Hans Günther, Sabine Hänsgen (eds.): Soviet Power and the Media (2006) [Russian]

Proceedings from the conference “The Political as Communicative Space in History” (Bielefeld, October 2003) devoted to the comparative analysis of the media in the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 1930s provide a pioneering media-theoretical exploration of the role of radio, film, photography and print in the engineering of the communist Soviet power.

Sovetskaya vlast’ i media [Советская власть и медиа]
Publisher Akademicheskiy proekt, St. Petersburg, 2006
Open Access
ISBN 5733103353, 9785733103358
621 pages

Reviews: Wolfgang Schlott (Die Welt der Slaven, 2007, DE, PDF), Alexander Prokhorov (Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2007), Alexander Ulanov (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007, RU), Jana Klenhova (ArtMargins, 2008), Yuliya Liderman (Usloviya teatra, RU, 2010).

PDF (broken link fixed on 2014-1-28)
PDFs

Roswitha Mueller: Bertolt Brecht and the Theory of Media (1989)

Bertolt Brecht spent a career puncturing artistic illusion while casting a spell as an innovator that has continued since his death in 1956. Best known to theater goers for “The Threepenny Opera,” “Mother Courage and her Children,” “The Caucasian Chalk Circle” and other production, the great playwright was, in fact, a man of all media. He was interested in radio and the cinema as soon as they appeared in Europe and brought to them, as well as to the stage, a dramatic theory so radical and influential that it has come to be known by the adjective “Brechtian.”

Publisher University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln & London, 1989
Modern German Culture and Literature series
ISBN 0803231326, 9780803231320
149 pages

Reviews: Katie Trumpener, Susan Bennett (Theatre Research International).

PDF (no OCR)

Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka (eds.): Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (2011)

“This book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media – one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, with contributions from internationally prominent scholars from Europe, North America, and Japan, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today’s interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting ‘old’ or even ‘dead’ media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding ‘new’ media in their complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.”

Publisher University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2011
ISBN 0520262743, 9780520262744
x+356 pages

Reviews: Simone Natale (Canadian Journal of Communication, 2012), Sarah Lugthart (TMG, 2012), John Potts (Screen, 2013), Michael Goddard (Journal of Visual Culture, 2013), Swagato Chakravorty (Senses of Cinema, 2013), Astrid Mager (Information, Communication & Society, 2013).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2021-4-9)