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Module convenor: Dr Carina Spaulding
Outline:
This module examines key aspects of long 20th-century history by critically evaluating the role of the mass media in reporting and a/effecting - and at times failing to respond to - cultural, social, and political change. After setting out the parameters of the module and introducing students to key methods of media research and ways of constructing and evaluating historical narrative and analysis through and using the media, the module will be structured largely chronologically by focusing on the media's involvement in and responses to major events throughout the long twentieth century.
There will be an overarching focus on the key themes of the roles of race, gender, and class. The 'mainstream' mass media will be covered, as well as minority media outlets and representations of media professionals themselves. This module introduces students to critical debates regarding the mass media, communication, and technology, as well as interrogates the relationship between the media and American politics, and in particular presidents and policy.
Introductory Reading:
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964)
H.L. Mencken, 'Journalism in America', in Prejudices (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1919, 1924), http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/mencken/mencken.html
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Of Freedom of the Press in the United States," in Democracy in America, vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 3, http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/tocqueville-democracy-in-america-historical-critical-edition-vol-2
James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in America since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press [1992] 2006)
Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978)