Media U

John Marx is professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel, 1890-2011 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005). I selected him as a reader for his work in contemporary and twentieth-century Anglophone literature and his interest in the political implications of fiction.Mark Garrett Cooper is professor of film and media studies at the University of South Carolina. He is the author of Love Rules: Silent Hollywood and the Rise of the Managerial Class (2003) and Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood (2011) and the coeditor of Rediscovering US Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, and the Archive (2018).

John Marx is professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire (2005) and Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel, 1890–2011 (2012).

Lisa Parks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
This book powerfully demonstrates that universities have been media institutions all along, well before the mobile phone and the MOOC. Cooper and Marx challenge us to consider what is at stake when universities approach the educated class as an “audience” and what mindsets and strategies they deploy in the process. Provocative and timely, Media U is bound to stir up discussion and debate.

Christopher Newfield, University of California, Santa Barbara:
This book shows that many of the strangest yet most important features of universities come from their status as media operations that try endlessly to increase and manage their audiences. By putting the pieces of our Humpty-Dumpty campuses back together again, the authors offer original insights and even reasons to hope for new directions in higher ed.

Paula M. Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association:
Tackling everything from football to general education to the credit hour, Media U helps us understand our turbulent university landscape. With a deep sense of history and careful marshaling of data, Cooper and Marx show us that higher ed is not just a maker of knowledge but also a platform for information—a medium itself.