Schedule of Readings for the Fall 2010 Semester

Dr. Jelena Karanovic
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Department of Media, Culture and Communication
New York University

Week 1: What do we mean by digital media?

• Lev Manovich. 2001. What is New Media? In The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Ginsburg, Faye. 2008. Rethinking the Digital Age. In The Media and Social Theory, 127-144. David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee, eds. New York: Routledge.

Week 2: Novelty and obsolescence of digital media
Session 1

• Bolter, David, and Richard Grusin. 1999. Introduction and Chapter 1. In Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Recommended: Cohen, Kris. 2005. “What Does the Photoblog Want?” Media, Culture & Society 27 (6): 883 -901.
• Recommended: Gitelman, Lisa, and Geoffrey Pingree, eds. 2003. New Media, 1740-1915. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Blog kick-off: Discuss one example of how a digital medium remediates an older technology. What features of older technology are being remediated? Is the new technology making a claim of greater immediacy? How so?

Session 2

• Sterne, Jonathan. 2007. “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.” In Residual Media. Charles Acland, ed. pp. 16-31.
• Parks, Lisa. 2004. “Kinetic Screens: Epistemologies of Movement at the Interface.” In MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age, ed. Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy. London: Routledge. pp. 37-57.
• Zhao, Michael. 2009. “eDump.” Available online at http://michaelzhao.net/eDump/
• Recommended: Puckett, Jim. 1997. “The Basel Ban: A Triumph over Business-As-Usual.”
• In-class screening: Baichwal, Jennifer. 2006. “Manufactured Landscapes.” Clips.

Week 3: Utopianism and histories of digital media
Make an appointment with me to discuss your interests and ideas for the final project in this course.
Session 1

• Turner, Fred. 2006. “How Digital Technology Found Utopian Ideology: Lessons from the First Hacker’s Conference.” In Critical Cyberculture Studies. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari, eds. New York: NYU Press. pp. 257-269.
• Goldsmith, Jack L., and Tim Wu. 2006. Preface and Introduction. In Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of Borderless World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Recommended: Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs.” In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Available online at http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
• Recommended: Stallman, Richard. (1984) “The GNU Manifesto.” Available online at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html.
• Recommended: Barlow, John. 1996. “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.” Available online at http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html
• Recommended: Bush, Vannevar. 1945. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic. Available online at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

Session 2

• Edwards, Paul. 1996. “Why Build Computers?: The Military Role in Computer Research.” In The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 43-73.
• Light, Jennifer. 1999. “When Computers Were Women.” Technology and Culture 40: 455-483.
• Recommended: Abbate, Janet. 1999. Inventing the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Recommended: Turner, Fred. 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Week 4
Session 1 – Ambiguities of copying

• Powers, Richard. 2001. The Artist’s Bedlam. In Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion and Art. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds. Boston: MIT Press. pp. 476-477.
• Meiselas, Susan and Joy Garnet. 2007. On the rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context. Harper’s Magazine 53-58.
• In-class screening: Berger, John. 1972. “Ways of Seeing.” Clips.
• Recommended: Benjamin, Walter. 1968 (1936). “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations. New York: Harcourt Brace.

Session 2 – Digital archives

• Manovich, Lev. 2001. “Database as a Symbolic Form.”
• Bowker, Geoffrey, and Susan Leigh Star. 1999. “What a Difference a Name Makes: The Classification of Nursing Work.” In Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. pp. 229-254.
• Christie, Michael. 2008. “Digital Tools and the Management of Australian Aboriginal Desert Knowledge.” In Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics. Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, eds. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 270-285.

Week 5
Session 1 – Digital archives, continued: the politics of search

• Introna, Lucas, and Helen Nissenbaum. 2000. “Shaping The Web: Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters.” The Information Society 16: 169-185.
• Stalder, Felix, and Christine Mayer. 2009. “The Second Index: Search Engines, Personalization and Surveillance.” In Deep Search: The Politics of Search beyond Google, ed. Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder. Innsbruck: Studienverlag.
• Darnton, Robert. 2009. “Google & the Future of Books.” The New York Review of Books 56 (2).
• Recommended: Grimmelmann, James. 2009. The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books. American Constitution Society for Law and Policy.

