This is NOT an essay - it is a collection of notes which are the foundation of an 800 word comparison of two articles regarding the place of humanities in university studies, and the roles of mass communication.

You will be given two short readings by the end of Week 3 of the Semester. Identify the approach or approaches used in each, and with reference to the features and examples of the identified approaches as presented in Subject materials, justify your answer.

Andrew Riemer's article, "Cannon or Fodder?" (The Weekend Australian, 16-17 November 1996) can be identified as having both Idealist and Leavisite approaches within the text. This is indicated in several passages of the text:

"My colleagues in the Department of English were irresponsible...They were trivialising the discipline...by allowing undergraduates to sidestep the so-called canonical writers...in favour of whatever transient phenomenon or w

...the notion that the media is shallow and deals in opinion while the universities deal in depth and truth is misguided (though by no means simply false). The media are in unacknowledged competition with the humanities.

Identified approaches: materialist/Frankfurt School

When looking at the approaches as they are presented in the Subject Materials, one is able to identify them as clearly being both Idealistic and Leavisite. Our Subject Book indicates that the Idealistic view of culture has been "conceived in the humanities and in journalism and popular social commentary ... a realm of moral, spiritual and aesthetic values which exist largely independent and above society". Further, this view states

The central materialist assumption is that it is the material conditions of physical, historical and social being or existence which determine what counts as consciousness.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Australian Identified, Subject Book, Critics Leavis, Department English, University Australia, Frankfurt School's, Semester Identify, Weekend Australian, Marx Engels, Milton's Eve, mass culture, cannon fodder weekend, society mass culture, 16-17 november 1996, mass society, weekend australian, identified approaches, view culture, society mass, approaches subject, fodder weekend australian, fodder weekend, cannon fodder, australian 16-17 november, subject materials,
Approximate Word count = 699
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)