On April 4, 2023 Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC) faculty, students, administrators, alumni and friends raised a glass to celebrate Neil Postman’s vision. Quoting Postman’s prescient warning in Amusing Ourselves to Death (“when a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk”), Jack Knott, the…
MCC Ephemera
Remarks by Rod Benson, MCC Chair 2016-2021
April 4, 2023 I want to start by thanking Sue Murray for her leadership as chair and for organizing this anniversary celebration, Dean Knott for his support, and Terry Moran and Debbie Borisoff for their years of leadership and service to this department. I did not know Neil as well as Terry or Debbie did,…
Anniversary Remarks
Susan Murray, Professor and Chair of Media, Culture, and CommunicationApril 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…
Remarks about Neil Postman
Deborah Borisoff, Professor and Former Interim ChairApril 4, 2023 I’d like to acknowledge four aspects of my relationship with Neil for which I am grateful. First, I came to know Neil when I was an administrator, pursuing my degree in a different School and area at NYU. Our conversations, therefore, focused on life in general;…
Toast for MCC’s 50th
Marita Sturken, Professor and Former Chair of Media, Culture, and CommunicationApril 4, 2023 There are quite a faculty here who were in the department when I arrived in 2005, including those who just spoke, but there are also many faculty and staff here who came into the department since then. And I am happy to say…
A Few Remarks Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Birth of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
Terence P. Moron, Professor EmeritusApril 4, 2023 In the beginning were the words. And the words were “Media Ecology,” a name that redefined media as not only the techniques and technologies of communication but as environments in which cultures grow. The name and the approach were born during a series of meetings in the…
Neil Postman’s keynote address to the Speech Communication Association, 1973
Full text of Neil Postman’s 1973 address to the Speech Communication Association.
Foundations of Media Ecology: New York University
This article by Professor Emeritus Terry Moran presents a personal history of the foundations and development of the Media Ecology Program at New York University.
MCC Events
A look back at just some of the events the department has hosted in the last 20+ years through the posters circulated.
MCC WEBSITE
Curious how the Department presented itself on the early internet? Thanks to the Wayback Machine, we have evidence of our first homepage.