21L.015
INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES
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-
- FINAL EXAMINATION GUIDELINES
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- This page is not the final examination. However, it provides
details of the final examination and how to prepare for it.
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- 1. Date/time/place: Thursday 22 May 1997. 9 am-12 pm. 4-370. Open book.
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- 2. The examination has 2 parts.
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- 3. For Part 1, you will be required to select 8 keywords and
names from a list of 12 on the final exam paper. For each of the
keywords names you select, you will write a short paragraph explaining
briefly its meaning and significance within the history and/or theory of
media. On the final examination paper, the 12 keywords/names will be selected
from the list below.
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- 4. Details of Part 2, an essay question, are given below. You must
write the essay in class, but you are free to bring in notes or an outline
that you have prepared beforehand.
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- 5. The 2 parts of the examination are weighted equally, i.e. 50% each
of the final grade.
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- PART I: KEYWORDS & NAMES
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- amateur radio
- aura
- auteurism
- bard
- camera obscura
- cinema of attractions
- cinéma-vérité
- commodity
- Coney Island
- consensus narrative
- cultural imperialism
- culture jamming
- digital photography
- Disneyland
- ELIZA
- hard-boiled
- Homer
- hypertext
- IMAX
- interactive
- Larry Flynt
- Leni Riefenstahl
- manuscript culture
- morphing
- motion simulation ride
- Oedipus
- panopticon
- panorama
- performance
- Plato's arguments against theatre
- slash
- special effects
- symbolic spectatorship
- The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
- typewriter
- vaudeville
- Warner Communications Inc.
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- PART II: ESSAY
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- 1. Close your eyes and remember back, back, back into the past. For
lab
- number one you brought in an item from your life that represented your
- relationship to media. For this essay, you are asked to return to that
- object and discuss it in terms of what you have learned in this class.
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- 2. Choose three (3) different approaches from among those we have read
or
- discussed in class and apply them to your object. You may discuss each
- approach individually or you may attempt to combine them. Some possible
- approaches are:
- McCluhan's theories of media
- Geertz's theory of culture in the Balinese Cockfight
- Commodity Aesthtetics, or Adorno and Horkheimer's "Culture Industry"
essay
- Williams's analysis of Television
- Thorburn's concept of consensus narrative
- Bazin's "Myth of Total Cinema"
- Nichol's article and Roberts's lecture on documentary and reality-TV
- Jenkins' lecture on fandom and popular culture
- Meehan's economic analysis of the media industry
- Propaganda
- Ong's Orality and Literacy article
- Dawson's article on theatre and participation
- Culture Jamming
- 3. In your essay, you must describe your object and its relation to
you;
- you must explain the main points of each of the three approaches you
- choose; you must explain how each approach relates to your object.
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- 4. You are strongly encouraged to use your original object, but if
you wish
- to choose a different object than the one you presented in lab (or
you
- missed the first lab), please describe it in detail and explain why
it
- relates to you and what it has to do with media.
ckelty@mit.edu,
mroberts@mit.edu