Michael Schudson
mschudson@ucsd.edu
fall, l998

This seminar is designed to introduce beginning graduate students to the intellectual history of communication research. This is a complex task in a department that seeks not to recapitulate mainstream American communication research but to extend it and criticize it. This department draws intellectual sustenance from some of the figures and traditions within conventional communication research but from others outside it, too. The seminar will try to provide a history of the "field" of communication as it is conventionally understood while weaving into it the alternative tradition that this department is trying to invent.

Required Texts:

Wendy Steiner, The Pleasure of Scandal (Chicago, l995)
Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, l983)
Michael Schudson, Discovering the News (Basic, l978)
Edward Purcell, The Crisis of Democratic Theory (Kentucky, l973)
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, l922).

Recommended Texts:

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Blackwell, l989)
Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture (California, l99l)

Week I. Introduction

A. The Enlightenment and Its Legacy

Isaiah Berlin, "The Counter-Enlightenment" in Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current (Viking, l980) l-24.

Declaration of Independence

Michael Warner, "The Res Publica of Print" in Warner, The Letters of the Republic (Harvard, l990) pp. 34-72.

B. Modernity and Its Discontents

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto (Part I)

Marshall Berman, "Unchained Melody," The Nation, May ll, l998, ll-l6.

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (l904-5) (New York: Scribner's, l958) l3-l9, l80-l83

Georg Simmel, "Metropolis and Mental Life," in Kurt Wolff, ed., The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free Press, l950) 409-424.

Daniel Boorstin, "The Graphic Revolution," in The Image (Atheneum, l980) pp. l2-l7.

Michael Schudson, Discovering the News (Basic, l978) pp. 12-60.

Supplemental Reading:

Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford U. Press, l953).

Week II. Social Science As Natural Science

Emile Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method (Free Press) pp. xliii-liii, l-l3, 27-46.

Max Weber, "Science as a Vocation" in Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford, l946) pp. l29-l56.

Edward Purcell, The Crisis of Democratic Theory (University Press of Kentucky, l973) l-46.

Jane Flax, "The End of Innocence," in Judith Butler and Joan Scott, eds., Feminists Theorize the Political (Routledge, l992) pp. 445-463.

Supplemental Reading:

Anthony Giddens, "Positivism and Its Critics" in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, A History of Sociological Analysis (New York: Basic Books, l978) pp. 237-286.

Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy" in Maurice Natanson, ed. Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Random House, l963) pp. 355-4l8.

Week III. The "Mass" and the Public

Michael Schudson, Discovering the News (Basic, l978) l22-144.

Hadley Cantril, "The Invasion from Mars" in Wilbur Schramm and Donald Roberts, Process and Effects of Mass Communication (Urbana; University of Illinois, l97l)

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion pp. 3-20, 48-75, l6l-l74, l95-l97, 20l-207, 2l4-25l..

John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems (l927) pp. ll0-l27, l4l-l42, l57-l6l, l85-l89, 203-2l9.

Jurgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere" in Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, eds. Rethinking Popular Culture pp. 398-404.

Week IV. Individual, Society, and Culture

Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, l9l5, l965) pp. l3-33.

George Herbert Mead, "Self" in George Herbert Mead, On Social Psychology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, l964) pp. l99-209, 242-246..

Edward Sapir, "Language," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (l934)

Edward Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory (l973) pp. 47-73.

George Stocking, Jr., "Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective," in George Stocking, Jr., Race, Culture, and Evolution (Free Press, l968) pp. l95-233.

James Wertsch, Voices of the Mind (Harvard, l99l) pp. 25-38.

Supplemental Reading:

Daniel Czitrom, Media and the American Mind (North Carolina, l982)

Donald Fleming, "Attitude: History of a Concept," Perspectives in American History 6 (l972)

Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth Century France (New Haven: Yale University Press, l98l)

Robert Nye, The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave Le Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic (London: Sage, l975).

Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, l98l).

Gregory Bush, Lord of Attention: Gerald Stanley Lee and the Crowd Metaphor in Industrializing America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, l99l).

