University of Southern California



CNTV 600 Medium Specificity

Day/Time: Tuesday, 1:00-3:50 p.m.

Classroom: SCA 216

Contact Information:

Henry Jenkins: hjenkins@usc.edu

Office: ASC 101C

Office hours by appointment. Please contact Amanda Ford (Professor Jenkins’ Assistant) at amanda.ford@usc.edu.

Please send all inquires regarding office hour appointments to Amanda Ford and questions regarding the course to Professor Jenkins.

This course takes as its central themes the borders and boundaries between media. Early on, we will consider some attempts to develop theories of medium specificity - trying to determine what traits define film, photography, television, and games, with a focus on what differentiates them from other existing modes of representation. How is photography distinct from painting? What are the defining traits of the cinematic? Are games narratives? As we deal with these theories, we will show how they each moved from descriptions of the properties of the specific medium to prescriptions for what the aesthetics of these media should look like. It is at this intersection where our course will most clearly explore the relationship between theory and practice. Even with these medium-specific approaches, we will be exploring how their development required a mode of comparison across media. So, we see Eisenstein, for example, resting his theory of the cinematic on analogies to text-based media and Bazin drawing on notions of photography and theater to talk about cinema. And we will explore how writers like Arnheim sought to resist the coming of sound in order to protect what they saw as the "purity" of their medium-specific approach.

As the course continues, we will dig more deeply into media theories and practices that consciously explore the intersections between expressive media rather than marking the borders between them. We will examine notions of interface, affordance, narrative, character, space and spectacle, opera and melodrama, globalization, and cultural hierarchy as they relate to the interplay between different media systems and practices. Here, we will be looking at theories that celebrate hybridity and border crossing rather than seeing them as problematic. Yet, in doing so, these theories still make implicit assumptions about what each medium does best or what each has to contribute to a transmedia system. So, again, we will find that the notion of medium specificity plays a central role in such formulations.

Across the course, we will be looking at a range of media texts as vehicles through which to test and expand the theories we are studying. These texts are sometimes read as experiments in medium specificity and border crossing and, other times, these works are seen as making their own conceptual contributions to our understanding of the interplay between different kinds of media. In every case, they will be looked at as illustrations of how media theory might inform creative practice and how production may help extend theoretical arguments.

Books:

Joyce Farmer, Special Exits (Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics, 2011).

Marsha Kinder and Tara Mcpherson (eds.), Transmedia Frictions: The Digital, the Arts,

and the Humanities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014).

All other readings are posted on the class blackboard site.

Assignments:

Contributions to Class Forum on Blackboard (20 Percent)

Students should share short reflections or questions on the materials read for each week's session, which can be used as a springboard for class discussions. Ideally, these should be posted on the blackboard Discussions forums by 10 a.m. on the day the class is being held.

The Specificity of Digital Media (20 Percent)

Much of what we are reading this semester was written in regard to early 20th-century media such as film and photography. In what ways have these debates surfaced as our culture has responded to the emergence of new media of expression? What similarities or differences do you see in terms of the debates about games or the web and the debates about these earlier media? Which ideas from the past offer us the best tools for thinking about the present and future of digital expression?

(Sept. 30)



Textual Analysis Paper (20 percent)

Students should select one of two approaches:

• Choose one of the media texts we have watched through the class session and develop a five-page paper which explores the relationship of this work to its medium. You should draw on ideas from one or more of the essays we've read this semester to help you frame your approach

(Nov. 11)



Final Paper (40 percent)

Students should write a 20-page essay on a topic of their own interests as they reflect on the core themes and concerns which have run through the class. Students may consider doing a creative project that explores these same issues, with permission of the instructor. Students should submit a one-to-two-page abstract of the project by mid term, so that they can receive feedback as they are developing their concepts.

Also, students will give a 10-minute final presentation sharing their project with the class. (Dec. 2)

USC Statement on Academic Integrity:

USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that individual work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by an instructor, and the obligations both to protect one’s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another’s work as one’s own.

All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. SCampus, the Student Guidebook, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located at . Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The review process can be found at .

Academic Accommodations/Statement for Students with Disabilities:

Any students requesting academic accommodations based on a disability are required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP when adequate documentation is filed.

Please be sure the letter is delivered to the professor as early in the semester as possible. DSP is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m.–5 p.m. The office is located in the Student Union room 301 and their phone number is (213) 740-0776.

Emergency Preparedness/Course Continuity in a Crisis:

In case of a declared emergency if travel to campus is not feasible, USC executive leadership will announce an electronic way for instructors to teach students in their residence halls or homes using a combination of Blackboard, teleconferencing, and other technologies.

Class Schedule

Week 1 Why Media Matters (Tuesday, August 25th)

Lisa Gitelman, “New Media Users,” Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data

of Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).

Jussi Parikka, “Media Archeology of the Senses: Audiovisual, Affective, Alogorithmic,”

What is Media Archeology? (London: Polity, 2012).

Jonathon Sterne, Excerpt from MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Durham, NC: Duke

University Press, 2012).

