James E. Katz | Teaching

Some Courses Offered

Undergraduate Courses

04:192:300 Research Methods in Communication
04:192:345 Mediated Communication Theory
04:192:432 Mediated Communication and Society
04:192:449 Telecommunications Policy & Processes

Graduate Courses

17:194:551 Media and Culture/ Topics in Mediated CP (MCIS)
17:194:587 Internet & Society (MCIS)
16:194:601 Information and Communication Processes
16:194:602 Research Foundations
16:194:603 Qualitative Research Methods
16:194:604 Quantitative Research Methods
16:194:633 Mediated Communication
16:194:664 Media and Culture/ Topics in Mediated CP
16:194:685 Special Topics in Mediated Communication
16:194:696 Advanced Topics in Qualitative Research

Teaching Links

WebCT

Dr. Katz's advice

for Ph.D. Students
More questions? Try Professor Katz's blog

QUALIFYING EXAMINATION FOR PH.D. STUDENTS

General Instructions

Answers should conform to the length guidelines if given with your question. If no guidelines are specified, please limit the text of your answer to 15-20 pages (approximately 5000 words) typed, double spaced. The typed copy must be submitted to the Director by 4:00 pm on the date specified.

The answers are to be in the form of papers, documented as appropriate, using APA style. Where a statement is presented as factual or as having been enunciated by a person (or several persons), bibliographic information must be supplied in complete form.

Each reply should be complete in itself; that is, the reply to one question should not require that the reply to another question be read with it.

Responses will be judged on the basis of your knowledge of the literature, and your ability to explore, analyze and elucidate your conclusions (See the evaluation form used by reviewers).

NOTE: WRITE THE QUESTION BEING ANSWERED AT THE TOP OF THE FIRST PAGE.

PLEASE RETURN 5 COPIES OF EACH EXAM (that would be 10 copies total)

Qualifying Exam Procedures

The functions of the qualifying examination are: to determine that the student is adequately prepared to embark on the research required for producing a dissertation; and, that the student has sufficient knowledge to be a member of the academy in the student's discipline.
The qualifying examination consists of two portions: the written and the oral. Students are given the written examination questions on a Friday morning, and submit their answers to the questions on the Monday ten days hence. Within two weeks of submitting the written answers, the oral examination is scheduled.
The written portion of the qualifying examination for all students consists of answers to two different questions. Each question must be read by at least two examiners, and there must be at least four different examiners in total. The four examiners constitute the Examination Committee.
Each program area determines for itself what the questions cover, within the constraints of the Program Description for that Area. LIS requires that students study in two areas: an LIS area, and an area from outside LIS. This means that the student must answer one question relevant to each of the two areas in which she/he has studied. In Communication, students must have a major and minor area of study. These may include foci within the Communication area: organizational communication, social interaction, mediated communication, or health communication, but are not limited to these areas of communication study. Students may choose as a minor area in one of the other areas of the Ph.D. program, or a minor elsewhere in the University. In Media Studies, there is no requirement to study in more than one area, so the two questions may cover whatever aspects of Media Studies the examination committee considers relevant.
For cases in which the student is to answer a written qualifying examination question in an area different from the program area, at least one examiner of that question must be from that area. For instance, if the other area if from outside SCILS, then at least one of the examiners must be a member of the graduate faculty of that other area. Or, if the other area is from within SCILS, at least one of the examiners must be a member of the Program area.
The number of questions that are set from which the student chooses two to answer is decided by the Program Area: a typical pattern for Areas which require students to study in two areas is two questions for each area, the student choosing one from each of the two.
The Examination Committee consists of the Chair determined by mutual agreement of the student and the faculty member, and at least three other examiners, chosen by the Chair in consultation with the student.
The members of the Examination Committee may set questions which are generally relevant to the student's research interests and/or course of study; or they may set questions which are relevant to the examined area as a whole. Such decisions are made by the Examination Committee, within any constraints that may be set by the Program Area.
The oral portion of the qualifying examination is led by the chair of the Examination Committee, and includes all four members of that Committee. In this portion of the qualifying examination, the members of the Examination Committee pose questions to the candidate, on the subjects of the written questions, and/or on subjects related to the areas in which the student is being examined.
At the conclusion of the oral portion of the qualifying examination, the members of the Examination Committee decide if the student has successfully passed the entire examination, if the student has passed the examination relative to only one of the areas, or if the student has failed the qualifying examination in toto . In the first case, the student is admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D.; in the second, the student is allowed to re-sit the qualifying examination (both written and oral) in the area in which she/he failed; in the third, the student is allowed to re-sit the examination in both areas. Re-sitting the examination means the setting of new questions for the required area(s), submission of answers to the question(s), and an oral examination in the area(s). If the student has failed in respect to one question, the two examiners of that question read the new paper and participate in the new oral portion of the examination; if the student has failed in respect to both questions; all four examiners participate in the reading of the new questions and in the new oral portion of the examination. Students may re-sit the qualifying examination once.