Gerald Stanley Lee, Crowds: A Moving Picture of Democracy (New York: Doubleday, Page, l9l3).

Leon Bramson, The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton, l96l) ll-72.

Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell U. Press, l99l).

Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston: Little, Brown, l980).

Richard Rorty, "Dewey Between Hegel and Darwin," in Dorothy Ross, ed., Modernist Impulses..., pp. 54-68.

Week V. A Macrohistorical Tradition -- Strong Effects?

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, l983) pp. 42-l07.

Michael Cole and Sylvia Scribner, The Psychology of Literacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l98l) 234-260.

James Carey, "Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan" in Raymond Rosenthal, ed. McLuhan: Pro and Con (Penguin Books, l969) 270-308.

James Carey, "Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph," in James Carey, Communication As Culture (Unwin Hyman, l989) 20l-230.

Daniel Bell, "The Social Framework of the Information Society" in Michael Dertouzos and Joel Moses, eds. The Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, l979) pp. 163-211.

Robert G. Albion, "The 'Communication Revolution'", American Historical Review 37 (l932) 7l8-720.

Supplemental Reading:

Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, "The Social Shaping of Technology: Introductory Essay" in MacKenzie and Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of Technology (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, l985).

Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic Books, l973)

Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, l979).

David R. Olson, The World on Paper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, l994).

Jack Goody, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, l977).

Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, l958) l9-75.

Week VI. Making a Science of Communication Research: Microsociological Traditions -- Weak Effects?

Edward Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory, pp. ll7-l58.

Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmact in World War II," Public Opinion Quarterly l2 (l948) 280-3l5.

Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action," in Lyman Bryson, ed. The Communication of Ideas (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, l948, l964) pp. 95-ll8.

Herta Herzog, "Motivations and Gratifications of Daily Serial Listeners" in Wilbur Schramm, ed., The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (Univ. of Illinois Press, l954) pp. 50-55.

Bernard Berelson, "What Missing the Newspaper Means," in Schramm, ed., 36-47.

Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence (New York: Free Press, l955) 15-42, ll6-l33, l37-l43, l75-l86, 309-320.

Paul Lazarsfeld, "Communication Research and the Social Psychologist" in Wayne Dennis, ed. Current Trends in Social Psychology (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, l948) 2l8-273.

Supplemental Reading:

Steven Chaffee and John L. Hochheimer, "The Beginning of Political Communication Research in the United States: Origins of the 'Limited Effects' Model," in Everett Rogers and Francis Balle, eds., The Media Revolution in America and Western Europe (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, l982) pp. 263-283.

Willard Rowland, The Politics of TV Violence Research (Newbury Park: Sage, l983).

Christopher Simpson, Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare l945-l960 (New York: Oxford University Press, l994).

Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "An Episode in the History of Social Research: A Memoir," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds. The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America l930-l960 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, l969) pp. 270-337.

Wilbur Schramm, "How Communication Works" in Wilbur Schramm, ed. The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, l954) 3-26.

Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss, "The Influence of Source Credibility on Communication Effectiveness," in Schramm, ed. 275-288.

Week VII. Unmaking a Science: Critics of Traditional Research

Todd Gitlin, "Media Sociology: The Dominant Paradigm" Theory and Society 6 (l978) 205-253.

Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communication and American Empire (Boston: Beacon Press, l97l) pp. 79-l07.

Elihu Katz, "Communications Research Since Lazarsfeld," Public Opinion Quarterly 5l (l987) S25-S45.

Theodor Adorno, "Television and the Patterns of Mass Culture," in Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, eds. Mass Culture (Free Press, l957) pp. 474-487..

Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School (MIT, l994) pp. 236-246.

Edward Purcell, Crisis of Democratic Theory, pp. 235-272.

Supplemental Readings:

Theodor Adorno, "Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America," in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Intellectual Migration, 338-370.

Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley: University of California Press, l984).

Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, l98l).

Dorothy Ross, "An Historian's View of American Social Science," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 29 (l993) pp. 99-ll2.

