Marshall McLuhan

Herbert Marshall McLuhan (21 July 1911 – 31 December 1980) was a Canadian professor of English, philosopher of communication theory and a public intellectual. His work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory, as well as having practical applications in the advertising and television industries.

Works

Theses

• George Meredith as a Poet and Dramatic Parodist, University of Manitoba, [1934]. M.A. thesis. Unpublished.
• The Classical Trivium: The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of his Time, Cambridge, [1943]; ed. W. Terrence Gordon, Gingko Press, 2009, 292 pp. Ph.D. Dissertation. [1], Review

Books

• The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, New York: Vanguard Press, 1951; Gingko Press, 2002, 160 pp; London: Duckworth Overlook, 2011, ARG. [2]

• Counterblast, 1954; Gingko Press, 2011. Distributed in 1954 as a hand-made 'zine'. [3]
  • Counterblast, New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1970; Gingko Press, 2010.
  • Contraexplosión, trans. Isidoro Gelstein, 1971. (Spanish)

• The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962, 300 pp; 2011, 336 pp.
  • A galáxia de Gutenberg: a formação do homem tipográfico, São Paulo: Ed. Nacional: Ed. da Universidade de São Paulo, 1972, trans. Leônidas Gontigo de Carvalho and Anísio Teixeira, 390 pp, ARG. (Brazilian Portuguese)
  • La galassia Gutenberg. Nascita dell'uomo tipografico, trans. Stefano Rizzo, Rome: Armando, 1976. (Italian)
  • "Gutenbergova galaxie", in Člověk, média a elektronická kultura: Výbor z díla, Brno: Jota, 2000, pp 105-158. (Czech)

• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw Hill, 1964; MIT Press, 1994, 392 pp; ed. W. Terrence Gordon, Gingko Press, 2003, 640 pp. [4]
  • Poznavanje opštila: čovekovih produžetaka, trans. Slobodan Đorđević, Belgrade: Prosveta, 1971, 432 pp. (Serbo-Croatian)
  • Jak rozumět médiím: Extenze člověka, trans. Miloš Calda, Prague: Odeon, 1991, 352 pp. (Czech)
  • Die magischen Kanäle: Understanding Media, trans. Meinrad Amann, 1992. (German)
  • Razumijevanje medija, trans. David Prpa, 2008. (Croatian)

• with Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects, Bantam Books, 1967; Gingko Press, 2001, 160 pp; Penguin, 2008; Gingko Press, 2011. Coordinated by Jerome Agel. [5]
  • El medio es el masaje. Un inventario de efectos, trans. León Mirlas, Buenos Aires: Paidos, 1969. (Spanish)
  • O meio são as massa-gens, trans. Ivan Pedro de Martins, Rio de Janeiro, 1969, 187 pp. (Brazilian Portuguese)

• with Quentin Fiore, War and Peace in the Global Village: An Inventory of Some of the Current Spastic Situations That Could Be Eliminated By More Feedforward, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968; Gingko Press, 2001, 192 pp. Coordinated by Jerome Agel. [6]
• with Harley Parker, Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting, New York: Harper & Row, 1968.
• Culture Is Our Business, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970.
• with Wilfred Watson, From Cliché to Archetype, New York: Viking, 1970. [7]
• with Barrington Nevitt, Take Today: The Executive as Drop Out, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

• with Kathryn Hutchon and Eric McLuhan, City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media, The Book Society of Canada Limited, 1977; repr. as Media, Messages and Language: The World as your Classroom, Skokie, Ill: National Textbook Co., 1980.
  • Città come aula. Per capire il linguaggio e i media, trans. A. Lorenzini, 1980. (Italian)

• with Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science, University of Toronto Press, 1988, 252 pp; 1992, ARG.

• with Bruce Powers, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, 1988.
  • La aldea global. Transformaciones en la vida y los medios de comunicación mundiales en el siglo XXI, trans. Claudia Ferrari, Barcelona: Gedisa, 1993. (Spanish)

• with Eric McLuhan, Media and Formal Cause, Neopoiesis Press, 2011.
• with Eric McLuhan, Theories of Communication, Peter Lang, 2011.
• with Eric McLuhan, The Lost Tetrads of Marshall McLuhan, New York: OR Books, 2017, 273 pp, ARG.

