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About Us
The McLuhan Global Research Network ("The site of sites for all things McLuhan") is an independent not for profit virtual learning and collaboration platform where scholars, researchers and practitioners extend the ideas and insights of Canada's communications pioneers, Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, and their successors into the 21st Century.
Incubated in 2000 at the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto, by members of Dr Liss Jeffrey's graduate seminar CT 1005 Understanding Media and McLuhan. The McGrn continues the ideas and energy of the 1998 Coach House Festival and conference, also led by DrJ.
This web site hosts the McLuhan Global Research Network, its archive, resources, projects, and links to other McLuhan interests.
New in 2007
The Media Ecology Café is a 'nomad circle' set up to welcome Danish doctoral candidate Mogens Oleson to Toronto, and to provide a moveable scholarly feast of ideas and conversations for the diasporic community of McLuhan scholars in Toronto, who are creating a new space in the vacuum left by the destruction of a significant McLuhan legacy at the Coach House and the University of Toronto.
netizen-news.ca is our virtual gathering place. Check it out.
What else?
The McLuhan Global Research Network has fought consistently to affirm the academic and heritage presence of the McLuhan legacy at the University of Toronto.
While interest in McLuhan's ideas may be homeless in Toronto, this is a temporary set back; these powerful ideas and insights will find a home. Already McLuhan's ideas are part of the world's conceptual legacy, the fabric of thought, and the metaphors we live by. The global research network is glad to help foster the alchemy of this transmutation wherever possible, locally in Toronto and globally wherever McLuhan scholarship flourishes. For further information on the state of play of the current struggle at Toronto, or to help nurture future possibilities, please contact admin2007@mcluhan.org.
This moving event was highly successful thanks to all and especially playwright Alice Van Buren and Now Magazine's Susan Cole. Thanks to Rowers Public House on Harbord Street for welcoming us at the last minute, when the McLuhan Coach House became suddenly and quite illegimately unavailable.
McLuhan global research network Founding director is McLuhan scholar Dr Liss Jeffrey, with help from Gisela McKay (pixcode), Fraser McAninch (Offline Research), and many more. Annual event the CoachHouse Festival (near) July 21 (McLuhan's birthday). On December 31, 2005, Commemorate the 25th anniversary of McLuhan's death with a Multilateral Mobile Moveable Feast (Toronto, Berlin, Vienna, Mexico City) Contact us to take part: admin2007@mcluhan.org
Two annual events:
The first annual event is the CoachHouse Festival (near) July 21st (McLuhan's birthday).
Next Coach House Festival: Saturday, July 22, 2007. Visit netizen-news.ca for details, or contact admin2007@mcluhan.org
In fall, 1998 the first Coach House Festival, featuring an international conference and art events, was held at U of T in a vain effort to encourage the university to develop the intellectual and heritage legacy of the Toronto School of Communications and the historic Coach House.
The summer Coach House festivals began in 2000 as a finale for Dr Jeffrey's graduate seminar Understanding McLuhan and Media.
On December 31, we commemorate the anniversary of McLuhan's death with a Mobile Moveable Feast, visiting landmarks and familiar haunts of Marshall McLuhan within his city, Toronto. We also take a contemplative walk at one of Toronto's Labyrinths and end the day with refreshments at the Park Plaza overlooking the Royal Ontario Museum.
Contact us to take part admin2007@mcluhan.org
What else?
The McLuhan Global Research Network has fought consistently to affirm the academic and heritage presence of the McLuhan legacy at the Coach House and at University of Toronto.
It has been a creative if disheartening struggle.
While institutional support for those seriously interested in McLuhan's ideas may be flaccid at Toronto, this is a temporary set back; these powerful ideas and insights will find a home. The hostility toward McLuhan will run its course, and history will render judgement on those who have been so harsh and resistant to ideas that have proven so fertile across the disciplines and professions. ( As for those men without courage -- and those who stood by holding their coats -- who built ego empires on McLuhan's ideas, and turned the Coach House into a private club, before denying any place for McLuhan's legacy at Toronto, the verdict is already in on such contemptible, cowardly, and narcissistically vain sycophants in McLuhan's day, obvious impostors after his death…) Already McLuhan's ideas form an undeniable part of the world's conceptual legacy, passionately pro and critically con; his insights inform the metaphors we live by. The global research network is glad to help foster the alchemy of this transmutation where possible, locally in Toronto and globally wherever McLuhan scholarship flourishes.
For further information on the state of play of the ongoing struggle at Toronto, in Toronto, or to help nurture future possibilities, please contact admin2007@mcluhan.org.
From 2006: The forum for Third Thursdays
The New media and policy working collaboratory at the historic McLuhan Coach House starts January 19th: 17:30 - 19:30 Topic "Media ecology: Steps toward a cultural environment movement" Special guest: Neil Andersen, media literacy educator, Animator: Dr Liss Jeffrey.
The McLuhan scholarly community, and long time associates of the Program were denied access to the McLuhan Coach House, in an astonishing and mean spirited turn of events, and so found alternative welcoming spaces for these dialogues.
Forum and virtual performance place for The Dialogue Theatre, an emerging alliance seeking to reverse the decline of dialogue by creating an open experimental space for dialogue, where we can stop, take a deep breath, and go back to some basics, speaking, listening, performing, telling our stories, and showing our multi media works, and where we can convene an engaged circle of open minds and compassionate hearts. There are no spectators in the Dialogue Theatre. Start small, start somewhere.
(First event January 30, 2006: "Forked tongues and broken speech: The voice of the arts in the US culture wars" Special guest, New Mexico playwrite Alice van Buren, animator Dr Liss Jeffrey. Interested? Contact admin2007@mcluhan.org)
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