Tony Grajeda, “The Sound of Disaffection,” in Henry Jenkins, Tara McPherson, and Jane

Shattuc (eds.), Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 357-375.

Screening: various experiences with recorded sound

Part One: Medium Specificity

Week 2 The Problem of Medium Specificity (Tuesday, September 2nd)

David Bordwell, "Defending and Defining the Seventh Art: The Standard Version of

Stylistic History," On the History of Film Style (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 1-45.

Rudolf Arnheim, "A New Lacoon: Artistic Composites and the Talking Film," Film as

Art (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1957), pp. 199-220.

Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov, “Statement on Sound,”

in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds.), The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 234-35.

Rick Altman, excerpts from Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press,

2007).

Mary Carbine, “‘The Finest in the Loop’: Motion Picture Exhibition in Chicago’s Black

Metropolis, 1905-1928,” Camera Obscura 8(2 23): pp. 8-41.

Screening: excerpts from silent and early sound films

Week 3 Medium Specificity in Cinema (Tuesday, September 9th)

David Bordwell, "Against the Seventh Art: Andre Bazin and the Dialectical Program,"

On the History of Film Style (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 46-83.

Andre Bazin, "The Myth of Total Cinema" and "Theater and Cinema," What is Cinema?

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 17-22, 76-124.

Sergei Eisenstein, “The Cinematic Principle and the Ideogram” and "Dickens, Griffith

and the Film Today," Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949), pp.28-44, 195-256.

Dziga Vertov, excerpts from Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 1985).

Screening: Samples from montage, multiframe, deep focus, and wide-screen movies.

Week 4 Medium Specificity in Photography (Tuesday, September 16th)

Andre Bazin, “Ontology of the Photographic Image,” What Is Cinema? (Berkeley, CA:

University of California, 2004), pp. 9-16.

David Company, "Stillness," Photography and Cinema (London: Reaktion Books, 2008),

pp. 22-59.

Jane Gaines, "Photography Surprises the Law: The Portrait of Oscar Wilde," Contested

Culture: The Image, the Voice, and the Law (Chapel Hill, CA: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 42-83.

Roland Barthes, “Garbo’s Face,” Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang), pp. 56-57.

Richard Dyer, “The Light of the World,” White: Essays on Race and Culture (London:

Routledge, 1997), pp. 82-144.

Annette Kuhn, “She’ll Always Be Your Little Girl…”, Family Secrets: Acts of Memory

and the Imagination (London: Verso, 2002), pp. 11-14.

Screening: La Jetee (1962)

Week 5 Medium Specificity in Games and Other Digital Media (Tuesday, September 23rd)

Henry Jenkins, "Games, The New Lively Art,"

.

Markku Eskelinen, "Towards Computer Games Studies," Electronic Book Review, May

22, 2004, .

Jesper Juul: "The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness," in

Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens (eds.), Level Up: Digital Games Research

Conference Proceedings, pp. 30-45. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003,

.

Wendy Chun, “Programing the Bleeding Edge of Obsolescence,” Programmed Visions:

Software and Memory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), pp. 1-55.

Tarleton Gillespie, “The Politics of Platforms,” New Media and Society 12(3) (2010), pp.

347-364.

Screening: Show and tell of recent games

Week 6 The Specificity of Television (Tuesday, September 30th)

William Uricchio,”Television’s Next Generation: Technology/Interface Culture/Flow,” in

Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (eds.), Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Durham: Duke University, 2005), pp. 163-182.

Sheila Murphy, “From Tube to a ‘Series of Tubes’: Television in and as New Media,”

How Television Invented New Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011), pp. 79-102.

Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, “Technologies of Agency,” Legitimating

Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (New York: Routledge,

2012), pp. 129-152.

Jason Jacobs, “Television, Interrupted: Pollution or Aesthetic?,” in James Bennett and

Niki Strange (eds.), Television As Digital Media (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 255-280.

Aymar Christian, “Independents Change the Channel,” Open TV: Indie Innovation and The Transformation of Creative Economy (Work in Progress), pp. 1-41.

Screening: Excerpts from historic and contemporary television

Week 7 Medium Specificity (Revisited) (Tuesday, October 7th)

Readings from Marsha Kinder and Tara Mcpherson (eds.), Transmedia Frictions: The Digital, the Arts, and the Humanities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014). Readings include:

• Marsha Kinder, “Medium Specificity and Productive Precursors: An Introduction.”

• N. Katherine Hayles, “Print is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Medium Specific Analysis.”

• Lev Manovich, “Postmedia Aesthetics.”

• Edward Branigan, “If-Then-Else: Memroy and the Path Not Taken.”

• Yuri Tsivian, “Cyberspace and Its PrecursorsL Linstbach, Warburg, Eisenstein.”

Noel Carroll, "Medium Specificity Arguments and the Self-Consciously Invented Arts:

Film, Video, and Photography," Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge, UK: University of Cambridge Press, 1996), pp. 3-24.

