University of Colorado-Boulder
JOUR 6201
GLOBAL MEDIA AND CULTURE
Fall 2011
TH- 12:30-3 Armory
1B01
Dr. Nabil Echchaibi Office: 1B29, Armory
Office Hours: TTH 9-11 a.m. or by appointment Phone: 303-492-8246
E-Mail: nabil.echchaibi@colorado.edu Website: nabilechchaibi.com
About the Seminar
This course surveys the broad literature of global media studies and traces the historical interconnections between communication, global politics, global economy, media systems and technologies, media flows, and the impact this has on the construction of individual and social identities. Our approach will be both historical and comparative across various geographic settings as we explore the interaction between local and global conditions informing cultural change in contemporary societies. The course emphasizes an emerging restructuring of the global media balance as old centers weaken and new local and regional media centers appear. Through a theoretical and empirical analysis of this reconfiguration we will also foreground the multiplicity of the contemporary cultural experience and the contentions of local and non-Western interpretations of modernity.
Required Texts:
-Divya McMillan, 2009. Mediated Identities: Youth, Agency and Globalization. New York: Peter Lang
-Marwan Kraidy, 2005. Hybridity or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
-Marwan Kraidy, 2009. Reality Television and Arab Politics: Contention in Public Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Other Readings:
I have compiled a list of scholarly and non-scholarly articles I believe will help us address some of the most productive arguments in the field of global and international media studies. You will find all these articles as pdf files on the course website under “schedule and readings.”
Assignments
Leading Discussion: each week, we will be a reading a great deal of articles and book chapters in a particular area of research in global media studies. Given the size of the class, two students will be in charge of leading the discussion of the readings for two class sessions during the semester. I will circulate a sign-up sheet on the first day of class for this purpose. Each discussion leader will informally (not to be turned in for grading but to be circulated to entire class on day of discussion) produce an annotated bibliography on the readings for the week they were assigned. The point here is not to merely summarize the content of the articles you read, but raise questions, concerns, and strengths presented in these readings so we can have original and constructive discussions each week. You will be evaluated based on the critical value of your questions and the substantive quality of your comments on the readings. So we can all benefit from every member of the class, every student is required to complete the assigned readings and participate in each class discussion. Response Paper: for one of your two assigned discussion leading days, you will be required to turn in a short response paper (4-5 pages) on either a book or at least three of the articles assigned for that week.
Book Review: choose one book from the list below (consult with me if you choose a book outside the list) and write a critical reviews (4-5 pages double-spaced each) These reviews should be researched and written with the intention of submitting them to a journal for publication. You will receive a handout about this assignment early in the semester. In the meantime, choose your books and it would be more useful for you if you could select books that will be helpful for your final project.
Final Paper: The final assignment will be a substantial research paper that addresses some aspect of global media studies from a critical perspective. The paper could be based on empirical evidence gathered from your own research beforehand or during the semester. Another conceptual format for this paper could be a literature review of one critical area in global media studies. In either approach you must address some of the conceptual work you’ve read in this course. Early in the semester, you will prepare a proposal (2-3 pages double-spaced) in which you outline your topic and the research questions you intend to answer.
Your final grade will be determined this way:
Attendance and Participation 20% (Attendance is mandatory)
Book review 20%
Short response paper 15%
Final paper 45%
Important deadlines:
-Response paper: Due on either one of the week you are leading class discussion
-Final Paper Proposal: Sept. 15
-Book Review: Oct. 6
-Final Paper: Dec. 9
Reading Suggestions and Book Review List
- Philip Seib, Al Jazeera Effect: How the New Global Media Are Reshaping World Politics.
- Libby Lester and Simon Cottle, Transnational Protests and the Media.
- Guy Golan, Thomas Johnson and Wayne Wanta. International Media Communication in a Global Age
-Ed Herman, R. McChesney, and E. Herman, The Global Media: The Missionaries of Global Capitalism (Media Studies)
-Daya Thussu, Media on the Move: Global Flow and Contra-Flow (Communication and Society)
- Eugenia Siapera, Cultural Diversity and Global Media: The Mediation of Difference
-Nick Couldry, Andreas Hepp, and F. Krotz, Media Events in a Global Age
-Marwan Kraidy and Patrick Murphy, Global Media Studies: An Ethnographic Perspective
-Nestor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity.
-Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts
-Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Communications Media, Globalization, and Empire
-Divya McMillin, International Media Studies
-George Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
-Michael Curtin, Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV
-Rini Mehta, Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora (Anthem South Asian Studies)
-Artz and Kamalipour, The Globalization of Corporate Media Hegemony (Suny Series in Global Media Studies)
-Nick Couldry, Media Rituals: A Critical Approach
-Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture
-Manuel Castells, Communication Power
-David Morley, Spaces of identity: Global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries
-David Morley, Home territories: Media,
mobility and identity
-Roger Silverstone, Media and morality: On the rise of the mediapolis
-Myria Georgiou, Diaspora, identity and the media: Diasporic transnationalism
and mediated spatialities
-Christine Ogan, Communication and identity in the diaspora: Turkish migrants
in Amsterdam and their use of media
-Avtar Brah, Cartographies of diaspora: Contesting identities
-Lila Abu-Lughod, Dramas of nationhood: the politics of television in Egypt
Academic Honesty
All work must be your own, and your work alone. Inventing sources or lifting material from the Web and presenting it as if you had conducted your own research, or coaxing/paying another student to produce your own assignment are examples of academic dishonesty.
You can expect that any form of academic dishonesty will result in an F – either for the assignment or for the entire course, depending on the severity of the misconduct. If you have questions or are unsure about a particular practice, please see me before you turn in your assignment. A student honor code has been adopted in all academic units of the university, including the journalism program. For more information about the honor code, please go to: http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/
Disability
If you qualify for accommodations
because of a disability, please submit to me
a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs can be
addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on
documented
disabilities. Contact: 303-492-8671, Center for Community N200, and
http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices.
If you have a temporary medical condition or injury, see guidelines at
http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices/go.cgi?select=temporary.html
Religious Observances
Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance. I am willing to work with anyone who needs accommodation for religious celebrations. You need to let me know at the beginning of the semester if you need special accommodation.
Help!
I want you to succeed in this course, and to enjoy it in the process. Please don't feel you have to wait until the end of the semester to talk to me about your performance, or about any other aspect of the course. I encourage you to call, e-mail or stop by my office to discuss your work.
About your
professor
I am an assistant professor in the program of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Before joining CU, I spent three years as an assistant professor at an American university in Switzerland. Before enrolling in graduate school at Indiana University-Bloomington where I obtained my MA and PhD, I worked in radio as copy editor.
My research interests engage questions of identity, race and minority media in Western Europe and the impact of international satellite broadcasting on religion in the Middle East. In the past few years, I have conducted ethnographic research among immigrant communities and minority media industries in Berlin and Paris. I am currently writing a book, Formations of the Muslim Modern: Islam, Media and Alternative Modernity, which explores how Muslims engage, through their own media production, modernity as a source of both contention and identification. Using a multilayered analysis of six case studies of Muslim media in Cairo, Los Angeles, Dubai, San Francisco, London, and Austin, the book examines how transnational satellite television and digital media have become prime discursive and performative stages where young individuals and institutions debate and contest what it means to be “modern” in the Muslim context.
I am also the associate director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture. Feel free to talk to me about research opportunities at the center.
