Course Introduction CMS.801 Media in Transition, Fall 2004
RAVEL: CMS.801 is a required course for master's students in the Comparative Media Studies Program. They ideally take it in the first semester of their second year. And the goal of the class is to provide them with some historical depth and perspective on media change. In other words, most of these students come to the program with some background in a media industry or with an undergraduate degree in which they have majored in a series of studies that is relevant to CMS. But many of them don't have that kind of historical perspective. And the goal of the class is to look at earlier points of media change. In the version of the class that I teach, we began with the transition from scrolls to codex books, in other words, the book as we know it today, which takes place around 400 AD. And we move forward through the advent of the printing press in Europe. In the 19th century, we talk about the beginnings of photography, radio, various sound technologies. And, in the ...