FAVt004 Comparative Media Theory: Media and Modernity

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2005
Extent and Intensity
2/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
Tomáš Dvořák, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 9 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
The main framework of the course present the early theories of modernity, specifically the different analyses of modern experience in the works of Georg Simmel, Siegfried Kracauer, and Walter Benjamin. Unlike the classical definitions of the modern (Weber, Marx, Tönnies, Durkheim) which have most influenced thinking about modernity (or, more precisely, about modernization) in the twentieth century, these authors do not start with the analysis of the whole of society, with its structural or institutional transformations but rather with the fragments of social reality. By analyzing them they try to describe new forms of perception, experience, and interaction. We will pay attention to some of their predecessors (Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Freud, Hessel), contemporaries (Lukács, Gramsci, Adorno), as well as to the reconception of modernity within the postmodern thought (Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas, Berman, Jameson). The course will put stress on the role the new media of the nineteenth century played in creating the new forms of experience: especially on main moments in the evolution of the modern visual culture both in Europe and North America (painting, photography, panorama, diorama, world exhibitions, early film), the ways they were produced, distributed, and consumed.
Assessment methods (in Czech)
Povinně volitelná přednáška. Na zacátku semestru studenti obdrží cítanku vybraných studií a kapitol, pedstavujících povinnou literaturu (cca 150 stran textu). Výstupem bude kritická studie na jedno ze zadaných témat v rozsahu 7-10 normostran.
Language of instruction
Czech
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Note related to how often the course is taught: výuka proběhne ve dnech 5.10., 19.10., 2.11., 30.11., 14.12. vždy 13.20 - 16.35 v kinosále - učebna C34.
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