How and why do people seek to capture everyday life on film? What can we learn from such films? This course challenges distinctions commonly made between documentary and ethnographic films to consider how human cultural life is portrayed in both. It considers the interests, which motivate such filmmakers ranging from curiosity about "exotic" people to a concern with capturing "real life" to a desire for advocacy. Students will view documentaries about people both in the U.S. and abroad and will consider such issues as the relationship between film images and "reality," the tensions between art and observation, and the ethical relationship between filmmakers and those they film.

History of Media and Technology addresses the mutually influential histories of communications media and technological development, focusing on the shift from analog to digital cultures that began mid-century and continues to the present. The approach the series takes to the study of media and technology is a multifaceted one that includes theoretical and philosophical works, histories canonical and minority, literature and art, as well as hands-on production issues toward the advancement of student projects and research papers. The topic for this term is Eternal War.

Techniques of creating narratives that take advantage of the flexibility of form offered by the computer. Study of the structural properties of book-based narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time and of storyline. Analysis of the structure and evaluation of the literary qualities of computer-based narratives including hypertexts, adventure games, and classic artificial intelligence programs like Eliza. With this base, students use authoring systems to model a variety of narrative techniques and to create their own fictions. Knowledge of programming helpful but not necessary. This course explores the properties of non-linear, multi-linear, and interactive forms of narratives as they have evolved from print to digital media. Works covered in this course range from the Talmud, classics of non-linear novels, experimental literature, early sound and film experiments to recent multi-linear and interactive films and games. The study of the structural properties of narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time, space, and of storyline is complemented by theoretical texts about authorship/readership, plot/story, properties of digital media and hypertext. Questions that will be addressed in this course include: How can we define 'non-linearity/multi-linearity', 'interactivity', 'narrative'. To what extend are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format? What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a nonlinear/ interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in a digital format? What can we learn from early non-digital examples of non-linear and interactive story telling?

Introduction to Media Studies is designed for students who have grown up in a rapidly changing global multimedia environment and want to become more literate and critical consumers and producers of media. Through an interdisciplinary comparative and historical lens, the course defines "media" broadly as including oral, print, performance, photographic, broadcast, cinematic, and digital cultural forms and practices. The course looks at the nature of mediated communication, the functions of media, the history of transformations in media and the institutions that help define media's place in society. This year's course will focus on issues of network culture and media convergence, addressing such subjects as Intellectual Property, peer2peer authoring, blogging, and game modification.

Meets with 21F.034, but assignments differ. See description under subject 21F.034: Extensive reading and discussion of case studies on educational technology, with focus on three areas: effective media design, the relevant educational issues, and the existing and anticipated methods for distribution and the business concepts behind them. Students will develop a course project that reflects knowledge of all three areas.

Extensive reading and discussion of case studies on educational technology that focuses on three areas: effective media design, relevant educational issues, and the existing and anticipated methods for distribution and the business concepts behind them. The primary case study is Star Festival, a multimedia curriculum about Japan that encourages users to explore issues of cultural and ethnic identity. Students expected to develop a project that shows an understanding of the types of business models that facilitate educational technology in the classroom. Graduate students are expected to explore the subject in greater depth. Taught in English.

Centers on historical eras in which the form and function of media technologies were radically transformed. Includes consideration of the "Gutenberg Revolution," the rise of modern mass media, and the "digital revolution," among other case studies of media transformation and cultural change. Readings in cultural and social history and historiographic method.

In this course, we will investigate popular culture and narrative by focusing on the relationship between literary texts and comics. Several questions shape the syllabus and provide a framework for approaching the course materials: How do familiar aspects of comics trace their origins to literary texts and broader cultural concerns? How have classic comics gone on to influence literary fiction? In what ways do contemporary graphic narratives bring a new kind of seriousness of purpose to comics, blurring what's left of the boundaries between the highbrow and the lowbrow? Readings and materials for the course range from the nineteenth century to the present, and include novels, short stories, essays, older and newer comics, and some older and newer films. Expectations include diligent reading, active participation, occasional discussion leading, and two papers.

Examines the relationship between popular and high culture and the problem of evaluating texts that tell stories. Treats a range of narrative and dramatic works as well as films. May be repeated for credit, with permission of instructor. Topic for Fall: Masterminds. Topic for Spring: Popular Culture in the Age of Media Convergence. Our purpose is to consider some of the most elaborate and thoughtful efforts to define and delineate "all-mastering," and to consider some of the delineations of "all-mastering the intellect" in various guises - from magicians to master spies to detectives to scientists (mad and otherwise). The major written work of the term will be an ongoing reading journal, which you will circulate to your classmates using an e-mail mailing list. The use of that list is fundamental - it is my intention to generate a sort of ongoing cyberconversation.