Week VIII. The Concept of Culture and Its Revisions: Symbolic Anthropology, British Cultural Studies, Audiences, Hegemony and Resistance

A. British Cultural Studies

Graeme Turner, "Ideology" in Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies (Unwin Human, l990) l97-225.

Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Cultural Theory" in Mukerji and Schudson.

Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," in Culture, Media, Language (London: Hutchison/Routledge,l980).

Stuart Hall, "The Problem of Ideology: Marxism Without Guarantees," in David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen, Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies (Routledge, l996) pp. 25-46.

B. Audience and Resistance

John Fiske, "Television: Polysemy and Popularity," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 3 (l986) 39l-408.

David Morley, "Domestic Relations: The Framework of Famiily Viewing in Great Britain," in James Lull, ed. World Families Watch Television (SAGE, l988) 22-48.

C. Symbolic Anthropology

Clifford Geertz, "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in Mukerji and Schudson.

Supplemental Reading:

Dan Schiller, Theorizing Communication (New York: Oxford, l996).

Andrew Goodwin, "Introduction," in Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, l992) pp. xiii-xxxix.

Week IX. Post-Modern Times

A. Postmodern Experience

David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, l989). (selections)

Joshua Gamson, "Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma," Social Problems 42 (l995) 390-407.

Sharon Marcus, "Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words" in Judith Butler and Joan Scott, eds., Feminists Theorize the Political (Routledge, l996) pp. 385-403.

B. Postmodern Knowledge: Power/Knowledge

Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures" (second lecture) in Nicholas Dirks, et. al., Culture/Power/History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, l994) pp. 210-22l.

Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," Feminist Studies l4 (l988) 575-599."

Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Indiana University Press, l989) l4-26.

Week X. Art and Efficacy

Wendy Steiner, The Scandal of Pleasure (Chicago, l995)

Ann Swidler, "Culture in Action," American Sociological Review 5l (l985) 273-86.

Michael Schudson, "How Culture Works," Theory and Society (l989)

Supplemental Readings:

Rochelle Gurstein, "Misjudging Mapplethorpe: The Art Scene and the Obscene," Tikkun 6 (November/December, l99l) pp. 7l-77.

Camille Paglia, "The Beautiful Decadence of Robert Mapplethorpe," Tikkun 6 (November/December l99l) pp. 77-80.

Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back (Chicago, l998).

Supplemental Reading:

Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, and Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, l986).

Mark Poster, Modes of Information

Other Background Readings:

Ithiel de Sola Pool, et. al. eds. Handbook of Communication (Chicago: Rand McNally, l973)
International Encyclopedia of Communication

Written Assignments:

A grade for this course will be based on seminar participation and three written assignments, as follows:

l and 2. Analysis and commentary on two of the common readings, addressing the following questions, as appropriate, in 3-5 pages each:

a) What is the intention/audience/context of the writing?
b) What is the mood or tone of the writing and the self-presentation of the author?
c) What is the primary argument?
d) What is the best evidence for it?
e) What is the best argument against it?
f) What does this piece of writing contribute to the study of communication?
g) What is, to you, the most interesting point the author makes or question the author raises?

Questions a and b should be answered in about a paragraph. Questions c and d should take 2 or 3 pages. Questions f and g should take a concluding couple of paragraphs.

Do NOT seek to be comprehensive. The task is to try to get to the heart of the matter directly and briefly.

NOTE: These two papers are to be prepared in advance of the class at which we will discuss the book or article that is their topic. Students should photocopy their papers for each member of the seminar and make them available Tuesday afternoon before 4:30.

3. Final assignment: develop one of your first two papers into an 8-l0 page essay to be turned in during exam week. Your essay should focus on important issues raised in the seminar and should center on two or more texts read in common (but only one of the two you have previously written on). The paper may also reflect your reading in at least one substantial supplementary reading.

Or: discuss a change in contemporary communication thought. Explain it. Say what was gained or lost in the change:

l. from strong to weak effects
2. from weak effects to strong effects
3. from positivism to relationalisms
4. from tradition/modernity to
5. from economic man to social man