21L.015 INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES
 
 
FINAL EXAMINATION GUIDELINES
 
This page is not the final examination. However, it provides details of the final examination and how to prepare for it.
 
1. Date/time/place: Thursday 22 May 1997. 9 am-12 pm. 4-370. Open book.
 
2. The examination has 2 parts.
 
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.
 
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.
 
5. The 2 parts of the examination are weighted equally, i.e. 50% each of the final grade.
 

 
PART I: KEYWORDS & NAMES
 
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.
 

 
PART II: ESSAY
 
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.
 
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:
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.
 
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