Session 2 – Columbus Day, no class.

Week 6
Session 1 – Network
Your first paper assignment is due.

• Barabási, Albert-László. 2002. Linked: The New Science of Networks, 41-63 and 160-178. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
• Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. Preface, Introduction, and Chapter 2 in The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. ix-x, 1-5, and 19-35.
• Recommended: van Loon, Joost. 2006. Network. Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 2-3: 307-314.

Session 2 – Networked peer production and civic engagement

• Benkler, Yochai, and Christian Ahlert. 2006. “Mining the Wealth of Networks with Yochai Benkler.”
• Baker, Nicholson. 2008. “The Charms of Wikipedia.” The New York Review of Books 55 (4).
• Giridharadas, Anand. 2010. “Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis.” The New York Times, March 12.
• Scholz, Trebor. 2008. “Where the Activism Is.” In Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, ed. Megan Boler. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. pp. 355-365.
• Zuckerman, Ethan. 2007. “Mobile Phones and Social Activism.” My Heart’s in Accra.
• Recommended: Bartow, Ann. 2007. “Some Peer-to-Peer, Democratically and Voluntarily Produced Thoughts About ‘the Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom,’ by Yochai Benkler.” Journal of Telecommunications and High Technology Law.
• Recommended: Scholz, Trebor. 2008. “Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0.” First Monday 13 (3).

Week 7
Session 1 – Networked peer production, journalism, and democracy

• Glaser, Mark. 2006. “Your Guide to Citizen Journalism.”
• Lemann, Nicholas. 2006. “Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists.” The New Yorker, August 7.
• Zuckerman, Ethan. 2004. “Making Room for the Third World in the Second Superpower.” In Extreme Democracy, ed. Jon Lebkowsky and Mitch Ratcliffe.
• Check out Global Voices In English, available at http://globalvoicesonline.org/
• Recommended: Gillmor, Dan. 2004. We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. O’Reilly Media.
• Recommended: Allan, Stuart, and Einar Thorsen. 2009. Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang.
• Recommended: Foust, Joshua. 2008. Echo Chamber: How Bloging Failed the War in Georgia. Columbia Journalism Review, August 19.

Session 2 – Networked peer production and justice

• Shirky, Clay. 2008. “It Takes a Village to Find a Phone.” In Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin. pp. 1-25.
• Downey, Tom. 2010. “China’s Cyberposse.” The New York Times.
• Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. “Meeting the Risks of Generativity: Privacy 2.0.” In The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 200-234.

Week 8
Session 1 – Redefining ownership: a debate
(1) through technological design

• Tarleton Gillespie. 2006. “Designed to ‘Effectively Frustrate’: Copyright, Technology, and the Agency of Users.” New Media & Society 8: 651-669.
• Jonathan Sterne. 2006. “The MP3 as Cultural Artifact.” New Media & Society 8: 825-842.
• Future of Music Coalition. 2010. “Network Neutrality: Fact Sheet.”

(2) through emerging business models

• Rodman, Gilbert, and Cheyanne Vanderdonckt. 2006. “Music for Nothing or, I Want My MP3: The Regulation and Recirculation of Affect.” Cultural Studies 20 (2): 245-261.
• Love, Courtney. 2000. “Courtney Love Does the Math.” Digital Hollywood Conference, New York, May 16, 2000.
• Future of Music Coalition. 2009. “New Business Models Spreadsheet.”

(3) through reclaiming intellectual and civil rights

• Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources. 2007. “Chapter 9: Fair Use.” Read especially the sections “What is Fair Use?” and “Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors.”
• Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2003. Introduction, in Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York: NYU Press. pp. 1-16.
• Aufderheide, Patricia, and Peter Jaszi. 2004. Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. Washington, D.C.: Final Report to Center for Social Media.
• Paley, Nina. 2009. “Frequently Asked Questions.”
• Morfoot, Leigh and Jason. 2010. “Citizen 3.0: Copyright, Creativity and Contemporary Culture.”
  
