1. Introduction to Media Studies SoSe 2011 Mag. Klaus Heissenberger North American Literary and Cultural Studies Universität des Saarlandes

2. Visual media Role of visuality in Western culture: -history of media -Social functions & effects: e.g. providing evidence Benedict Anderson: imagined communities

6. Visual media Role of visuality in Western culture: -history of media -Social functions & effects: e.g. providing evidence e.g. constructing a/the public e.g. constructing identity...

7. Visual media: Visuality and language Pictures... have to be read; and the ability to read has to be acquired. Nelson Goodman

9. Visual media: Language, signs, semiotics signs: - iconic, indexical and symbolic signs (Charles Sanders Peirce) - signifiers and signifieds (e.g. Ferdinand de Saussure) - referentiality vs. construction - arbitrariness vs.... -... making meaning: conventions & conventionality > communities - metaphor and metonymy - difference and identity Useful introductory web project: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

10. Signs: constructing a public sphere

11. AIGA - American Institute of Graphic Arts: Symbol Signs

12. Signs: constructing a public sphere ÖNORM A 3011

13. Signs: constructing a public sphere denotation > connotation culture and ideology

14. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1970) signs + meaning denotation and connotation interpellation the subject ideology myth

15. Culture and power Interpellation and ideology: “… the effect of discourse is to position us in relation to a variety of social forces. It subjects us.” (Campbell + Kean) relevant “subject positions”: class gender sexuality/sexual orientation race and ethnicity age etc.

18. The “Circuit of Culture”

19. Example analysis See Burton, Burton, “How to Study the Media,” 18-19

20. Diskurs, power/knowledge, subject Michel Foucault: Different concept of power: - not centralized but disperses (across all relations in the social field) - not only repressive but productive E.g.: sexuality as a historical construction: produced by (medical, legal, scientific, etc.) discourses that analyze, classify, regulate knowledge about bodies, the flesh, pleasure... and thus produce ‘sexual’ subjects... and: people identifying with/as the subjects thus produced!

21. the Panopticon Jeremy Bentham