and “1227: Treatise on Nomadology: – The War Machine” In Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp.208-231, 351-423
  • Veak, T. J. (2006). Democratizing Technology: Andrew Feenberg’s Critical Theory of Technology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
  • Lippmann, Walter. (1922, 1998). Public Opinion. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
  • Dean, J., Anderson, J. W., & Lovink, G. (Eds.). (2006). Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society. New York: Routledge.
  • Putnam, R. D. (2000).”Chapter 9: Against the Tide? Small Groups, Social Movements, and the Net” in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster. Pp. 148-182
  • Virno, P. (2003). A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life. Cambridge: Semiotext (e).

Informational Politics: Public Opinion and Numerical Representation

  • Castells, M. (1997). “Informational Politics and the Crisis of Democracy” in The Power of Identity. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell., pp. 367-419
  • Elmer, G. (2004). Profiling Machines: Mapping the Personal Information Economy. Cambridge,: MIT Press.
  • Foucault, M. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), Lecture of 17 March 1976, 239–264
  • Lewis, Justin. (2001). Constructing public opinion: How political elites do what they like and why we seem to go along with it. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
  • Howard, Philip N. (2005) “The Managed Citizen and Information Techology” in New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. (pp. 170-197)
  • Sunstein, C. R. (2001).”The Daily Me” in Republic.com. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp. 3-23)

The Ownership of Democratic Culture

  • Balkin, J., Digital Speech and Democratic Culture:  A Theory of Freedom of Expression for the Information Society, in NYU Law Review  Vol 79:I (April 2004) pp1-55.
  • Bratich, J. Z. (2008). Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
  • Couldry, N., & Curran, J. (2003). Contesting Media Power: Alternative Media in a Networked World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.
  • Dean, Jodi. (2002). Publicity’s Secret: How Technology Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  • McChesney, R. W. (1999). Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  • Meehan, E. R., & Riordan, E. (Eds.). (2002). Sex & Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Public Sphere

  • Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
  • Benkler, Yochai. (2006) “Chapter 7: Political Freedom Part 2: Emergence of the Networked Public Sphere.” In The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press. (pp. 212-272)
  • Calhoun, Craig.  1998.  “Community without Propinquity Revisited: Communications Technology and the Transformation of the Urban Public Sphere.”  Sociological Inquiry 68(3:) 373-97.
  • Downey, J., & Fenton, N. (2003). New Media, Counter Publicity and the Public Sphere. New Media & Society, 5(2), 185-202.
  • Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actual Democracy. In C. J. Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (pp. 109-142). Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Habermas, J. (1974 [1964]). The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article. New German Critique, 3(Autumn), 49-54.
  • Warner, Michael. 2002. “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture12, 1: 49-90.

Minor General – Code Politics: Theories and Methods

Theoretical Approaches to Code

  • Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
  • Chun, W. H. K. (2005). On Software, or the Persistence of Visual Knowledge. Grey Room, Winter(18), 26-51.
  • Mackenzie, A. (2006). Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. New York: Peter Lang.
  • Galloway, A. R. (2004). Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Halyes, N. K. (2004). Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis. Poetics Today, 25(1), 67-90.
  • Latham, R., & Sassen, S. (2005). Digital Formations: Constructing an Object of Study. In R. Latham & S. Sassen (Eds.), Digital Formations: IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm (pp. 1-33). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
  • Lessig, L. (2006). Code: Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books.
  • Manovich, L. (2002).”What is New Media” in The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. (pp. 18-61).

Cybernetics: Communication and Control

  • Beniger, J. R. (1986). The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the Societies of Control. October, 59(1), 3-7.
  • Gillespie, T. (2007). Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Goldsmith, J. L., & Wu, T. (2006). Who Controls the Internet?: Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Massumi, B. (2002). “The Political Economy of Belonging and the Logic of Relation” in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (pp.68-89)
  • Wiener, N. (1950). The Human Use of Human Beings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Code and Activism

  • Arquilla, J., & Ronfeldt, D. F. (1996). The Advent of Netwar. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
  • Critical Art Ensemble (1996) “Electronic Civil Disobedience,” In “Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas” New York: Autnomedia, pp. 7-34
  • Jordan, T., & Taylor, P. A. (2004). Hacktivism and Cyberwars: Rebels with a Cause? London ; New York, N.Y.: Routledge.
  • Kahn, R., & Kellner, D. (2004). New Media and Internet Activism: From the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to Blogging. New Media & Society, 6(1), 87-95.
  • Miekle, Graham. “Hack Attacks and Electronic Civil Disobedience.” Future Active: Media Action and the Internet. New York: Routledge, 2003. 141-172.

The Political Economy of Code

  • Andrejevic, M. (2002). The Work of Being Watched: Interactive Media and the Exploitation of Self-Disclosure. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 12(2), 230-248.
  • Dyer-Witheford, N. (1999). Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  • Grusin, R. (2000). Location, Location, Location: Desktop Real Estate and the Cultural Economy of the World Wide Web. Convergence, 6(1), 48-61.
  • Kelty, C. (2008). Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Nakamura, Lisa.  (2002).  “Menu-Driven Identities:  Making Race Happen Online”.  In Cybertypes.  New York:  Routledge.  Pp. 101-136
  • Terranova, T. (2004). Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. Ann Arbor: Pluto Press.

Digital Reseach Methods

  • Elmer, G. (2006). Re-tooling the Network: Parsing the Links and Codes of the Web World. Convergence, 12(1), 9-19.
  • Hine, C. (2000). Virtual Ethnography. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
  • Howard, P. N. (2002). Network Ethnography and the Hypermedia Organization: New Media, New Organizations, New Methods. New Media & Society, 4(4), 550-574.
  • Rogers, R. (2004). Information Politics on the Web. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  • Schneider, S. M., & Foot, K. A. (2004). The Web as an Object of Study. New Media Society, 6(1), 114-122.
  • Turkle, S.  (1995).  “Introduction:  Identity in the Age of the Internet”.  In Life on the Screen.  New York:  Simon Schuster.  Pp. 9-26