October 2-- Project Bibliography

Blair, Hugh, George Campbell, and Richard Whately. The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately: With Revised Bibliographies. Ed. James L. Golden and Edward P. J. Corbett. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.

This volume brings together excerpts the three most influential "Scottish Realists." Of particular interest are Campbell's seven appeals, which are very pragmatic. These appeals are: probability, plausibility, importance, proximity of time, connexion of place, relation of the actors or sufferers to the hearers or speaker, interest of the hearers or speaker in the consequence" (212). These texts were primarily intended to provide advice for ministers writing sermons.

Gee, James Paul. "New People in New Worlds: Networks, the New Capatilism and Schools." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 43-68.

Gee carefully avoids using Marxist terms, but his argument is that our schools do not adequately prepare students from minority and lower socio-economic groups in our schools because schools do not teach those students how to communicate in terms that will allow them to be successful. Rather than offering overt critique, Gee instead endeavors to explain how networks and distributed learning, "new capitalism," and schools fit together in terms of "multiliteracies." In "new capitalism" business becomes a "distributed system" and business market knowledge rather than products, because everyone has good products. The difference is in how each product is designed to fit the identity of the consumer (46-47). These industries are typically arranged with flattened hierarchies and value flexibility in workers. Gee claims that schools should be restructured to prepare workers for new capitalism and offers a "Bill of Rights" for children that he believes will prepare them for the new way that business is done.

Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Although 30 years old, Goffman's work is still relevant. The first part of the book provides a brief overview of display, rituals, and photography and how they relate to each other. Typically, if subjects know they are being photographed, they will pose, arrange themselves in a way that they feel is attractive to a viewer, which functions as a ritualized display. The particular poses are often based on the sex of the models. The bulk of the work, though, is devoted to reproducing advertisements that illustrate his points about display and gender display.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. KeyWorks in Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 71-101.

Horkheimer and Adorno make the point that even though people "see through" the mechenations of the "Culture Industry," they still participate in it. Even though amusement has always existed, it did not become an industry until fairly recently. Ideology determines what amusements are available to the mass populace, and all amusements vary in only minor ways. This is similar to the way that transportation is offered in the United States. Ford and Chevrolet both offer a variety of superficially different options, but all are gasoline powered vehicles that are similar in size and shape. Even though other modes of transportation exist, our road system and laws are designed to accommodate cars and trucks, so these remain the most common.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006.

Jenkins discusses the relationship among "media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (2). He argues that media that used to be separated, such as music and cell phones are now converging as we become more saturated by media. He sees new media as being convergences of old ones.

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium is the Message." Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Keyworks in Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 129-38.

While McLuhan's work has overtones of technological determinism, his work still makes a valid point: the "content" of one medium is always another medium, thereby making the “medium” and the “message” indistinguishable. Writing contains speech, speech contains thoughts, etc. He rejects that technology is, by its nature, value neutral.