History of Media Studies

In this session, we will read Nils Gilman's “The Cold War as Intellectual Force Field" and Arvind Rajagopal's “Cold War Communication: A Global History."

In this session, we will read Robert T. Craig's “For a Practical Discipline” (2018) and Sarah Cordonnier's “Constituted and Constituting Exclusions in Communication Studies”.

In this session, we will read Richard Levins's “Dialectics and Systems Theory” (1998) and Angela Xiao Wu's “Journalism via Systems Cybernetics: The Birth of the Chinese Communication Discipline and Post-Mao Press Reforms”.

In this session, we will read Armond Towns's “Toward a Black Media Philosophy” (2020) and Wendy Willems's “Re-Reading Habermas in the Context of Slavery and the Slave Trade."

In this session, we will read Peter Decherney's “The Museum of Modern Art and the Roots of the Cultural Cold War” (2005) and Nathaniel Brennan's “Content Analysis, Inc.: Producing and Managing Cultural Intelligence at the Museum of Modern Art.”

In this session, we will read Hemant Shah's “Lerner at Columbia: The Voice of America’s Turkey Studies” (2011) and Jülide Etem's “US Government-Sponsored Audience Reception Research in Turkey and Modernization through Educational Films.”

In this session, we will read David Hollinger's "The Knower and the Artificer" (1987) and Pete Simonson's "Peirce, Nietzsche, and the Modernist Reinvention of Rhetoric".

In this session, we will read Peter Galison's “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision” (1994) and Katie Bruner's “Seeing the Unforeseen: The Compton Reforms and the Edgerton Flash Unit, 1939-1945”.

In this session, we will read Margaret Rossiter's “The Matilda Effect in Science” (1993) and Leonarda García-Jiménez and Esperanza Herrero's “Including Female Voices in the Stories We Tell About Communication Research: Memories and Narratives of Women in Academia.”

In this session, we will read Maria Löblich (a member) and Andreas Scheu, "Writing the History of Communication Studies: A Sociology of Science Approach" (2011) and a working paper by two of our members, Stefanie Averbeck-Lietz and Sarah Cordonnier, "French and German Theories of Communication: Comparative Perspectives."

In this session, we will read Robert Dahl's “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest” (1961) and Fenwick McKelvey's “The Modelled American Voter,” draft chapter of VOTER_MACHINE_WORLD: America’s Quest for Computer Models of Elections and  World Affairs. (Note: Also included is the introduction to book section that the draft chapter will appear in. We plan to discuss the entire chapter as well as this introduction, but given the document’s length we will foreground the first of the three models discussed (pages 2 to 18 in the chapter draft) in our discussion.)

In this session, we will read Erik Vroons' “Communication Studies in Europe: A Sketch of the Situation around 1955” (2005) and a working paper authored by one of our members, Hynek Jeřábek, “How Empirical Social Research Gained Ascendancy in Post-war France.”

In this session, we will read Robert Alun Jones' “The New History of Sociology” (1983) and a working paper authored by one of our members, Jeff Pooley, “The Declining Significance of Disciplinary Memory: The Case of Communication Research.”

In this session, we will read Jamie Cohen-Cole's “Instituting the science of mind: intellectual economies and disciplinary exchange at Harvard’s Center for Cognitive Studies” (2007) and a working paper authored by one of our members, Katya Babintseva, “From Control to Freedom and Back Again: the PLATO Computer and Cognitive Psychology in the 1960s-1970s.”

In this session, we will read Perrin Selcer, “The View From Everywhere: Disciplining Diversity in Post–World War II International Social Science” (2009) and a draft paper authored by one of our members, Sarah Nelson, “A Dream Deferred: Unesco, American Expertise, and the Eclipse of Radical News Development in the Early Satellite Age.”
Note: Download the two readings as a single zip file in the “Readings” tab in the upper right.

In this third session, we will read Gustavo Sorá and Alejandro Blanco, “Unity and Fragmentation in the Social Sciences in Latin America” (2018) and a draft paper authored by one of our members, Raúl Fuentes-Navarro, “Latin American interventions to the practice and theory of communication and social development: on the legacy of Juan Díaz-Bordenave.”
Note: Download the two readings as a single zip file in the "Readings" tab in the upper right.

In this second session, we will read Johan Heilbron, Nicolas Guilhot, and Laurent Jeanpierre, "Toward a Transnational History of the Social Sciences" (2008) and a draft paper co-authored by one of our members, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz (and Adam Kendon), "The Natural History of an Interview and the Microanalysis of Behavior in Social Interaction: A Critical Moment in Research Practice".
Note: Download the two readings as a single zip file in the "Readings" tab in the upper right.

In this initial session, we will read the introduction to Roger Backhouse and Philippe Fontaine, eds., A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences (2014) and a draft paper from one of our co-conveners, Dave Park, "The Pre-History of ICA: NSSC, the Communication Course, and the Field of Communication in the Mid-20th Century."
Note: Download the two readings as a single zip file in the "Readings" tab in the upper right.