• Recommended: Paley, Nina. 2009. “Sita Sings the Blues.”

Session 2 – New media and news professions

• Klinenberg, Eric. 2005. “Convergence: News Production in a Digital Age.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science 597:48-64.
• Couldry, Nick. 2010. “New Online News Sources and Writers-Gatherers.” In New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in the Digital Age, ed. Natalie Fenton. London: SAGE Publications. pp. 138-152.
• Recommended: Boczkowski, Pablo. 2004. Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Week 9
Session 1 – The blurring of labor and leisure

• Postigo, Hector. 2003. “Emerging Sources of Labor on the Internet: The Case of America Online Volunteers.” International Review of Social History 48: 205-223.
• Dibbell, Julian. 2007. “The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer.” New York Times, June 17, 2007.
• Check out the filmmaker Ge Jin’s website, www.chinesegoldfarmers.com.
• Recommended: von Ahn, Luis. 2006. “Presentation for Google TechTalk on Human Computation.” October 26.

Session 2 – New media labor and transnational mobility

• Xiang, Biao. 2005. Gender, Dowry and the Migration System of Indian Information Technology Professionals. Indian Journal of Gender Studies 12: 357-380.
• Recommended: Freeman, Carla. 2000. High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy: Women, Work, and Pink-Collar Identities in the Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press.

Week 10
Session 1 – Redefining identities through digital media

• Hargittai, Eszter. 2008. “The Digital Reproduction of Inequality.” In Social Stratification. Ed. David Grusky. Boulder: Westview Press. pp. 936-944.
• Kendall, Lori. 2002. “Hanging Out in the Virtual Locker Room: BlueSky as a Masculine Space.” In Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press. pp. 71-108.
• Lisa Nakamura. 2007. “Measuring Race on the Internet.” In Digitizing Race. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 171-201.

Session 2 – Redefining identities: Activist strategies
A complete draft of your final paper is due for peer review.

• Ginsburg, Faye. 2007. “Found in Translation.” In Media Res: A Media Commons Project.
• Gillett, James. 2003. “Media Activism and Internet Use by People with HIV/AIDS.” Sociology of Health & Illness 25 (6): 608-624.
• Orgad, Shani. 2005. “The Transformative Potential of Online Communication: The Case of Breast Cancer Patients’ Internet Spaces.” Feminist Media Studies 5 (2): 141-161.
• Recommended: Davidson, Joyce. 2008. “Autistic Culture Online: Virtual Communication and Cultural Expression on the Spectrum.” Social & Cultural Geography 9 (7): 791-806.

Week 11
Session 1 – Youth identities and digital media

• Ito, Mizuko et al. 2008. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Chicago: MacArthur Foundation.
• Montgomery, Kathryn. 2008. “Youth and Digital Democracy: Intersections of Practice, Policy, and the Marketplace.” In Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth, ed. W. Lance Bennett. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press. pp. 25-50.

Session 2 – Digital intimacy and surveillance
Your peer review is due in class (along with the copy of the paper that you reviewed).

• Thompson, Clive. 2008. “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy.” The New York Times, September 7, 2008.
• Gershon, Ilana. 2010. “Breaking Up in a Public.” In The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 165-196.
• Recommended: Collins, Lauren. 2008. Friend Game. The New Yorker, January 21, 2008.

Week 12: Technologies of personhood
Session 1

• Taylor, T. L. 2002. “Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Worlds.” In The Social Life of Avatars: Presence and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments, ed. Ralph Schroeder. London: Springer-Verlag. pp. 40-62.
• In-class film screening: Matulick, Shelley. 2006. “Our Brilliant Second Life.”
• Recommended: Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Session 2

• Reed, Adam. 2005. “’My Blog Is Me’: Texts and Persons in UK Online Journal Culture (and Anthropology).” Ethnos 70 (2): 220-242.

Weeks 13 and 14 – Student conference
Your blog portfolio is due.
Your research paper is due.