Media, Communication, and Information Theory since 1950s

(McLuhan, Goody, Innis, Havelok)

Structuralism and Linguistics since 1960

(de Saussure, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, Chomsky)

European-French neo-Marxism and Critical Theory

(Benjamin, Debord, Adorno, Althusser)

European Philosophy, "grand tradition," including hermeneutics

(Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Gadamer, Heidegger)

Semiology / Semiotics

[signs, sign systems, and meaning; intertextuality, interpretation]

(de Saussure, Peirce, Lotman, Barthes, Eco)

Sociology of media

(Hall, Fiske)

Received Academic and Professional Disciplinary boundary assumptions (and differences between US and French/ European disciplines)

(US academic disciplines: "human sciences" vs. science and technology)

Modern French philosophical and intellectual traditions

(Sartre, Bergson, Bachelard, Debord, Derrida)

Post-Marxian Philosophy and Social Theory:
Frankfurt School, Benjamin, Adorno, Gramsci

US-UK Cultural Studies:
cultural analyses of gender, race, class, ethnicity, identities, ideologies

(Hall, Jameson and followers)

Reception Theory: history of cultural reception, interpretive communities

(Jauss, Iser, Fish, Roger Chartier, etc.)

Post-Structuralism, Discourse Theory, Deconstruction

(Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Baudrillard)

Recent Marxian theory, 1980s-present

(Jameson, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Virilio, French po-mo, Zizek)

Anglo-American Philosophy of Language and shifts to postmodern thought

(Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, Rorty)

Feminist theory and gender studies

Materialist Social History

(Braudel, Foucault)

Media Studies

New Media Studies (post-digital)

Post-Structuralist Sociology

Bourdieu

American Pragmatism and Critique of Theory

Richard Rorty,
Stanley Fish

Political-Economy and quantitative methodologies for the study of media and communications

Visual Culture Studies,
media studies debates

Network Theory, Science and Society Theory
(Latour)