Susan Murray, Professor and Chair of Media, Culture, and Communication
April 4, 2023
It’s my pleasure to welcome you to our 50th anniversary celebration.
I’d like to start by destabilizing the idea that this is actually our anniversary. (I know, classic move by an academic). I’m doing this because, like most histories, our history is complicated and contested.
- To begin with, when the department was given its current name – Media, Culture and Communication— in 2008, it actually marked the consolidation and integration of three separate and already existing programs – Media Ecology, Speech and Interpersonal Communication, and Graphic Communication.
- But in trying to locate the origins of MCC we looked back even further, to the mid 1940s, when Charles Siepmann, who specialized in radio programming and broadcast policy, chaired the newly formed “Department of Communications in Education” at Steinhardt.
- After Siepmann left NYU in 1968, the department broke up into multiple programs across several schools, but by then Neil Postman and Terry Moran (who is here tonight and who will give remarks shortly) were on the faculty and they worked together to create a new graduate program, one that eventually developed into Media Ecology–the first of the three programs that became MCC.
- So this is really what we are marking today–the founding of Media Ecology in 1971… Yes… 1971…we admit that we are 2 years late in marking this occasion, which was missed in all the chaos of COVID until one of our colleagues, Erica Robles-Anderson, pointed it out to us last year. That’s when Dove Pedlosky, our always-on-it director of External Affairs, began doing oral histories and archival research for an anniversary website and repository of recollections and ephemera to mark the occasion. We only recently felt it was safe to gather in person for a toast…
So why are we marking Media Ecology and not Siepmann’s Department of Communications in Education?
I would argue that it’s because we can trace the spirit of our intellectual engagements to Neil’s early vision of a vibrant, highly interdisciplinary field of media study—one that he referred to as “an exhilarating effort” to advance the field of communication in new directions.
Neil, along with Terry, envisioned a new field based on the paradigm that all communication is an environment and believed that an emphasis on context would open up fruitful new avenues of research. Media ecologists would ask questions such as: how do media, technology, and information systems work in relation to one another and how do these interacting systems structure meaning, perception, and values?
50 years later, our faculty is made up of media scholars, historians, philosophers, anthropologists and sociologists who study the interconnections between media and global cultures and works with an expansive definition of media that goes beyond traditional print, cinema, television, or internet.
And Neil’s ideas and media ecology as a theoretical frame are experiencing a revival in our current moment. What was once critiqued by some as an overly pessimistic stance in the early 2000s– a time in which media studies was all about utopian ideas of engaged, empowered, audiences—popular thinkers, academics and journalists are returning to Neil’s arguments to understand our current socio-political moment..
- For example, Ezra Klein of the New York Times has claimed repeatedly in his editorials and podcasts over the past year that Neil’s work is “essential for understanding our current political moment.”
- A few years ago, Neil’s book Amusing Ourselves To Death was the focus of a cover story for the Atlantic, subtitled, “In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.”, Megan Garber, who wrote that piece has gone on to write others for the magazine using Neil as a constant touchstone.
- And earlier this year, social media Influencer, Jenn Im, put Amusing Ourselves To Death, at the very top of her Tik Tok list of “Books that Make You Smarter,” calling it, “the original, like the blueprint, of all these books coming out right now that are talking about the dangers of social media and technology.” The OG. Yes.
- Although I have to point out that, obviously, Tik Toks and Social Influencers, would be Neil’s true nightmare.
- Although I have to point out that, obviously, Tik Toks and Social Influencers, would be Neil’s true nightmare.
The ideas that MCC were founded in are more relevant today than ever, but so is the research and teaching of our current faculty. Our program was founded from a desire to reimagine the study of communication with new analytical frameworks for understanding media’s role in social change. We continue this commitment to exploring the outer edges of media studies. And through their remarkably original scholarship, MCC faculty, students and alumni are charting the next 50 years of the discipline. [I’d Like Us to raise our glasses for a TOAST to our history and its continued relevance and to the future of MCC]
Speaking of Alumni, It gives us great pleasure to welcome back tonight some of students who worked with Neil directly and those who’ve graduated from our undergraduate, MA, and doctoral programs in the years since.
In attendance we have members of the newly configured bicoastal MCC ALUMNI COUNCIL under the steadfast leadership of Council Chair Jasmine Yook (BS 2014).
The work our alumni do to advance the field, mentor current students, advocate for, and build, a better media … moves us, always.
I’d also like to thank Dove Pedlosky and Latia McAlister for the work they put into conceptualizing and planning this event.
Terry Moran and MCC former chairs will give brief remarks tonight, but first I’d like to introduce the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Steinhardt, Jack Knott, who will say a few words.