Gray Area Grand Theater: Andrew McLuhan teaches Understanding Media Intensive: Part two

Join a group of like-minded people from around the world for the newest cohort of Understanding Media Intensive: Part Two, the second of a three-part intensive survey of Marshall McLuhan‘s major 1964 work Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, taught by Andrew McLuhan, Director of The McLuhan Institute. Over 13 weeks we will cover chapters 8-20 – part one covered background and chapters 1–8. UMI: Part Three (spring or fall 2025) will cover the concluding chapters 21–33.

If you’re interested in how technology shapes us individually and socially, if you’re interested in the pioneering work of Marshall McLuhan, if you’ve tried to read Understanding Media but had a hard time with it, if you’d like to immerse yourself in a deep study of this 1964 guidebook and explore how to use it to make sense of the contemporary world, this course is for you. Course participants join in from around the world in a small group from a variety of backgrounds from students to teachers, artists to CEO’s, people in technology, marketing, from all walks of life come together to explore and make sense.

In an age where our media environment conditions and structures our reality in increasingly potent ways, Understanding Media provides important foundational knowledge on how our cultural traumas and tropes are embodied in technologies. This course will provide lecture and discussion on Part Two of the book, which puts forth a set of tools for exploring human technologies and innovations as a means to regain agency in the midst of our increasingly disorienting online lives.

Instructor Andrew McLuhan reads each chapter aloud, with personal anecdotes and other sources (books, essays, letters, documents) to add context and comprehension. Discussion and optional creative assignments provide another valuable resource to help students absorb the material and apply it today. Live students are able to engage in discussion and ask questions while an Audit option is available at a lower cost for those unable to attend synchronously.

Lectures will include explorations and explanations of never-before-seen author annotations, historical documents, and personal accounts. This course picks up at the beginning of Part Two of Understanding Media starting with Chapter 8 – The Spoken Word: Flower of Evil? and will conclude with Chapter 19 – Wheel, Bicycle, and Airplane. A scrapbook of materials around the publication of the book in 1964 compiled by Marshall’s wife Corinne McLuhan, containing reviews and interviews, will add further context to how the book was received and provide insight into the material under discussion.

Classes average 2-3 hours and will be streamed live on Tuesdays from January 7, 2025 – April 1, 2025, starting at 5:00pm PST / 8:00pm EDT, and ending no later than 8:00pm PST / 11:00pm EDT.