Editor

• associate editor, Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication journal, 9 issues, ed. Ted Carpenter, Toronto, 1953-59; selected articles published as Explorations in Communication, 1960 (see below). The journal of the "communications group" (Carpenter, McLuhan, Easterbrook, Tyrwhitt, Williams); the central theme was 'media biases'. [8] [9] [10]
  • Verbi-Voco-Visual Explorations, Something Else Press, 1967, 61 pp. Revised issue 8 of Explorations (Oct 1957) in book format.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poetry, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1956.

• with Edmund Carpenter (eds.), Explorations in Communication: An Anthology, Boston: Beacon Press, 1960, 210 pp.
  • El aula sin muros investigaciones sobre técnicas de comunicación, trans. Luis Carandell, 1968; 2nd ed., 1974. (Spanish)

• Voices of Literature, 2 vols., Holt, Rinehart & Winston of Canada, 1964-65.

• editor, Aspen 4, New York: Roaring Fork Press, Spring 1967.

• with R. J. Schoeck (eds.), Voices of Literature, Book III: Sounds, Masks, Roles, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.

Selected Essays and Interviews

• "New Media and the Arts", Arts in Society 3(2): "The Avant-Garde Today", University of Wisconsin Press, Sep 1964, pp 239-242.
• "Culture and Technology", in Astronauts of Inner-Space: An International Collection of Avant-Garde Activity, ed. Jeff Berner, San Francisco: Stolen Paper Review, and London: The Times, 1966, pp 18-19.
• "The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualistic Society", in The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962; repr. in The New Media Reader, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, MIT Press, 2003, pp 194-202
• "The Medium Is the Message", in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964; MIT Press, 1994; repr. in The New Media Reader, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, MIT Press, 2003, pp 203-209.
• "Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan - A candid conversation with the high priest of popcult and metaphysician of media", Playboy (March 1969); repr. in Essential McLuhan, New York: BasicBooks, 1995, pp. 233-269. [11]
  • "Marshall McLuhan versus Playboy aneb Upřímný rozhovor s veleknězem popkultur a metafyziky médií", in Člověk, média a elektronická kultura: Výbor z díla, Brno: Jota, 2000, pp 213-249. (Czech)
• "McLuhan's Laws of the Media", Technology and Culture (January 1975), pp 74-78.

Collected Writings, Lectures and Interviews

• The Interior Landscape: The Literary Criticism of Marshall McLuhan 1943-1962, ed. Eugene McNamara, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
• Marshall McLuhan: The Man and his Message, eds. George Sanderson and Frank Macdonald, Fulcrum, 1989. Introduction by John Cage.
• The Medium and the Light: Reflections on Religion, eds. Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek, Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 1992; Toronto: Stoddart, 2002, 224 pp.
• Essential McLuhan, eds. Frank Zingrone and Eric McLuhan, New York: Basic Books, 1995.
  • Člověk, média a elektronická kultura: Výbor z díla, trans. Irena Přibylová and Martin Krejza, Brno: Jota, 2000, 420 pp. (Czech)
• Media Research: Technology, Art, Communication: Essays by Marshall McLuhan, ed. M.A. Moos, Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 1997. [12]
• Understanding Me: Lectures & Interviews, eds. S. McLuhan and D. Staines, MIT Press, 2003.
• Marshall McLuhan Unbound, eds. Eric McLuhan and W. Terrence Gordon, Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2005, 412 pp. [13]
• with David Carson, The Book of Probes, eds. Eric McLuhan and William Kuhns, Gingko Press, 2011, 576 pp. Collection of aphorisms and excerpts. [14]

Bibliographies

• At MarshallMcLuhan.com
• At U75102 Understanding Media

Correspondence

• Letters of Marshall McLuhan, eds. Matie Molinam, Corrine McLuhan, and William Toye, Oxford University Press, 1987, 562 pp.

Literature

Journals

• McLuhan Studies, 6 issues, eds. Francesco Guardiani and Eric McLuhan, University of Toronto, c1996-99. (navigate through red squares)
• International Journal of McLuhan Studies, eds. Matteo Ciastellardi and Emanuela Patti, Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, since 2011.

Special issues

• Enculturation 12: "McLuhan at 100 - Picking Through the Rag and Bone Shop of a Career", eds. Kevin Brooks and David Beard, 2011.
• Journal of Visual Culture 13(1): "Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man @ 50", ed. Raiford Guins, Sage, Apr 2014, 114 pp.

