McLuhan's message is medium for communications prof

Michael Darroch can imagine renowned scholar Marshall McLuhan standing on the front steps of Assumption University, gazing out at the Ambassador Bridge and across the Detroit River to the United States, the kernels of the most well-known concepts in communications and media studies fulminating in his mind.

 

“McLuhan was always very fascinated by the U.S.,” said Dr. Darroch, an assistant professor in the Department of Communications, Media and Film. “Canada had the distinct position of being an outsider, in that it was positioned between the old European and new American empires. McLuhan felt Canada provided an outsider’s perspective on the raging new technological maelstrom happening in the U.S., the implications of which they may not have been able to see themselves.”

 

McLuhan eventually became one of the most well-known scholars in his field, always remembered for concepts and phrases he coined such as “the global village” and “the medium is the message.” And while much of his best-known work was done at the University of Toronto, McLuhan taught at Assumption University from 1944-46 before moving on to St. Michael’s College.

 

“There’s definitely a historical connection to Windsor,” said Darroch. “It’s during his time here that he started to correspond with a lot of international thinkers. And the concept of borders as a metaphor for points of connection between different modes of thinking became very prominent in his research and writing.”

 

Darroch recently received a three-year, $83,407 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to study the early work of McLuhan and his collaborators. Fourteen UWindsor faculty members were awarded a total of $644,745 in new SSHRC grants for a variety of research projects this year.

 

In addition to looking at his brief time in Windsor, Darroch will study the Explorations research group McLuhan helped establish in Toronto.

 

“Explorations was one of the richest interdisciplinary research projects in Canada, which sought to understand the effects of new media of their time: radio, film, television and even computers,” he said. “There was a tendency in the U.S. to focus on so-called administrative communications studies, such as how technology could be used to improve organizational efficiencies, whereas in Canada, people like McLuhan started with a critical social view of media, understanding new technology as an extension of existing art forms, including literature and visual arts.”

 

A great source for Darroch’s work is the archival correspondence between McLuhan and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, an urban planner and member of Explorations. She worked with and translated many of the writing of Sigfried Giedeon, a Swiss art historian and architectural critic who wrote some very influential books in the 1940s and placed a great deal of emphasis on interdisciplinary relationships.

 

“McLuhan started corresponding with Giedeon in 1943 and continued studying his writings while he was here in Windsor,” Darroch said. “He felt that there should be a greater connection between science and art, between natural sciences and humans sciences. This was a major influence on McLuhan.”