lewis levenberg
working bibliography for thesis
18 November 2009
Designing Interdisciplinary Research

PRIMARY
the first three sources here are MAJ's collections of short essays, the core texts around which this thesis will be organized. In their form they recall earlier works of journalism, radical philosophy, and prison literature (cf. Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, for example); in their content they are an extended polemic against the structure and practices of the prison system, and of its racist, capitalist nationalist justifications. All Things Censored contains the text of the radio essays censored by NPR, and re-recordings of some of those (which remain in NPR's vault); the biographical, introductory, and legal interpretations in ATC are particularly useful.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. All Things Censored. New York: Seven Stories, 2003. Includes audio CD. 
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Death Blossoms: Reflections from a Prisoner of Conscience. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2003.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Live from Death Row. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996.
The three sources following are representative examples of the types of web sources I am interested in examining, and perhaps appropriating for a third multi-media chapter that can show more visually and explicitly the types of representation/occlusion of his work/figure that occur in digital media. 
Wikipedia - "Mumia Abu-Jamal". Web. 
youtube search - "Mumia Abu-Jamal". eg badman621, 28 april 2008. Web.
google search - "Mumia Abu-Jamal". Web. eg DOS page.

REFERENCE
Appiah, Kwame A., and Henry L. Gates Jr., eds. Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999.
	includes an excellent brief introductory essay on MAJ's life and case, along with recommendations for further reading and references to other related articles (eg MOVE and Black Panthers and Death Penalty and so on); since MAJ is not included in sources such as the Encyclopedia of Censorship, this is an interesting source to consider in terms of the "socialization of texts"...
HISTORY
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2004.
	MAJ's semi-auto-bio-graphical history of the BPP. A radical/critical history to be sure, notable for its chapter "a Woman's Party", which includes much original scholarship and serves as a good model for an oral history. 
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Faith of our Fathers. New York: Africa World Press, 2003.
	Another radical history, this time examining the religious geneaology of Black Americans for about 500 years. Have not read this yet. 
Boyer, Paul S. Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
	Traces the social movements and institutional/legal regulations that combine in American book censorship practices. Especially thorough treatment of the early twentieth century, and a good look at the Vice Societies, which are an important model of censorship practitioners, having many contemporary analogues... late 20th century scholarship is a bit less exciting/thorough but he does introduce the effects of new media on book censorship, an interesting if speculative discussion.
DeGrazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere: the Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius. New York: Random House, 1992.
	massive book-history focusing on detailed examinations of "masterpieces" that have transgressed laws of obscenity, especially sexual. good Introduction.
Eberly, Rosa. Citizen Critics: Literary Public Spheres. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000. 
	have not read this yet; am interested in her conception of how readers regulate texts.
Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the Media. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998.
	catalogue of censored stories and works of lit/tv/cinema/news that have been suppressed in MASS media. Brief aside regarding MAJ from one of his interviewees. 
Garry, Patrick. An American Paradox: Censorship in a Nation of Free Speech. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
	philosophical engagement with the structure of laws and nationalist principles regarding censorship; very well-organized book, some good logical arguments, very interesting conception of the relation between social practices of reading, regulation, and censoring. not done reading.
Haight, Anne. Banned Books: Informal Notes on Some Books Banned for Various Reasons at Various Times and in Various Places. 3rd Edition. New York: Bowker, 1970.
	catalog; includes ancient and modern texts. good long-term view of book history...
Karolides, Nicholas (ed.) Censored Books II: Critical Viewpoints, 1985-2000. Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press, 2002.
	catalog, but with more extended (2-3 pp each) critical essays DEFENDING the books than in Haight...
Karolides, Nicholas (ed.) Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Political Grounds. New York: Facts on File, 1998.
	Similar structure to Critical Viewpoints, good Introduction.
Ladenson, Elisabeth. Dirt for Art's Sake: Books on Trial from Madame Bovary to Lolita. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
	good literary analysis of some censored masterpieces; good close readings of both the texts in question and the discourses about censorship that surround them. Especially good chapter on Lolita; heavy focus on sexual reasons for censoring but a useful description of publishing from the inside.
Rimer, Sarah. "Death Sentence Overturned in 1981 Killing of Officer." New York Times, 19 December 2001, p A20. Retrieved 17 November 2009. Web.
	in lay terms, why MAJ is no longer sentenced to death but is still in prison. 
LEGAL
Abu-Jamal v. Price. PADC No. 981947p (1998).
Abu-Jamal v. Horn. PADC No. 019014p (2008).
	MAJ sues prison for his punishment as a result of publication
Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal. 521 Pa. 188; 555 A.2d 846 (1989).
	the original murder trial including appeals
Dred Scott v. Sanford. 19 U.S. (How.) 393, 407 (1857).
	SCOTUS held that a slave, even one born in the US, and even their children, had no citizen's rights.
Furman v. Georgia. 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
McClesky v. Kemp. 481 U.S. 279 (1987).
Miller v. California. 415 U.S. 15 (1975)
	reversed ROTH decision
Pennsylvania v. Abu-Jamal. 498 U.S. 881 (1990).
Roth v. United States. 354 U.S. 476 (1957)
	first amendment case
Turner v. Safley. 482 U.S. 78, 17 S.Ct. 2254 (1987).

