David Thorburn is an American professor emeritus of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is notable for media studies, literary criticism, and teaching. His poetry has appeared in Slate Magazine,Slate Magazine, March 28, 2006, poem by David Thorburn, The Man I Killed, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 Threepenny Review, The Atlantic, Poem by David Thorburn, Oct. 1, 2007, The Atlantic, Lise, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 and elsewhere. His book of poems Knots was published in 2020. He was one of the first academics to study the medium of television as an academic field of inquiry.Elizabeth Jensen, June 15, 2003, Los Angeles Times, TV gets its PhD: Academics say it's a legitimate discipline, but the scholar tribe lacks consensus, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013, “... (TV) ... a fast-changing discipline, an 'embryonic stew,' says MIT professor of literature David Thorburn, one of the first U.S. academics to study television years ago...”Professor of Literature, Director of MIT Communications Forum, David Thorburn, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 He was the director of MIT's Communications Forum for twenty years. He is regarded as an authority on modernist literature, and he was selected by the Teaching Company to teach the course Masterworks of Early 20th-Century Literature.

Early years Thorburn received a bachelor's degree from Princeton and an MA and PhD from Stanford and taught at Yale. A student, Thomas E. Ricks, described Professor Thorburn as a challenging and thought-provoking teacher, remembering that one of his challenges——to tell why Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury was not a great novel——was one of the "best assessments" he ever got during his studies there.Thomas E. Ricks, April 20, 2009, The Washington Post, Outlook: Shut Down West Point, Annapolis, Air Force Academy, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013, "...Prof. David Thorburn ... Here's a challenge--tell my why Mickey Spillane's 'I, the Jury' is NOT a great novel..." After ten years at Yale, he joined the literature faculty at MIT. His research interests include modernist writers such as Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, and James Joyce as well as later writers such as John Updike. His fiction anthology entitled Initiation: Stories and Short Novels on Three Themes became a popular source for high school and college students.

Media studies

Thorburn joined MIT in 1976. He was the founder and first director of the MIT Film and Media Studies program which is now known as the Comparative Media Studies program. In 1996, he became director of MIT's Communications Forum, which sponsors panel discussions with particular focus on how communications are affected by politics and culture, with special attention to emerging technologies such as the Internet. As director of MIT's Communications Forum, Thorburn helped bring conferences on controversial topics to MIT, such as the views of V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai regarding the future of the U. S. Post Office,Janelle Nanos, June 2012, Boston Magazine, Return to Sender , Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 as well as the fate of the newspaper industry in the digital age,Boston.com, October 7, 2010, MIT, Communications Forum: Online Migration Of Newspapers, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 and copyright issues featuring Richard Stallman.GNU.org, April 19, 2001, MIT Communications Forum, Copyright and Globalization in the Age of Computer Networks, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 He brought television writer David Milch, who served as a writer and producer on Hill Street Blues, to a class he taught on the media.Harvey Blume, April 30, 2013, The Boston Globe, Q&A with David Milch, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 He suggested in a 1977 critique in the Georgia Review that television drama should be studied with the "same care and attentiveness we bring to the study of literature, music and film."Noel Holston, June 27, 2013, Peabody Awards, Horace Newcomb Retires from Peabodys , Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 Regarding the future of newspapers, he forecast that national brands would survive but regional and local papers might have to struggle, although he remains optimistic about the possibilities of technology:

Thorburn is regarded as an authority on how media influences politics. His course American Television: A Cultural History, examined the medium in a context of humanism. He was one of the first scholars to analyze television from a scholarly perspective. In 2008, he described the World Wide Web as not as powerful then as traditional media such as television, although it was increasingly a major source of fund-raising for candidates.Andy Greenberg, January 11, 2008, Forbes Magazine, Curtains For Ron Paul's Web Crusade, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013 In an essay in The American Prospect, he wondered whether the human disposition to view new technologies through the use of metaphor might be limiting our understanding of the intrinsic qualities and possibilities of the Internet.David Thorburn, Dec. 19, 2001, The American Prospect, Essay: Web of Paradox, Accessed Aug. 22, 2013

Awards and honors Thorburn was awarded Fulbright, Woodrow Wilson, and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships. Professor David Thorburn, Ph.D. at The Great Courses, Accessed December 17, 2023 He won MIT's highest teaching award, the MacVicar Faculty Fellowship, in 2002.

Scholarship and teaching Thorburn is a critic of over-analysis of literature with excessive focus on trivia.

Books • Initiation: Stories and Short Novels on Three Themes, edited with an introduction (Harcourt Brace, 1971; second edition, 1976).

• Romanticism: Vistas, Instances, Continuities, co-edited with Geoffrey Hartman (Cornell University Press, 1973).

• Conrad's Romanticism (Yale University Press, 1974; second printing, 1975).

• John Updike: A Collection of Critical Essays, co-edited with Howard Eiland (Prentice Hall, 1979).

• Media and Popular Culture, General Editor, book series (HarperCollins, seven volumes, 1988-92).

• Media in Transition, General Editor, book series (MIT Press, 2003-08).

• Democracy and New Media, co-edited with Henry Jenkins (MIT Press, 2003).

• Rethinking Media Change, co-editor (MIT Press, 2003).

• Masterworks of Twentieth Century Fiction. DVD Lecture series. (The Teaching Company, Chantilly, VA., 2007; revised edition, 2009).

• The Film Experience (MIT OpenCourseWare, 2013). 24 lectures.

• Knots. poems. (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2020).

References

External links The Film Experience, MIT OpenCourseWare.