Richard Cavell – författare

Edmund Snow Carpenter (1922–2011), shaped by an early encounter with Marshall McLuhan, was a renegade anthropologist who would plumb the connection between anthropology and media studies over a thoroughly unconventional career.As co-conspirators in the founding of the legendary journal Explorations (1953–59), Carpenter and McLuhan established the groundwork for media studies. After ten years teaching anthropology at the University of Toronto, hosting radio and television shows on the CBC, and doing major research in the Arctic, Carpenter left Toronto and became an itinerant anthropologist. He took up a position in Papua New Guinea, where he countered anthropological practice by handing his camera to the Papuans. Carpenter’s marriage to the artist and heiress Adelaide de Menil made him a truly independent scholar. With the support of the Rock Foundation, founded by de Menil, he collected ethnographical art, curated exhibitions, and edited the materials for a twelve-volume study of social symbolism based on the massive archives created by Carl Schuster. Richard Cavell shows Carpenter – austere, generous, and unpredictable – to also be unwavering in working throughout his career within the framework established by Explorations.The anthropological impetus for media studies has largely been forgotten. This study restores that memory, tracing Carpenter’s work in media and in anthropology over a lifetime of cultural achievements and intellectual convolutions.

Edmund Snow Carpenter (1922–2011), shaped by an early encounter with Marshall McLuhan, was a renegade anthropologist who would plumb the connection between anthropology and media studies over a thoroughly unconventional career.As co-conspirators in the founding of the legendary journal Explorations (1953–59), Carpenter and McLuhan established the groundwork for media studies. After ten years teaching anthropology at the University of Toronto, hosting radio and television shows on the CBC, and doing major research in the Arctic, Carpenter left Toronto and became an itinerant anthropologist. He took up a position in Papua New Guinea, where he countered anthropological practice by handing his camera to the Papuans. Carpenter's marriage to the artist and heiress Adelaide de Menil made him a truly independent scholar. With the support of the Rock Foundation, founded by de Menil, he collected ethnographical art, curated exhibitions, and edited the materials for a twelve-volume study of social symbolism based on the massive archives created by Carl Schuster. Richard Cavell shows Carpenter – austere, generous, and unpredictable – to also be unwavering in working throughout his career within the framework established by Explorations.The anthropological impetus for media studies has largely been forgotten. This study restores that memory, tracing Carpenter's work in media and in anthropology over a lifetime of cultural achievements and intellectual convolutions.

While current scholarly interest has assured Marshall McLuhan's (1911-80) foundational status as a media theorist, much room still exists for further exploration of his writings, which have taken on additional layers of significance in our contemporary digital moment. Holding that media were extensions of the human, McLuhan also posited that the human was a product of technology. Ranging across fields as diverse as art history, biotechnology, and beyond, this collection of essays considers McLuhan's ground-breaking approach within a number of new contexts and explores the distinguishing features of his media theory.

Shakespeare produced his works during a media shift that was unmatched – until our own.Mediatic Shakespeare by media theorist Richard Cavell examines how Shakespeare’s writing engaged with the cultural upheaval of an era shifting rapidly from spoken traditions towards print materials. Cavell argues that print was an active cultural force that was in the process of reshaping Shakespeare’s world and work. Nostalgic for oral communality, Shakespeare engaged guardedly with print, producing a media dynamic that resonates throughout his work.Drawing on media theorists from Marshall McLuhan to Friedrich Kittler and Bernhard Siegert, Cavell traces Shakespeare’s engagement with the effects of a media ecology in which knowing and being were aggressively in flux. Structured across four chapters, Mediatic Shakespeare explores Shakespeare’s media ecology, the unsettling interfaces of orality and literacy, the breakdown of the sensus communis, and the implications for his work of the printing involution.

This collection of essays considers McLuhan's ground-breaking approach within a number of new contexts and explores the distinguishing features of his media theory.