Film and Media History

What motivates media change? How have different forms of mass media--print, film, radio, television, the World Wide Web--historically interacted? To answer these questions this course surveys the historical development of cinema in relation to the audiovisual mass media of the past two centuries. It will discuss how, in the 1800s, new technologies like photography and telegraphy influenced the development of later media forms. The course then examines the rise and global expansion of the motion picture industry, the emergence and transformation of radio and television broadcast networks, the development of video and computer games, and media convergence. In order to make this survey of multiple media histories more manageable, this course focuses on critically important examples, key moments of transformation and crossover between these media forms.

Learning Outcomes

• Use the principles of historical thinking to assess the relationship between the contemporary global media and their historical roots.
• Use principles of historical thinking to understand human societies, specifically through the history of mass media from Gutenberg to the present.
• Define and summarize continuities and major changes in the ways audio-visual mass media, broadly considered, have addressed audiences from the fifteenth century to the present.
• Define and summarize major stylistic, technological, and industrial events, developments, and themes in the history of audio-visual mass mediation, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
• Define and summarize key arguments distinguishing national media audiences from local and global audiences.
• Define and summarize the role governments and corporations have played in development of various forms of audio-visual mass media.
• Identify and describe a few key alternatives to mainstream media.
• Practice basic skills in researching media histories.