27 September 2004
Benjamin; Adorno & Horkheimer
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction†(1939)
Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception†(1944)
Term paper, stage one: Preliminary project proposal due
Assignment: Term paper, stage one: Preliminary project proposal
For this first stage of the term paper assignment, please write 250 to 500 words about the topic that you think you'll want to work on this semester. The term paper assignment asks that you use your deep understanding of Marxist cultural theory to do a careful, thorough, interesting analysis of some media text or phenomenon; in your preliminary project proposal, you should give me a sense of what media object you'd like to explore, what questions you have about that object, and how you expect Marxist cultural theory will help you in this analysis.
