Category Archives: Media Theory
It’s out! The Textbook & the Lecture is published
Here’s a blog post about the book just posted by the publisher, Johns Hopkins U.P. I went to school at the dawn of the microcomputer. These were expensive, immobile boxes that only responded to coded commands. Today I hold a … Continue reading
Posted in Friedrich Kittler, History, Lecture, Marshall McLuhan, Media Theory, Michel Foucault, Textbook, Uncategorized, Writing
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The Catechism and the Textbook: A Genealogy of Instructional Interactivity
This presentation traces the origin of Luther’s catechism and its impact on later educational methods, materials and instructional interactivity, using German and American examples from the 16th to the 21st centuries.
Posted in History, Media Theory, Textbook, The Self
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Lecture & Textbook: Education in the Age of New Media
Forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press. Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining … Continue reading
Posted in Bildung, Friedrich Kittler, History, Lecture, Media Theory, Michel Foucault, Textbook, The Self, Writing
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New Book: Media Transatlantic!
I have a new book out as of the end of May. It’s published by Springer and titled Media Transatlantic: Media and Communication Studies between North American and German-speaking Europe. Here’s the blurb: This book reflects recent scholarly and theoretical … Continue reading
Posted in Friedrich Kittler, Marshall McLuhan, Media Theory, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized, Writing
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Psychology & Neurology are Constructed via Media and "the Social"
Given the socially and technologically contingent nature of symptoms like the “flashback,” neuroscience alone cannot be expected to provide ready answers. This symptomatology of the flashback and its use as a narrative device was developed in the “age of film,” … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Theory, Media Theory, The Self, Uncategorized
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John Dewey as Media Theorist ?!
I’ve been working on this for submission to the John Dewey Society: Communication and (Educational) Media: Dewey as a Theorist avant la lettre In addition to being an educational reformer and philosopher nonpareil, John Dewey also theorized media and communication. The inimitable Marshall … Continue reading
Posted in Media Theory
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Old Literacies and the “New” Literacy Studies: Revisiting Reading and Writing
Video “abstract” and paper that recently appeared in the open, online journal Seminar.net. This paper traces a discontinuous and material history of “schooling,” writing and its technologies, rather than one that would be continuous and etymological or cultural in focus (i.e. going … Continue reading
Posted in Media Theory
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How Luther went Viral
A 2011 article from the Economist (listen to audio, above) compares Martin Luther’s use of the then new medium of print in the Reformation, and the use of Facebook in the so-called “Arab Spring.” In looking at Luther’s use of … Continue reading
Posted in History, Media Theory, Textbook
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Paradigm shifts and Educational Forms: A Textbook Case
This article just appeared in “Online First” for AERA’s Educational Researcher. It is intended as a kind of ‘sequel” to my study of the “transmedial history”of the lecture, which was published in the same journal in 2011. Both articles look … Continue reading
Posted in History, Media Theory, Textbook, Writing
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Faculty ProD Keynote: Simulation, Stimulation & Silence – Learning Online and Off
I gave this keynote at an excellent professional development event at my alma mater, the University of Alberta in August. CTL TECHKNOWLEDGY Symposium Keynote Here’s the abstract: Almost 20 years after the popular adoption of the Internet, we are still … Continue reading
Posted in Media Theory, Phenomenology
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