CRITICAL  THEORY
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. "Intellectuals and the Gallows." Ed. Joy James. Imprisoned Intellectuals. New York: Rowman  and Littlefield, 2003. 
	one essay in a good anthology including black liberationists, internationalists, etc; this essay is an examination of radical philosophy and history in relation to both the death penalty and the ostracizing of radical intellectuals from professional/academic communities.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. "Revolutionary Literature = Contraband." Journal of Prisoners on Prisons 2(1), Fall 1989.
	early and very brief (3 pp) article in which MAJ critiques the disparity between the prohibition of Revolutionary Worker, a black communist publication, with the distribution of other radical periodicals such as white supremacist literature, as well as pornography, taking Pennsylvania prisons as a case study but including anecdotal evidence from other prisons in US.
Agamben, Giorgio. The Signature of All Things: on Method. New York: Zone Books, 2009.
	This book traces three core concepts of philosophical historiography. first, it takes up the "paradigm", for which GA reads Foucault against Kuhn to argue that major shifts in society cannot be ascribed a singular origin, a unique moment in history. second, it addresses the "signature", in which GA reads Paracelsus in the context of modern critical theory, to argue that human agency is the means by which signification can have ontological effects on the world. third, he returns to Foucault's notion of "archaeology" by way of Melandri, to show the limits of philosophical inquiry into objects in and of past, on the basis of forgetting in the present. I'm not quite through this one yet, so this may change (and become more or less important as a result).
Allan, Keith and Kate Burridge. Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
	linguistic analysis of taboo, especially useful for two concepts: the first is a tripartite relationship between orthophemism, euphemism, and dysphemism as the possible forms of a taboo term (cf clinical/proper name, polite term, curse word). the second is the complexity of the relationship between how bad a word is and its social context. censoring, they argue, is therefore primarily a social practice, relying heavily on socially constructed values for its cues. 
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.
	useful definition of cultural production as more than just writing; also for concepts like the field of study, social capital, and disavowal. 
Cesaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000.
	need to re-read
Cleaver, Eldridge. Soul on Ice. New York: Delta, (1968) 1992. 
	see note to "All Things Censored", above.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1986.
	a schizo out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic on the analyst's couch; the body without organs; nomadology; philosophical and historiography model for writing... still reading; implicit critique so far of cultural elitism, i.e. no account for agency of imprisoned bodies as yet.
Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak.NY: Routledge, 1978.
	need to read; looking for deconstructive methodological model as well as how to think about difference other than in binary terms.
Derrida, Jacques. Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin. Trans. Patrick Mensah. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1998.
	"i have only one language, and it is not mine" - cf. deleuze and guattari's "minor literature", also spivak on the subaltern's agency to speak.
DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Centennial Edition. New York: Random House, 2003.
	especially important for the concept of "double consciousness". need to re-read
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1966.
	the devastating psychological effects on individuals of extended racism and colonization. need to re-read.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1975.
	the prison systems of the West transitioned from disciplinary power to regulatory power as their M.O.; especially see concepts of docile bodies and the panopticon, but generally a seminal work on the philosophy of incarceration.
Gramsci, Antonio. Prison Notebooks. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. 
	a little overwhelming; will look for a guide to important parts of this. structurally, MAJ's work is very similar in form. Content- well, like i said it's a bit overwhelming. 
Heiner, Brady T. "Foucault and the Black Panthers." City 11(3), 2007.
	Foucault read the black panthers' writings, including MAJ, and therefore turned from archaeology to geneaology, and became more radical. however, he also occluded that influence as he subsumed questions of race, class, and prison inside those of sexuality. 
McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1991.
	introduces the "bibliographic code" / paratextual/contextual elements of a work, in contrast to the "linguistic code" / textual content of a work. good eye for media specificity.
Ong, Walter. "Orality and Literacy." New York: Routledge, 1988.
	writing restructures consciousness, both instrumentally (prosthetic memory) and ontologically (author is removed from their text).
Pizer, Donald. "Self-Censorship and Literary Editing." Ed. Jerome McGann. Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation. Chicago, London: University of Chicago, 1985. Chapter 8: pp 144-161.
	you have to know an author's entire body of work before you can recognize self-censorship in their changes across drafts of any particular work. excellent methodological plan. 
Schmitt, Carl. The Concept of the Political. Trans. George Schwab. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007.
	the political is defined in terms of who your ENEMIES are, in other words, political action is that which takes place under conditions of existential importance. p.s. Schmitt turned out to be a Nazi, which makes his argument really interesting in hindsight.
Spivak, Gayatri C. "Can the Sub-Altern Speak?" Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. New York: Macmillan, 1988.
	nope. so the question becomes, who speaks FOR the subaltern? also, is MAJ subaltern? is he speaking? good transition to theories of performativity and vocality, as well as to studies of the visual and the aural communication in the next chapters. 

