The McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology's original constitution acts as a guiding template, not only for what McLuhan intended happen here, but as a framework to explore the relevance of his work in a contemporary landscape. McLuhan’s work continues to provide inspiration for new theories of media and communication globally and the Centre offers a critical space to engage with these ideas. To adequately pursue this requires the inclusion of feminist, queer, and decolonizing critical perspectives on the study of technology and culture.
The Centre is a place for these ideas to convene through events, such as the historic Monday Night Seminars, Conferences, PhD Research Fellowships, and Working Groups. As McLuhan stated: “The object of the Centre is to pursue by a wide variety of approaches an investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies.” The Centre aims to encompass the ways technology and culture inhabit media studies across faculties at all three campuses of the University of Toronto.
There is a revolving renaissance around McLuhan: he is lauded then dismissed, seemingly put to rest, before being resuscitated once again. While McLuhan himself might not have had his eyes directly on economics, politics, and bodies, if the original theory of the “the medium is the message” is carried through - where the message of the medium is the change in pace, pattern and scale a media introduces into human affairs - then the message of the medium is also an invitation to consider social structures and power dynamics. The McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology is a destination for the interdisciplinary consideration, unraveling, and reconstitution of a McLuhanesque capturing of technological life.
Director, Professor Sarah Sharma
Professor Sarah Sharma was appointed the Director of the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology in 2017. She is an Associate Professor of Media Theory at the University of Toronto and holds her faculty appointment at both the Institute of Communication, Culture, and Technology and the Faculty of Information. Sarah is currently leading research at the Centre concerned with a revising and extension of McLuhan's key theoretical media works, in conversation with critical cultural media and communication theory.
The Toronto School media theories of Harold Adams Innis and Marshall McLuhan form a significant backdrop for Sarah’s research and teaching. She focuses on topics related to time, technology and social difference as well as feminist approaches to technology. Her first book, In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics was published by Duke University Press in 2014. Sarah is working on her second monograph, which considers the relationship between technology and the gendered politics of exit. This book outlines the possibility and necessity of a feminist “technological determinist” politics rooted in McLuhan’s media theory.
At the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, Sarah is also editing a volume entitled MsUnderstanding Media, based on her first year of programming. This edited book brings together media scholars to engage with a feminist approach to The Medium is The Message.
Explore a selection of Sarah's works on McLuhan and Innis here:
Going to Work in Mommy's Basement Boston Review (June 2018)
Exit and the Extensions of Man Transmediale Online Journal (April 2017)
In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics Duke University Press (2014)
It Changes Space and Time: Introducing Power-Chronography Communication Matters: Materialities, Infrastructure, and Flows. Jeremy Packer and Steve Wiley (eds), Routledge (2012)
Taxis as Media: A Temporal Materialist Reading of the Taxicab Social Identities: Journal of Race, Nation, and Culture 14.4 (July 2008)
Baudrillard at the Edge of the Technological Dynamo Without a Theory of Technology Communication and Critical Cultural Studies, Volume 5, Issue 1 (2008)
Research Assistant 2017/18: Sarah Wilkins
Photo: Sara Martel
The McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology is an initiative of the Faculty of Information (iSchool) at the University of Toronto. It aims to continue the ground-breaking work initiated by the Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), who spent his career as Professor of English at the University of Toronto. The Centre had its beginnings on October 24, 1963, when John Kelly (President of St. Michael’s College) and Claude Bissell (President of U of T) decided to establish a Centre for Culture and Technology, which later became McLuhan’s office.
Located in the historic McLuhan coach house (39A Queen’s Park Crescent East), The McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology is now a gathering place for critical scholars from all disciplines to meet, share, and develop scholarly interests on the impact of digital technologies on culture. The quaint and quiet coach house is set against the backdrop of a bustling Toronto and is an incubator for scholars of media studies across the University of Toronto’s three campuses.
You can see more historic photos of McLuhan and the Coach House on the Monday Night Seminars page.
Links for events and initiatives related to Marshall McLuhan and his legacy that take place outside
the Centre for Culture and Technology.
Marshall McLuhan Lecture at the transmediale festival
The Marshall McLuhan Projects are presented by transmediale in cooperation with the Embassy of Canada in Berlin. They comprise the Marshall McLuhan Lecture and accompanying programming.
McLuhan at St. Michael's College SMC One: The McLuhan Seminar in Creativity and Technology
Offered for the first time in 2018-2019, St. Michael's College McLuhan Seminar is an exploration of the relationship between creativity and technology. The Seminar is inspired by McLuhan’s innovative thinking. First-year students will explore how the humanities relate to other fields of thought in addressing the individual, social, and cultural experiences and effects of technological innovation.
For additional information, inquries regarding usage rights, copyright, licensing or other matters related to the life and work of Marshall McLuhan.
The Marshall McLuhan Collection at the John M. Kelly Library
The Marshall McLuhan Collection was created in 2010 from material within the John M. Kelly Library to mark the centenary of McLuhan’s birth as well as to celebrate McLuhan’s tenure with the University of St. Michael’s College from 1946-1980.
The Marshall McLuhan Library at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library
The Fisher is proud to hold Marshall McLuhan's working library. Holding over 6000 volumes, the library was used heavily by McLuhan in the writing of his most famous works, including Understanding Media, The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Medium is the Massage.
The Marshall McLuhan Salon in Berlin
A multimedia information centre of the Embassy of Canada in Berlin that was named after the famous Canadian media philosopher Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911 – 1980). It presents Canada using state-of-the-art technical equipment.