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GUIDELINES FOR DISSERTATION PRESENTATIONS

The final presentation of your Ph.D. dissertation is an important part of the process of receiving a degree. This is your chance to share your knowledge with the SCILS’ community and to demonstrate your understanding of a complex research project.

The following guidelines are offered to help you prepare your presentation:

Prepare a 30-minute presentation. Your goal is to succinctly summarize your study. Follow these general time guidelines: Rationale and literature review (10 minutes), Methodology (10 minutes), Results and Implications (10 minutes).
If you use overheads/slides make sure they are large enough to be easily read. A general rule is that it takes 2 minutes to describe one overhead. In general, plan to use no more than 10 overheads in your presentation.
Define specialized terms. Do not assume your audience understands the vocabulary particular to your special area.
Practice your presentation several times before you give it. Make sure it conforms to the time limit.
An overhead projector will be available. If you need any other AV equipment, notify the Ph.D. office at least one week before your presentation.
A copy of the abstract of your proposal and prepare a one-page biographical sketch to distribute.
Bring about 20 copies of your abstract and biostatement for distribution to the audience.

In general, 15 minutes will be allocated to questions from the audience.

Your dissertation advisor will introduce you and, if you wish, moderate the question/ answer session.

Consult with your advisor for additional guidance relevant to your particular study.

Good luck. We are looking forward to hearing you speak.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH FOR DISSERTATION PRESENTATIONS

Along with your final dissertation abstract, the following information should be included on a separate page:

A brief biographical paragraph including previous degrees and areas, work affiliation, date which you entered the Ph.D. program, research/ theoretical/professional interest areas, publications (if any), future plans (if known), name of Chair and committee members, and other pertinent information.

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READING LISTS

Mediated Communication Technology

Fortunati, Leopoldina, Katz, James E., & Riccini, Raimonda. (eds.) (2003). Mediating the human body: Technology, communication, and fashion. Mahwah, N.J.; London: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.
Katz, James Everett (1999). Connections: social and cultural studies of the telephone in American life. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.
Katz, James E. (ed.) (2003). Machines that become us: The social context of personal communication technology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.
Katz, James E., & Aakhus, Mark (eds.) (2001). Perpetual contact: Mobile communication, private talk, public performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Katz, James E., & Rice, Ronald E. (eds.) (2002). Social consequences of internet use: Access, involvement, and interaction. Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT Press.
Rice, Ronald E., James E. Katz (eds.) (2001). The internet and health communication: Experiences and expectations. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Wellman, Barry, & Haythornthwaite, Carol (eds). (2002). The Internet in everyday life. Balckwell.
Howard, Philip N., & Jones, Steve (eds.)(2004). Society online: The Internet in context. Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London: Sage.

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Early Perspectives on Communication Technology

Boorstin, Daniel J. (Daniel Joseph)(1962). The image or what happened to the American dream. New York, Atheneum.
Corn, Joseph J. (ed.) (1986). Imagining tomorrow: history, technology, and the American future. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Czitrom, Daniel J. (1982). Media and the American mind: from Morse to McLuhan. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Kasson, John F. (1977). Civilizing the machine: technology and republican values in America, 1776-1900. New York: Penguin Books.
Lasch, Christopher (1991). The true and only heaven: progress and its critics. New York: Norton.
Marvin, Carolyn (1988). When old technologies were new: thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century. New York: Oxford University Press.
Marx, Leo (2000). The machine in the garden: technology and the pastoral ideal in America. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Segal, Howard P. (1985). Technological utopianism in American culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kilmer Area Library (Livingston) Smith, Merritt Roe, & Marx, Leo (1994). Does technology drive history? The dilemma of technological determinism. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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Technological Determinism: Technology’s Effect on Society

Beniger, James R. (1986). The control revolution: Technological and economic origins of the information society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. (1983). The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge, [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ellul, Jacques (1973). The technological society. New York, Knopf.
Innis, Harold A. (1972). Empire and communications. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The extensions of man. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Meyrowitz, Joshua (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mumford, Lewis (1963). Technics and civilization. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Ong, Walter J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London; New York: Methuen.
Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books.
Tenner, Edward (1996). Why things bite back: technology and the revenge of unintended consequences. New York: Knopf.
White, Lynn Townsend (1962). Medieval technology and social change. London, Oxford University Press.