Investigates relationships between the two media, including film adaptations as well as works linked by genre, topic, and style. Explores how artworks challenge and cross cultural, political, and aesthetic boundaries. Topic for Fall: Shakespeare, Film, and Media. Meets with CMS.840, but assignments differ. Filmed Shakespeare began in 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree performing the death scene from King John for the camera. Sarah Bernhardt, who had played Hamlet a number of times in her long career, filmed the duel scene for the Paris Exposition of 1900. In the era of silent film (1895-1929) several hundred Shakespeare films were made in England, France Germany and the United States, Even without the spoken word, Shakespeare was popular in the new medium. The first half-century of sound included many of the most highly regarded Shakespeare films, among them -- Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Henry V, Orson Welles' Othello and Chimes at Midnight, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, Polanski's Macbeth and Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. We are now in the midst of an extremely rich and varied period for Shakespeare on film which began with the release of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V in 1989 and includes such films as Richard Loncraine's Richard III, Julie Taymor's Titus, Zeffirelli and Almereyda's Hamlet films, Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, and Shakespeare in Love. The phenomenon of filmed Shakespeare raises many questions for literary and media studies about adaptation, authorship, the status of "classic" texts and their variant forms, the role of Shakespeare in youth and popular culture, and the transition from manuscript, book and stage to the modern medium of film and its recent digitally inflected forms. Most of our work will involve individual and group analysis of the "film text" -- that is, of specific sequences in the films, aided by videotape, DVD, the Shakespeare Electronic Archive (http://shea.mit.edu), and some of the software tools for video annoatation developed by the MIT Shakespeare Project under the MIT-Microsoft iCampus Initiative. We will study the films as works of art in their own right, and try to understand the means -- literary, dramatic, performative, cinematic -- by which they engage audiences and create meaning. With Shakespeare film as example, we will discuss how stories cross time, culture and media, and reflect on the benefits as well as the limitations of such migration. The class will be conducted as a structured discussion, punctuated by student presentations and "mini-lectures" by the instructor. Students will introduce discussions, prepare clips and examples, and the major "written" work will take the form of presentations to the class and multimedia annotations as well as conventional short essays. The methodological bias of the class is close "reading" of both text and film. This is a class in which your insights will form a major part of the work and will be the basis of a large fraction of class discussion. You will need to read carefully, to watch and listen to the films carefully, and develop effective ways of conveying your ideas to the class.

Studies the relations between literature (primarily of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods) and the technologies associated with its production and dissemination. Instruction and practice in oral and written communication. Topic for Spring: Hypertexts and Hyperrealities. This course explores the properties of non-sequential, multi-linear, and interactive forms of narratives as they have evolved from print to digital media. Works covered in this course range from the Talmud, classics of non-linear novels, experimental literature, early sound and film experiments to recent multi-linear and interactive films and games. The study of the structural properties of narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time, space, and of storyline is complemented by theoretical texts about authorship/readership, plot/story, properties of digital media and hypertext. Questions that will be addressed in this course include: How can we define "non-sequentiality/multi-linearity", "interactivity", "narrative". To what extend are these aspects determined by the text, the reader, the digital format? What are the roles of the reader and the author? What kinds of narratives are especially suited for a non-linear/interactive format? Are there stories that can only be told in a digital format? What can we learn from early non-digital examples of non-linear and interactive story telling?

Explores the impact of the printing press upon European politics and culture during the first several centuries after Gutenberg and compares these changes with the possibilities and problems inherent in contemporary electronic technologies of the word. Assignments include formal essays and online projects. There has been much discussion in recent years, on this campus and elsewhere, about the death of the book. Digitization and various forms of electronic media, some critics say, are rendering the printed text as obsolete as the writing quill. In this subject we will examine the claims for and against the demise of the book, but we also supplement these arguments with an historical perspective they lack: we examine books and printing technology during the Early Modern period of European history, from roughly 1450 to 1800. We will begin with the theoretical and historical overviews of Walter Ong and Elizabeth Eisenstein, after which we will study specific cases such as the writings and readers of Erasmus and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, English chapbooks, and stage plays in print. Finally, we will reconsider the issues raised by digital technologies today in light of these historical perspectives. This subject is jointly listed as 21H.418 and CMS.880. It satisfies requirements towards the Major and the Minor in History and in Comparative Media Studies, and is also open to graduate students in the Comparative Media Studies Program and in other MIT and Harvard graduate programs.

Techniques of creating narratives that take advantage of the flexibility of form offered by the computer. Study of the structural properties of book-based narratives that experiment with digression, multiple points of view, disruptions of time and of storyline. Analysis of the structure and evaluation of the literary qualities of computer-based narratives including hypertexts, adventure games, and classic artificial intelligence programs like Eliza. With this base, students use authoring systems to model a variety of narrative techniques and to create their own fictions. Knowledge of programming helpful but not necessary.

A cultural approach to television's evolution as a technology and system of representation. Considers television as a system of storytelling and mythmaking, and as a cultural practice studied from anthropological, literary, and cinematic perspectives. Focuses on prime-time commercial broadcasting, the medium's technological and economic history, and theoretical perspectives. Considerable television viewing and readings in media theory and cultural interpretation are required. Topic for Spring: American Television: A Cultural History. Meets with CMS.915, but assignments differ.