Students will choose 50 works from each of the following 4 main categories, for a total of 200 works.

I. Media Theory and Related Theoretical Contexts
II. Media Traditions
III. Digital Media Forms and Technologies
IV. Self-Defined Specialty Area

Media Traditions

Architecture, Urban Design, Spatial Design
Comics, Animation, and Visual Storytelling
(Cyber) Narrative
Film Art
Graphic Design / Information Visualization
History of Writing, Print, and Reading
Modern and Post-Modern Art
Performance Art / Performance Studies
Photography
Play and Games
Radio and Television
Other Areas of Media Traditions and Forms

Architecture, Urban Design, Spatial Design
  • Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Presss, 1979.
  • Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction. New York: Oxford University Presss, 1977.
  • Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London; New York: Verso, 1990.
  • Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
  • Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960.
  • Morrison, Phillip and Phylis Morrison. Powers of Ten: A Book About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Company, 1982.
  • Negroponte, Nicholas. The Architecture Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973.
  • Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1999.
  • Sorkin, Michael. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.
  • Whyte, William Hollingsworth. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980.
Top Main List
   
Comics, Animation, and Visual Storytelling
  • Busiek, Kurt and Alex Ross. Marvels. Marvel Books, 2001.
  • Disney, Walt. Snow White. Disney Studios.
  • Eisner, Will. Comics and Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press, 1994.
  • Fleischer Brothers. Superman. DC Comics.
  • Johnston, Ollie and Frank Thomas. The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. New York: Hyperion Press, 1995.
  • Jones, Chuck. Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of Animated Cartoonist. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1999.
  • Lee, Stan. Works
  • McCay, Winsor. Little Nemo. Dover Pubns, 1976.
  • McCay, Winsor. Gertie the Dinosaur.
  • McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Perennial, 1994.
  • Pilling, Jayne. A Reader in Animation Studies. London: John Libbey & Company Ltd., 1999.
  • Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History/Here My Troubles Began/Boxed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
  • Ware, Chris. Quimby the Mouse. (Acme Novelty Library) Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2003.
Top Main List
   
(Cyber) Narrative
Science Fiction
  • Bear, Greg. Blood Music. New York: Arbor House, 1985.
  • Butler, Octavia. Xenogenesis. New York: Warner Books, 1987.
  • Cadigan, Pat. Synners. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001.
  • Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Tor, 1985.
  • Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Shadow. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1999
  • Gibson, William. Neuromancer New York: Ace Books, 1994. 
  • Le Guin, Ursula. The Lathe of Heaven. London: V. Gollancz, 1979.
  • Piercy, Marge. He, She, and It. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1991.
  • Stephenson, Neil. The Diamond Age. New York: Bantam, 2000.
  • Sterling, Bruce. various works.
Fiction and Plays Relevant to Digital Design
  • Ayckbourn, Alan. The Norman Conquests. London; New York: French, 1975.
  • Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1999.
  • Faulkner, William. Go Down Moses. New York: Random House, 1942.
  • Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom. New York: Random House, 1986.
  • Faulkner, William. Sound and Fury. New York: Random House, 1984.
  • Faulkner, William. Snopes Trilogy.
  • Faulkner, William. The Reivers.
  • O'Neill, Eugene. Strange Interlude. New York: Nick Hern Books, 1991.
  • Pavic, Milorad. Dictionary of the Khazars. London: Hamilton, 1989.
  • Schwartz, Delmore. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. New York: New Directions Pub. Corp., 1978.
  • Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1875.
  • Sterne, Laurence. The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman. London: J. Dodsley, 1775.
  • Stoppard, Tom. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. New York: Grove Press, 1968.
  • Tolkein, J.R.R.. Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967.
 Films Relevant to Digital Design
  • Luxor Junior. John Lasseter. Pixar Films.
  • Toy Story. John Lasseter, Buena Vista, 1995.
  • Toy Story II. Ash Brannon, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton. Buena Vista, 1999
  • The Matrix. Andy and Larry Wachowski. Warner Brothers, 1999.
  • Groundhog Day. Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin. Columbia Pictures, 1993.
  • Run Lola Run. Tom Tykwer. Sony Pictures, 1998.
  • Short Cuts. Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt. New Line Cinema, 1993.
  • Mystery Train. Jim Jarmusch. Orion, 1989.
  • Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. Miramax, 1994.
  • Timecode. Mike Figgis. Screen Gems, 2000.
  • Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hironobu Sakaguchi. Sony Pictures, 2001.
Top Main List
   
