J412/512 - Issues in Media Criticism:
Teaching Apathy, Teaching Citizenship: Media Literacy, Consumer Culture, and Democracy

Carl Bybee
207 Allen Hall/Office Hours 10:00-11:00 UH
346-4175
cbybee@ballmer.uoregon.edu

Fall 2007

8:30- 9:50 am
GENERAL INFORMATION
Description
This course will explore the growing media literacy movement in the United States, including the debates over what media literacy means and where it should be headed. The course takes as its starting point the definition of media literacy advanced in the Aspen Report of the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy which suggests that precepts held in common by the media literacy community are:
  • media are constructed, and construct reality.
  • media have commercial implications.
  • media have ideological and political implications.
  • form and content are related in each medium, each of which has a unique aesthetic, codes and conventions.
  • receivers negotiate meaning in media.

Keeping these precepts in mind, the course will examine the growing commercialization of childhood, news and entertainment products created and directed toward young people and the conflicts that arise between raising children to be consumers as opposed to raising children to be citizens in a democratic society.

Reading Resources and Class Texts (In Bold)
  • Barber, Benjamin.Con$umed : how markets corrupt children, infantilize adults, and swallow citizens whole.New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
  • Brock, David. The Republican Noise Machine, New York: Crown Publishers, 2004.
  • Buckingham, David. The Making of Citizens. New York: Routledge 2000.
  • Fromm, Erich. Escape From Freedom. Many editions, all will work. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1941. Required.
  • Fromm, Erich. To Have or To Be. Many editions, all will work. New York: Harper and Row, 1976. Required.
  • Hewlett, Sylvia and Cornel West. The War Against Parents. New York: Mariner Books. 1998.
  • Kincheloe, Joe. Critical Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
  • Linn, Susan, Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, New York: New Press, 2004.
  • Alex Molnar, Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America's Schools, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
  • Pecora, Norma. The Business of Children's Entertainment, New York: Guilford Press, 1998. Recommended.
  • Quart, Alissa. Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2003. Required.
  • Saltman, Kenneth, Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
  • Schor, Juliet, Born to Buy, New York: Scribner, 2004. Required.
  • Schor, Juliet and Holt, Douglas (eds.), The Consumer Society Reader, New York: The New Press.
  • Steinberg, Shirley and Kincheloe (eds.), Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Second Edition, 2004.
  • Steinberg, Shirley and Joe Kincheloe. What You Don't Know About Schools. New York: Palgrave, 2006.
  • Steyer, James P., The Other Parent, New York: Atria Books, 2002.
  • Strasser, Susan, Charles McGovern and Matthias Judt (eds.), Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Van Allen, Edward J., The branded child; the school psyche-snoops exposed, and what can be done about them, New York, Reportorial Press, 1964.
  • Selected readings from the Internet.
  • Selected readings on class Blackboard site. [http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/]
  • E-reserve readings from the Knight Library.

Selected Media Literacy Organizations:

Format

This will be a workshop style course, emphasizing both reading and doing, as well as critical evaluation. Since a significant amount of the coursework will be done in class, will involve group work, and will be assigned as class interests develop, attendance is required. Assigned readings will be announced at least one class period before they should be completed. Students are expected to read the rules, abide by the rules and join the Media Literacy Discussion List called Media L [http://listserv.binghamton.edu/archives/media-l.html]. Students are not expected to read all posting on the Media L listserve, but read the title headings and become familiar with the range of issues and events being discussed.

Evaluation

Students will complete two individual papers. The first, a critical review and evaluation of issues concerning citizenship and consumership, will be due at the end of the fifth week (1,250 words/ 35% of grade). The second, a critical review of a children’s media product in terms of citizenship issues, will be due on the last day of class (1,250 words/ 35% of grade). As groups, students will also prepare reading outlines (the number to be determined by class readings assigned), lead discussions and maintain a legible journal of class readings and discussisons (30% of grade). Class attendance is required. For every class missed, one-third grade will be deducted from the final grade. Class attendance will not raise your grade, it is required. However, missing classes will lower your grade.

Course Outline
1. Introduction: A Complex Puzzle Involving Kids, Marketing and Democracy.
2. Growing Concerns about the Commercialization of Childhood: The Public
3. Consumer Culture and Citizenship: Who Am I?
4. Kids: Between the Market and Citizenship: Challenging Marketing to Children
5. Kids: Between the Market and Citizenship: Group Presentations.
COURSE SCHEDULE & READINGS

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Week Five

Week Six

Week Seven

Week Eight

Week Nine

Week Ten

 


 

 
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