Monographs

• Gerald Emanuel Stearn (ed.), McLuhan: Hot & Cool: A Primer for the Understanding of & a Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan, New York: Dial Press, 1967.
• G. Gamaleri, La galassia McLuhan. Il mondo plasmato dai media?, 1976. (Italian)
• Daniel J. Czitrom, Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan, University of North Carolina Press, 1982, 254 pp. Review.
• Arthur Kroker, Technology and the Canadian Mind: Innis, McLuhan, Grant, Montreal: New World Perspectives, 1984.
• Graeme Patterson, History and Communication: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, The Interpretation of History, University of Toronto Press, 1990, 251 pp. [15]
• Gary Wolf, "Channeling McLuhan: The Wired Interview with the magazine's patron saint", Wired 4.01 (Jan 1996).
• Forward through the Rear View Mirror: Reflections on and by Marshall McLuhan, eds. N. DeHart and Paul Benedetti, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
• Understanding Media, Voyager, 1996. CD-ROM.
• Glenn Willmott, McLuhan, or Modernism in Reverse, University of Toronto Press, 1996, 262 pp. [16]
• Paul Levinson, Digital McLuhan. A Guide to the Information Millennium, Routledge, 1999, 226 pp.
• Richard Cavell, McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography, University of Toronto Press, 2002, 360 pp. [17]
• Janine Marchessault, Marshall McLuhan, Sage, 2004.
• W. Terrence Gordon, McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed, Continuum, 2010.
• Jose Antonio Domingues, O paradigma mediologico - Debray depois de Mcluhan, LabCom, 2010. (Portuguese)
• We Are All Crew, ed. Michelle Kasprzak, Rotterdam: V2_, 2011, 64 pp.
• Elena Lamberti, Marshall McLuhan’s Mosaic: Probing the Literary Origins of Media Studies, University of Toronto Press, 2012, 320 pp. [18]
• B.W. Powe, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy, University of Toronto Press, 2014, 368 pp. [19]

Biographies

• Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger, New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989, 320 pp; MIT Press, 1998.
• W. Terrence Gordon, Marshall McLuhan: Escape Into Understanding, A Biography, Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003, 480 pp. [20]
• Douglas Coupland, Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work!, New York: Atlas & Co, 2010, 224 pp.

Conference proceedings

• McLuhan e la metamorfosi dell'uomo, eds. Derrick de Kerckhove and Amilcare Iannucci, Rome: Bulzoni, 1984, 263 pp. Papers from the symposium held in Venice, 11-13 Nov 1982. (Italian)
• Pour comprendre 1984 / Understanding 1984, ed. Derrick de Kerckhove, Ottawa: Canadian Commission for Unesco, 1984, 330 pp. Papers delivered at the colloquium McLuhan and 1984, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, 14-16 Dec 1983. (French),(English)
• Marshall McLuhan + Vilém Flusser's Communication + Aesthetic Theories Revisited, eds. Melentie Pandilovski and Tom Kohut, Winnipeg: Video Pool Media Arts Centre, 2015. Proceedings of the 2012 conference. [21] (English)

Essays

• Tom Wolfe, "The New Life Out There", in The New Life Out There, The New York Herald Tribune, 1965; repr. in McLuhan: Hot & Cool: A Primer for the Understanding of & a Critical Symposium with a Rebuttal by McLuhan, New York: Dial Press, ed. Gerald Emanuel Stearn, 1967, pp 15-34.

• Gary Genosko, McLuhan and Baudrillard: the masters of implosion, Routledge, 1999, PDF.

Documentaries

• Out of Orbit: The Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan, dir. Carl Bessai, 45 min, 1999. TV documentary.

Recent conferences and exhibitions on McLuhan

• Feedback #1: Marshall McLuhan and the Arts, West, The Hague, 22 Sep-9 Nov 2017; Berlin, 2018; Paris, 2018; Toronto, 2019.
• Feedback: International Symposium. Moment of Truth: for a Reasonable Ecology between the Media, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 28-29 Sep 2017.

Links

• The Marshall McLuhan Estate
• Marshall McLuhan Speaks, a video collection, 2011.
• McLuhan at Gingko Press
• Marshall McLuhan Salon, the multimedia information centre of the Embassy of Canada in Berlin.
• Virtual Maastricht McLuhan Institute
• http://amodern.net/article/the-unknown-explorations/
• http://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/
• McLuhan at U75102 Understanding Media, an undergraduate module taught at Oxford Brookes University, UK.