Film Art
  • Altman, Rick. Sound Theory, Sound Practice. New York: Routledge, 1992.
  • Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing, 1999.
  • Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.
  • Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.
  • Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
  • Bordwell, David. On the History of Film Style. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
  • Bordwell, David and Kristen Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: Knopf, 1986.
  • Bordwell, David and Carroll Noel. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.
  • Bordwell, David, Janet Straiger and Kristen Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
  • Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
  • Brown, Nick. Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
  • Caughie, John. Theories of Authorship. London: Routledge/BFI, 1981.
  • Cook, David. A History of Narrative Film. New York: Norton, 1996.
  • Eisentein, Sergei. Film Forum: Essays in Film Theory. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949.
  • Kolker, Robert. Film Forum and Culture.
  • Kolker, Robert. A Cinema of Lonliness: Penn Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
  • Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.
  • Kuhn, Annette. Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso, 1990.
  • Leff, Leonard and Jerold Simmons. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood Censorship, and the Production Code. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
  • Marks, Laura. The Skin of Film: intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.
  • Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
  • Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.
  • Schatz, Thomas. The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. New York: Pantheon, 1988.
  • Smoodin, Eric. Animating Culture: Hollywood Cartoons from the Second Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993.
  • Sobchak, Vivian. Address of the Eye: a Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
  • Telotte, J.P.. Replications: A Robotic History of the Science Fiction Film. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
  • Telotte, J.P.. Science Fiction Film. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001
  • Wasko, Janet. Hollywood in the Information Age. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
  • Williams, Linda. Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
Top Main List
   
Graphic Design / Information Visualization
  • Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971.
  • Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks, 1996.
  • Dondis, Donis. A Primer of Visual Literacy. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973.
  • Lupton, Ellen and J. Abbott Miller. Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design. New York: Kiosk, 1996.
  • McQuiston, Liz. Graphic Agitation: Social and Political Graphics Since the Sixties. Phaidon Press, 1993.
  • Meggs, Phillip. A History of Graphic Design. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1988.
  • Rand, Paul. Paul Rand, A Designer's Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
  • Ruder, Emil. Typography. A Manual of Design. Teufen, Niggli: Hastings House, 1981.
  • Tschichold, Jan. The New Typography: a Handbook for Modern Designers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
  • Tufte, Edward. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 2001.
  • Tufte, Edward. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 1997.
  • Tufte, Edward. Envisioning Information. Cheshire: Graphics Press, 1991.
Top Main List
   
 History of Writing, Print and Reading
  • Bolter, J. David. Writing Space: the Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1991.
  • Bringhurst, Robert and Warren Chappell. A Short History of the Printed Word. New York: Knopf, 1970.
  • Drucker, Johanna. The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
  • Drucker, Johanna. The Alphabetic Labyrinth: the Letters in History and Imagination. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
  • Eisenstein, Elizabeth. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in early modern Europe. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
  • Gaur, Albertine. A History of Writing. London: British Library, 1992.
  • Goody, Jack. Representations and Contradictions: Ambivalence towards Images, Theatre, Fiction, Relics and Sexuality. Oxford; Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.
  • Harris, Roy. The Origin of Writing. LaSalle, Il: Open Court, 1986.
  • Harris, Roy. Signs of Writing. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.
  • Homer. The Illiad and The Odyssey.
  • Lord, A.B.. Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
  • Manguel, Alberto. A History of Reading. London: HarperCollins, 1996.
  • Nunberg, Geoffrey. The Future of the Book. Berkeley, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
  • Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: the Technologies of the Word. London; New York: Methuen, 1982.
  • Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction. London: Hutchinson, 1985.
  • Sharples, Mike and Thea van der Geest. The New Writing Environment: Writers at Work in a World of Technology. London; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996.
Top  Main List
 
