(Neo) Realism I: Cinema, The World and Truth

still from Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero (Italy, 1948)

Overbey, Introduction to Springtime in Italy
(This includes a number of short articles by Zavattini, Antonioni, De Sica & Rossellini)

Marcus, Rossellini's Open City: The Founding
Bazin's collection of articles on neo-realism from What Is Cinema?; Vol. II
Merleau-Ponty, Preface to Phenomenology of Perception
Kracauer, The Found Story and the Episode from Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality

What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?

This chart looks good but it's outdated. Get the 'big picture' here at Free Press.
The question we will be discussing in class is: What makes mainstream media mainstream? How does this prevent the media from fulfilling the social roles that liberal democratic theory assigns to it?

Noam Chomsky, What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream
James Curran, Mass Media and Democracy Revisited
Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media?
Ed Herman, Media in the US Political Economy

Construction and Performance I: Privilege and Representation

Power, Privilege and Discrimination

Peggy McIntosh, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"

Cultural Studies & Representation
Douglas Kellner, "Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism and Media Culture"
Sanjukta Gosh, "'Con-Fusing' Exotica: Producing India in US Advertising"

Ideology and Hegemony
Stuart Hall, "The Whites of Their Eyes: Racing Ideologies and the Media"
James Lull, "Hegemony"

all readings (except the online Peggy McIntosh) are from Dines and Humez (eds), Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text-Reader; 2nd Edition(Sage, 2003)

Get More: 2013 VMA, Artists.MTV, Music, Miley Cyrus

Comics? Comics!

from Sigmund Freud's notebooks: Comics as dream work

Here are a couple of examples of comics that we can use to continue our discussion of what comics are and what they are not. It is also a good excuse to test out your comic book readers (.cbr and .cbz). Let me know if you encounter any problems reading these files.

Ernie Bushmiller, Nancy, selected Sunday Comics, 1941

Winsor McCay, Little Nemo in Slumberland, 1905-1914

Robert Sergel, "Up Up Down Down" from Eschew 2011

Bonus reading: from Douglas Wolk, Reading Comics Chapter 1: "What Comics Are and What They Aren't"

Welcome To Fall 2013

Images