in media res media

Why not start in the middle of things, in the middle of media?

I was having a conversation with a student the other day about traveling. She is headed to Europe for a couple fo weeks she hopes to turn into a couple of months. It's harder to do in some ways today than it was when I was traveling back in the late 80s and early 90s. Money, for one thing, is much more expensive. But in many ways its much easier, of course. Back then few had email, and of course, there were no websites to help us plan, no MySpace to connect with fellow travelers, no lists of pensions or cheap places to crash.

The conversation reminded me of getting off a train in a small German town around dusk. I remember standing in the station with my back to the river, looking over the small square shrouded in light drizzle and wondering where I was going to spend the night. I'd come to Mainz to see the Gutenberg press, but clearly I was going to have to wait until morning. The chalkboards showed all the hotels were full and I was just about resigned to camping down by the river, despite the rain, when teenage boy approached me. He wanted to practice English. I told him I was looking for digs. He put me up in his parents attic and the next morning introduced me to French press coffee. By the time I got back to the States I had determined to go to grad school. Seems the French press and the Gutenberg press have been constants in my life ever since.

Maybe one way to kick this off is to get a little help from you guys. I'm teaching 572T this summer, the grad version of New Media Technologies. So, what do you think these grads need to know? My undergrads in the same class read Jenkins' Conversion Culture. That's been working well to unveil the workings of culture and commerce in new media. I've got a host of books for the grads, but what do you think they -- as potential phd applicants --need to take away?