Explorations

 

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Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, principally edited by Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan, was the first postwar journal to engage directly with the new “grammars” of mid-century new media of communication. Launched in Toronto in 1953, at the very moment that television made its national debut in Canada, Explorations presented a mosaic of approaches to contemporary media culture and became the site in which McLuhan and Carpenter first formulated their most striking insights about new media in the electric age. The extraordinary breadth of contributions to Explorations from leading thinkers across the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences makes this journal a founding publication in the now burgeoning field of media studies. Originally funded by a Ford Foundation grant, the eight co-edited issues of Explorations ran from 1953 to 1957 and have been reprinted for the first time in sixty years.

 

The reissued volumes, One through Eight, are newly available as print-on-demand facsimiles of the original publications, via Wipf & Stock publishers: http://wipfandstock.com/explorations-1.html

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During the 1950’s, Carpenter also presented an “Explorations” television program on the Canadian Broadcast Company.
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Title graphic for “Explorations Part Three: The Language of Gesture,” 1957
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Still from Carpenter’s Explorations program, The Language of Gesture, 1957
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Still from Carpenter’s Explorations program, The Language of Gesture, 1957
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Still from Carpenter’s Explorations program, The Language of Gesture, 1957
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Stills from another of the Explorations tv series, with program host Mavor Moore, 1957

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