 Modern and Post-Modern Art
  • Bois, Yve Alain and Rosalind Krauss. Formless: A User's Guide. Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996.
  • Diller, Elizabeth and Ricardo Scofidio. Flesh: Articulated Probes. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994.
  • Foster, Hal. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, Wa: Bay Press, 1983.
  • Foster, Hal. The Return of the Real: the Avant-Garde at the End of the Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
  • Fried, Michael. Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
  • Greenberg, Clement. Art and Culture; Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961
  • Janson, H.W.. History of Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1986.
  • Krauss, Rosalind. The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
  • Krauss, Rosalind. The Optical Unconscious. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993.
  • Krauss, Rosalind. October: the Second Decade. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.
  • Selz, Peter and Kristine Stiles. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artist's Writings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Top Main List
 
Performance Art / Performance Studies
  • Anderson, Laurie. Puppet Motel. Blaine, WA: Voyager Co, 1998.
  • Aristotle. Poetics. London;NewYork: Penguin Books, 1996.
  • Auslander, Philip. From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. London; New York: Routledge, 1997.
  • Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
  • Battcock, Gregory and Robert Nickas. The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1984.
  • Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theater. New York: Hill and Wang, 1964.
  • Carlson, Marvin. Performance: A Critical Introduction. London; New York: Routledge, 1996.
  • Forte, Jeanie. Women's Performance Art: Feminism and Postmodernism.
  • Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001.
  • Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance: Live Art Since the 1960. New York: Harry N Abrams Publishers, 1998.
  • Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. The New World Border: Prophecies, Poems & Loqueras for the end of the century. San Francisco: City Lights, 1996.
  • Gomez-Pena, Guillermo. Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back. London; New York: Routledge, 2000.
  • Jones, Amelia. Body/Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
  • Jones, Amelia and Andrew Stephenson. Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
  • Stephenson, Andrew. Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London; New York: Routledge, 1999.
 Top  Main List
 
Photography
  • Crimp, Douglas. The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism.
  • Lister, Martin. The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.
  • Mitchell, William. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.
  • Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions and Practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
  • Trachtenberg, Alan. Classic Essays on Photography. New Haven: Leete's Island Books, 1980.
Top Main List 
 
 Play and Games
  • Bekoff, Marc and John Byers. Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative, and Ecological Perspectives. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
  • Caillois, Roger. Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961
  • Dunnigon, James. The Complete Wargames Handbook: How to Play, Design, and Find Them. Quill, 1992.
  • Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens; a Study of the Play-Element in Culture. London: Routledge, 1980.
  • Partlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • Sutton-Smith, Brian. The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
  • Winnicott, D.W.. Playing and Reality. London: Travistock Publications, 1971
 Top Main List
 
Radio and Television
  • Allen, Robert. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
  • Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
  • Dienst, Richard. Still Life in Real Time: Theory after Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.
  • Fiske, John. Television Culture London; New York: Methuen, 1987.
  • Gitlin, Todd. Watching Television: a Pantheon Guide to Popular Culture. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
  • Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.
  • Kaplan, E. Ann. Regarding Television: Critical Approaches - an Anthology. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983.
  • Newcomb, Horace. Television: The Critical View. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking, 1985.
  • Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. New York: Schocken Books, 1975.
 Top Main List
 
Other Possible Areas of Media Traditions and Forms
Students may propose other fields or subfields that support their own research focus, for example: Elizabethan Drama, Renaissance Painting, the Victorian Novel, Ameriican Literature, Lyric Poetry, Opera, the Ballad, Women's Autobiography, Slave Narratives, etc.
 Top Main List