Quick Facts
Biography
Eric McLuhan (born 1941) is a communications theorist and media ecologist, one of two sons of Marshall McLuhan.
Biography
Eric McLuhan received his BSc in Communications from Wisconsin State University in 1972 and his M.A. and PhD in English Literature from the University of Dallas in 1980 and 1982. In 2007, he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. In 2011, the University of St. Michael’s College in Toronto, Canada awarded him an L.L.D. of Sacred Letters.
Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman and Eric McLuhan together coined the term 'media ecology ' during a conversation in 1967.
Marshall and Eric McLuhan co-authored the books d Laws of Media: The New Science (1990), Media and Formal Cause (2011), and Theories of Communication (2011). According to McLuhan associate Dean Motter, Eric also collaborated with his father on some books as a ghostwriter.
His teaching experiences have been in the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto and with the McLuhan Program International. He was Director of Media Studies at the Harris Institute for the Arts in Toronto for 17 years. Prior to that he taught and tutored at York University, Dawson College and Ontario College of Art. Likewise, he was a founding partner at McLuhan and Davies Communications. He also performed the original Fordham Experiment.
McLuhan is the author of Electric Language (1998), The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake (1997) and The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul: An Odyssey (2015). He is also editor of the journal McLuhan Studies and has overseen several collections of his father's work: The Book of Probes (2011), Marshall McLuhan Unbound (2005, with Terrence Gordon), The Medium and the Light (2010); and the co-editor of Essential McLuhan (1997, with Frank Zingrone).
Recent work includes a collaboration with mime Wayne D. Constantineau, produced in a series called The Human Equation (BPS Books), which curiously includes a board game. Also forthcoming is: The Dance of the Ages: Egyptian Art of the Old Kingdom and Its Relevance to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge Scholars Press.
Eric lives in Ontario, Canada, continuing in retirement to work on new books, projects & collections, his father's works, his own and with collaborators.
List of Works
City as Classroom (with Marshall McLuhan, Kathryn Hutchon), 1977
Laws of Media: The New Science (with Marshall McLuhan), U of Toronto Press, 1988
The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake, U of Toronto Press, 1997
Electric Language: Understanding the Present, Stoddart, 1998
The Human Equation, Book I: The Constant in Human Development and Culture from Pre-Literacy to Post-Literacy (with W. D. Constantineau), BPS Books, 2010
Media and Formal Cause (with Marshall McLuhan), NeoPoeisis Press, 2011
Theories of Communication (with Marshall McLuhan), Peter Lang, 2011
The Human Equation, Book II: The Science of Investigation (with W. D. Constantineau), BPS Books, 2011
The Human Equation, Book III: Know Thyself: Action and Perception (with W. D. Constantineau), BPS Books, 2012
The Human Equation, Book IV: Mime and Media I (with W. D. Constantineau), BPS Books, 2016 [Forthcoming]
The Human Equation, Book V: Mime and Media II (with W. D. Constantineau), BPS Books, 2016 [Forthcoming]
Cynic Satire, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015
The Sensus Communis: Synesthesia, and the Soul, BPS Books, 2015
Editor
Essential McLuhan (with F. Zingrone), Stoddart, 1995
Who Was Marshall McLuhan? (with F. Zingrone, W. Constantineau), Stoddart, 1996
The Medium and the Light: Writings on Religion by Marshall McLuhan, (With Jacek Schlarek) Stoddart, 1998
The Book of Probes (with W. Kuhns), Gingko Press, 2004
McLuhan Unbound, Gingko Press, 2005