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Social Constructivism: Society over Technology

Bijker, Wiebe E., Hughes, Thomas P., & Pinch, Trevor J. (eds.)(1987). The Social construction of technological systems: new directions in the sociology and history of technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Especially Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s “The consumption Junction: A proposal for research strategies in the sociology of technology.”
Bijker, Wiebe E., & Law, John (1992). Shaping technology/building society: studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Especially Bruno Latour’s “Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts.”
Hughes, Thomas P. (1983). Networks of power: electrification in Western society, 1880-1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Law, John (ed.) (1991). A Sociology of monsters: essays on power, technology, and domination. London; New York: Routledge.
MacKenzie, Donald (1990). Inventing accuracy: a historical sociology of nuclear missile guidance. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
MacKenzie, Donald, & Wajcman, Judy (eds.) (1985). The Social shaping of technology: how the refrigerator got its hum. Milton Keynes; Philadelphia : Open University Press.
Meikle, Jeffrey L. (1995). American plastic: a cultural history. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Nye, David E. (1990). Electrifying America: social meanings of a new technology, 1880-1940. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Winston, Brian (1986). Misunderstanding media. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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Philosophy of Technology

Arendt, Hannah (1998). The human condition (2nd ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Berger, Peter L., Berger, Brigitte, & Kellner, Hansfried (1973). The homeless mind; modernization and consciousness. New York, Random House.
Borgmann, Albert (1984). Technology and the character of contemporary life: A philosophical inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Feenberg, Andrew (1999). Questioning Technology. London: Routledge.
Gehlen, Arnold (1980). Man in the age of technology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Habermas, Jürgen (1971). Toward a rational society; student protest, science, and politics. Boston: Beacon Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1977). The question concerning technology, and other essays. New York: Harper & Row.
Hickman, Larry A. (2001). Philosophical tools of technological culture: Putting pragmatism to work. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Higgs, Eric, Light, Andrew, & Sting, David (2000). Technology and the good life? Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Ihde, Don (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: from garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mitcham, Carl (1994). Thinking through technology: the path between engineering and philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mitcham, Carl, & Mackey, Robert (eds.) (1983). Philosophy and technology: readings in the philosophical problems of technology. New York: Free Press ; London: Collier Macmillan.
Pacey, Arnold (1999). Meaning in technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Parens, Erik (ed.) (1998). Enhancing human traits: Ethical and social implications. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Winner, Langdon (1977). Autonomous technology: Technics-out-of-control as a theme in political thought. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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Communication Technology and Power

Andrews, Lori, & Nelkin, Dorothy (2001). Body bazaar: the market for human tissue in the biotechnology age. New York: Crown Publishers.
Feenberg, Andrew, & Hannay, Alastair (ed.) (1995). Technology and the politics of knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kellner, Douglas (1995). Media culture: cultural studies, identity, and politics between the modern and the postmodern. London; New York: Routledge.
Lessig, Lawrence (2001). The future of ideas: The fate of the commons in a connected world. New York: Random House.
Marcuse, Herbert (1964). One dimensional man; studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Boston, Beacon Press.
Noble, David F. (1980). America by design: science, technology, and the rise of corporate capitalism. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press.
Robins, Kevin, & Webster, Frank (1999). Times of the technoculture: from the information society to the virtual life. London; New York: Routledge.

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Technology and Feminism

Cockburn, Cynthia, & Ormrod, Susan (1993). Gender and technology in the making. London; Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage,
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz (1983). More work for mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. New York: Basic Books.
Haraway, Donna J. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature. New York, NY: Routledge.
Harcourt, Wendy (ed.) (1999). Women@Internet: creating new cultures in Cyberspace. London; New York: Zed Books.
Keller, Evelyn Fox, & Longino, Helen E. (1996). Feminism and science. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1898). Recreating motherhood: ideology and technology in a patriarchal society. New York: Norton.
Rothschild, Joan (ed.) (1983). Machina ex dea: feminist perspectives on technology. New York: Pergamon Press.
Stone, Allucquère Rosanne (1995). The war of desire and technology at the close of the mechanical age. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Wajcman, Judy (1991). Feminism confronts technology. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press.

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Technology and Its Discourse

Carey, James W. (1989). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
Marchand, Roland (1985). Advertising the American dream: Making way for modernity, 1920-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Herman, Andrew, & Swiss, Thomas (eds.) (2000). The World Wide Web and contemporary cultural theory. New York: Routledge.
Ross, Andrew (1991). Strange weather: Culture, science, and technology in the age of limits. London; New York: Verso.
Slack, Jennifer Daryl, & Fejes, Fred (eds.) (1987). The Ideology of the information age. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp.
Woodward, Kathleen (ed.) (1980). The Myths of information: technology and postindustrial culture. Madison, WI: Coda Press.

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Technology and Postmodernism

Baudrillard, Jean(1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Gergen, Kenneth J. (1991). The saturated self: dilemmas of identity in contemporary life. New York, N.Y.: Basic Books.
Hayles, N. Katherine (1999). How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Lanham, Richard A. (1993). The electronic word: democracy, technology, and the arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lévy, Pierre(1998). Becoming virtual: Reality in the Digital Age. New York: Plenum Trade.
Poster, Mark (2001). What's the Matter with the Internet? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Turkle, Sherry (1997). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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