This blog is not meant to replace any of the many useful web sites concerned with media studies. It is primarily intended to complement classroom teaching, and its usefulness lies in its nature as a blog. On a blog, the latest entries are always at the top, which means it stays up-to-date and current.

My academic background is as an Americanist (BA in American Studies), but I also have an MA in Critical Theory. While my PhD also comes under the American Studies umbrella, that was really because my supervisors were in that department.

For my BA, I studied anthropology, American literature, history, politics; and American film.
For my MA, I studied major theorists (Marxists, post-Marxists, Freud and his successors etc.), but specialised in media (film, TV, typography); I wrote my MA dissertation on legibility debates in the history of typography, relating these to the theories of Michel Serres on noise in communications.
For my PhD, I wrote a thesis on five novels by American author Don DeLillo, specifically concerned with his treatment of events in his novels, and the links between technology and superstition. My thesis also included a chapter on the Challenger shuttle disaster.

Publications

• “The Truth is Out There: TV Horror and Freud’s Unopened File” in Borderlines Vol 4 Number 1 (University of Wales Press 1997)
• “Don Delillo and the Challenger: Mastering the Event” in Borderlines Vol 5 Number 4 (University of Wales Press 1998 )
• “Don DeLillo’s The Names: an Alphabetic Intrigue” in Henry Street – A Graduate Review of Literary Studies 8.2, (Dalhousie University Fall 1999)
• “Underworld: Sin and Atonement” in Underwords: Perspectives on Don Delillo’s Underworld, edited by Joseph Dewey, Steven G. Kellman, and Irving Malin (University of Delaware Press, 2002).

Beyond my academic background, I worked for 6 years (1999-2006) as Marketing Manager for Jigsaw Systems Ltd, a major IT company specialising in creative markets. This work principally involved providing IT solutions centred around Apple computers to professionals and educators involved with desktop publishing and design; photography; video production; music production; 3D animation; and architecture. Apart from requiring some hands-on knowledge of hardware and software used in creative and media, my work involved catalogue and advertisement copywriting, as well as offering consultancy services to customers, and trade shows/exhibitions.

Dr Robert McMinn, January 2009.

Contact: mcmrbt [at] gmail [dot] com