Screening: TBA

Part Two: Media Relations

Week 8 Windows, Frames, and Mirrors (Tuesday, October 14th)

Anne Friedberg, "The Virtual Window," in David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.),

Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Cambridge: MIT Press,

2003), pp. 337-354.

Jay David Bolter and Richard A. Grusin, "Remediation," Configurations 4(3) (1996),

311-358.

Lev Manovich, "Cinema as a Cultural Interface,"

.

Screening: Sleep Dealer

Week 9 Attractions and Spectacles (Tuesday, October 21st)

Henry Jenkins, "'A Regular Mine, A Reservoir, a Proving Ground': Reconstructing the

Vaudeville Aesthetic," What Made Pistachio Nuts: Early Sound Comedy and the

Vaudeville Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 59-96.

Henry Jenkins, "'I Like to Hit Myself in the Head': 'Vulgar Modernism' Revisited"

(forthcoming).

Scott Bukattman, "Spectacle, Attractions and Visual Pleasure,” in Wanda Strauven (ed.)

The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), pp. 71-84.

Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions[s]: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-

Garde," in Wanda Strauven (ed.) The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), pp. 381-388.

Charles Musser, "Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity," in

Wanda Strauven (ed.) The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), pp. 389-416.

Recommended Reading: Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,”

Screen 16(3) (Autumn 1975), pp. 6-18, .

Screening: Hellzapoppin (1941)

Week 10 The Archival (Tuesday, October 28th)

Jared Gardner, “Archives and Collectors, 1990-2010,” Projections: Comics and the

History of twenty-First Century Storytelling (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 149-179.

Diana Taylor, “Acts of Transfer” and “The Archive and the Repertoire,” Performing

Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), pp. 53-78.

Steve Anderson, “Past Indiscretions: Digital Archives and Recombinant History” and

Stephen Member, “Movies Beget Digital Media,” in Marsha Kinder and Tara Mcpherson (eds.), Transmedia Frictions: The Digital, the Arts, and the Humanities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

Ellen Garvey, “Alternative Histories in African-American Scrapbooks,” Writing with

Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 131-171.

Abigail Derecho, "Archonic Literature: A Definition, a History, and Several Theories of

Fan Fiction," in Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse (eds.), Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the 
Internet (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), pp. 61-78.

Screening: History and Memory

Week 11 Spectacular Media Spaces (Tuesday, November 4th)

Angela Ndalianis, "Architectures of the Senses: Neo-Baroque Entertainment Spectacles,"

in David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.) Rethinking Media Change: The

Aesthetics of Transition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 355-374.

Constance Balides, "Immersion in The Virtual Ornament: Contemporary ‘Movie Ride’

Films," in David Thorburn and Henry Jenkins (eds.), Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), pp. 315-336.

Lauren Rabinovitz, "More Than the Movies: A History of Somatic Visual Culture

Through Hale's Tours, IMAX and Motion Simulator Rides," in Lauren Rabinovitz

and Abraham Geil (eds.), Memory Bytes: History, Technology and Digital Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp.99-125.

Erkki Huhtamo, “Moving Panorama: A Missing Medium,” Illusions in Motion: Media

Archeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), pp. 1-28.

Screening: Field Trip to Vortex Immersion (Details to Follow)

Week 12 Melodrama and the “Stuff” of Everyday Life (Tuesday, November 11th)

Daniel Miller, “Houses: Accommodating Theory,” Stuff (London: Polity, 2009), pp. 79-

109.

Norman Bryson, “Still Life and ‘Feminine Space’, Looking at the Overlooked: Four

Essays on Still Life Painting (London: Reaktion, 1990), pp. 136-178

Joyce Farmer, Special Exits (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2010).

Screening: Sunrise: A Story of Two Humans (1926)

Week 13 From Opera to Transmedia (Tuesday, November 18th)

Richard Wagner, “Outlines of the Artwork of the Future,” in Ken Jordan and Randall

Packer (eds.), Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (New York: WW Norton, 2002), pp. 3-9.

Henry Jenkins, "The Reign of the “Mothership’: Transmedia’s Past, Present, and Possible

Futures,” in Denise Mann (ed.), Web TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future (Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), pp. 244-268.

Henry Jenkins, “All Over the Map: Worldbuilding and Oz,” (Work in progress).

Fred Turner, “The New Language of Vision,” The Democratic Surround: Multimedia

and American Liberalism From World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), pp. 77-115.

Screening: Excerpts from Transmedia and Multimedia Texts

Week 14 Hybridity and the Dialogic (Tuesday, November 25th)

Brian Larkin, "Extravagant Aesthetics: Instability and the Excessive World of Nigerian

Film," Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure and Urban Culture in Nigeria

(Durham, NC: Duke University, 2008), pp. 168-216.

George Lipsitz, "Cruising Around the Historical Bloc: Postmodernism and Popular Music

in East Central Los Angeles," Time Passages: Collective Memory and American

Popular Culture (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 133-162.

Laura Marks, “The Memory of Things,” The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment,

and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 77-126.

Screening: Excerpts from Third Cinema and World Music

Week 15 Final Presentations (Tuesday, December 2nd)

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