Media Theory Curriculum

    Yesterday I went to an engaging talk by Anthony Vidler that was part of a week-long series of lectures that he presents in the Architecture School. He spoke about teaching theory and suggested that theory surveys are useless. Vidler proposed to take one short text and run with it for all 15 weeks of a semester. Then you turn the footnotes and bibliography into additional reading assignments.

The class figures out what was read to write that text. The class historicizes it. In terms of class dynamics, five people reading the same text will have five authorities. The authority of the professor is just to say that this is the beginning. The discussion migrated to the question- how to avoid a canon. Vidler proposed a reading list that sounded much like the traditional cultural theory canon. But in defense of that he argued that you can only destroy the canon if you know it.