COMMUNICATIONS THEORY - NEEDS DEVELOPMENT
Ball-Rokeach, S.J., and M.L. DeFleur. "A dependency model of mass-media effects." Communication Research 3(3), 1976.
	communication takes place in a complex system of dependency relationships, involving individual perspectives/values, interpersonal relationships, institutional/social conditions, access to media, and national/legal conditions. focuses on audience's reception and understanding of mediated communication; can it be applied to production? need to go through works cited.
Davison, W.P. "The third-person effect in communication." Public Opinion Quarterly, 1983.
	hypothesis that individuals will perceive a message to have a greater effect on others than on themselves; when they see that message as detrimental, they will therefore take action to protect others from the message (censorship) -- perceptual part has been confirmed over and over; not so much the behavioral part.... 
DeSanctis, G., and M.S. Poole. "Understanding the use of group decision support systems: the theory of adaptive structuration." Organizations and Communication Technology. Ed. J. Fulk and D. Steinfeld. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990.
	technological resources combine with social rules of its use in individuals' practices; when the practices contradict either of the two conditions, it leads to a change in the structure of both rules and resources. applicability to prison lit?
Hayes, A.F., D.A. Scheufele, and M.E. Huge. "Nonparticipation as self-censorship."  Political Behavior, 2006.
	still need to read, esp. works cited. theory that individuals will hold back from participation in discourses (especially of political nature) when they disagree?
McLeod, Douglas, William Everland, and Amy Nathanson. "Support for Censorship of Violent and Misogynic Rap Lyrics: An Analysis of the Third Person Effect." Communication Research 24(2), 1997. 
	experiment to test Davison's hypothesis; stats confirmed perceptual component but had methodological problems with confirmation of behavioral component (ie only used self-reported measures to test whether individuals would support censorship, no test of actual behaviors.)
Orilikowski, Wanda. "Using technology and constituting structures." Organization Science, 2000.
	theory of adaptive structuration; cf desanctis and poole.

VISUAL CULTURE/SEMIOTIC THEORY
Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.
	still reading; important application of semiotic analysis especially connotation and denotation as the means of meaning getting into the image - meaning not original to the image, rather, human agency gives it meaning. cf. agamben on signatures.
Debray, Regis. Media Manifestos. Trans. Eric Rauth. New York: Verso, 1996.
	the emergence of a new medium/technology does not replace an older one; it does displace it as the dominant mode of communication and expression. need to re-read.
Gitelman, Lisa. Always Already New. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006.
	still need to read; looking for conceptualization of re-reading as well as methodological model for media studies. 
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: NYU, 2006.
	participatory culture useful to explain the discourses online about MAJ's work and figure; collective intelligence maybe less relevant but interesting in terms of the re-hashing of the legal case (also online); convergence of books, radio, and digital reproductions to form a nebulous category that may or may not define MAJ's cultural production.
Lotman, Yurij, and Boris Uspensky. "On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture." Critical Theory since 1965. Ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Seale. Sarasota, FL: University of Florida, 1989.
	all signification (cultural communication) takes place in a layered environment including the individual, their language, their cultural background, history -- everything that is intelligible inhabits the same "semiosphere", outside which there is only nonsense; innovations happen when multiple/different semiospheres collide.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media - the Extensions of Man. New York: Gingko, 2004.
	the medium is the message; the message of every medium is another medium; hot and cool media; the prosthesis of mediated communication. technological determinism.
Mitchell, W.J.T. "What do pictures want?" Chicago: Unversity of Chicago, 2006.
	need to re-read; looking for visual culture methodology
Nakamura, Lisa. Digitizing Race: Visual Culture and the Internet.
	the structural racism of the internet is visually identifiable; exposes the fallacy of the internet as a culturally neutral space. need to re-read.
Oguibe, Olu. "Photography and the Substance of the Image". Visual Culture Reader. 
	the meaning of visual images is more dependent upon their uses and effects than on their contents. especially interesting discussion of African uses of photography as material objects rather than faithful representations of reality.
Patton, Cindy. "White Racism/Black Signs: Censorship and Images of Race Relations." Journal of Communication 45(2), 1995. 
	traces the early twentieth century's cinematic representations of race in their political, social, legal context; good analysis of how culture industry's concern about racial prejudice instead of racial violence led to change in interpretation of the visual sign of black bodies. that is, black bodies become the signifiers of white racism rather than black people. also important is the rise and fall of film censorship, which CP links to a change in the locus of affective meaning, from the visual sign to the dialogue between characters.
Rogoff, Irit. "Studying Visual Culture." Visual Culture Reader.
	how do you solve a problem like Media?

MISCELLANEOUS
Kovach, Bill and Tom Rosenstiel. The Elements of Journalism. 2nd Ed. New York: Three Rivers, 2007. 
	since MAJ was punished for "conducting the business or profession of journalism," it makes sense to analyze his writing not only as literature but also in the context of journalism's codes of representation. What might MAJ's "elements of journalism" be?
North, Douglass. Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge Universirty, 1990.
	in looking for the uses and effects of censored works, it makes sense to be able to recognize how changes in institutions take place. this study organizes that line of inquiry by showing how small changes need to accrue over time in order to affect institutional structures.