Books

 

BOOKS

McLUHAN IN SPACE: A CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY

forthcoming in translation from

Communication University of China

Press (Beijing)  July 2026

(1st ed. UTP 2002)

 

   MEDIATIC SHAKESPEARE

[forthcoming UTP 2025]

“fabulous readings”; “stunningly original”;

“a near-perfect mastery of primary and secondary sources”;

“eye-opening”; “well-structured and lucidly written”

[from the pre-publication reviews]

Stephen Wittek, “Review of Mediatic Shakespeare,” Shakespeare (13 January 2026)

“compelling erudition”; “a maestro in complete control over a staggering abundance of material”; “a genuinely daring and thought-provoking piece of scholarship that will surely have a wide-ranging impact on the fields of Shakespeare studies and media studies alike. Cavell has pointed the way toward an exiting new framework for thinking about Shakespearean drama and early modern literature in general.”

*McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book of 2024, Media Ecology Association*

*2025 Book Award Honorable Mention, American Anthropology Association, Council for Museum Anthropology*

“charts the intellectual life of an epoch”; “a major contribution to (a) the history of anthropology, including visual anthropology; (b) the history of media and communications studies; (c) collecting and museology”  [from the pre-publication reviews]

Speechsong: The Gould / Schoenberg Dialogues (New York / Los Angeles: Punctum Press, 2019)

* Installed at West Cultural Centre, The Hague, Summer 2023 [westdenhaag.nl]

  • Gödel Escher Bach Exhibition, West Den Hague Cultural Centre, The Hague, Netherlands, an installation based on Richard Cavell, SpeechSong (Punctum P, 2020): 38:00 min. 4:3 video with synchronized lighting; commissioned for the exhibition and realised by Baruch E. Gotlieb

 

house friedman 001

Friedman House

San Francisco: ORO Press, for the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture 2017

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                       

Remediating remediating aupMcLuhan 

Amsterdam University Press,

2016

(ISBN 9789089649508)

Republished London: Routledge 2025

 

 

 

  

nature of mediaMarshall McLuhan, On the Nature of Media: Essays 1952-1978, compiled, edited and introduced by Richard Cavell

Berkeley and Hamburg: Gingko P, 2016

 

 

 

 

Marshall McLuhan, McLuhan Bound:                                                                                Essays on Understanding Media,                                                                                          compiled, edited and introduced by                                                                                 Richard Cavell (same text as above, with new introduction for this edition) (Beijing:                    Sowe, 2016)

 

 

 

 

marinetti dines_cover02_March3

 

Marinetti Dines with the High Command: A Manifesto and Five AeroPoems

(Toronto: Guernica Essential Drama Series, 2014)

“a brilliant and important book”

–Marjorie Perloff

 

 

McLuhan in Space: A Cultural Geography (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2002),

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “New Cultural Spaces: Cultural Studies in Canada today,” The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 29.1/2 (2007), Special Double Issue, co-edited and co-introduced, with Imre Szeman

 

 

 

 

 

sexing maple

 

 

Sexing the Maple: A Canadian Sourcebook, edited with Peter Dickinson

(Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2006)

 

 

 

 

 Love, Hate and Fear in Canada’s Cold War

 edited and introduced

(Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2004)

 

 

 

 

Book Chapters

  • “Canadian Cinema and the Intellectual Milieu,” in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Cinema, ed. Janine Marchessault and Will Straw (N.Y.: Oxford UP, in press 2018)
  • “Mediatic Shakespeare: McLuhan and the Bard,” in Shakespeare in Canada, ed. Irena Makaryk (Ottawa: Ottawa UP, 2017) 157-176
  • “Remembering Canada: The Politics of Cultural Memory,” in Cynthia Sugars, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature (N.Y.: Oxford UP, 2016), 64-79
  • “Mechanical Brides and Vampire Squids” in Marshall McLuhan and Vilém Flusser’s Communication and Aesthetic Theories Revisited, eds. Melentie Pandilovski and Tom Kohut (Winnipeg: Video Pool, 2015), 281-297.
  • “McLuhan, Turing, and the Question of Determinism,” in Traffic: Media as Infrastructures and Cultural Practices, ed. Marion Nadotdotser-Lather and Christoph Neubert (Leiden: Brill, 2015) 149-159
  • “McLuhan and Aesthetics,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly (2nd ed. N.Y.: Oxford UP, 2014) 4: 283-286 (double columns)
  • “Anthems and Anthologies,” in Anthologizing Canadian Literature: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Robert Lecker (Waterloo: WLU P, 2015): 35-50
  •  “DreaMedium®,” in Das Medien Meiner Traüme,” ed. Ralf Adelmann und Ulrike Bergermann (Berlin: Verbrecher Verlag,  2013) 15-18 [festschrift for H. Winkler]
  • “In-Corporating the Global Village,” in McLuhan’s  Global Village Today, ed. Carmen Birkle, Angela Krewani and Martin Kuester (London:  Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 7-14
  • “Jane Rule and the Memory of Canada,” in Unruly Penelopes and the Ghosts: Narratives of English Canada, ed. Eva Darius-Beautell (Kitchener/Waterloo: WLUP, 2012): 157-181
  • “From Earth City to Global Village: McLuhan, Media and the Cosmopolis,” in Architecture and the Construction of the Canadian Fabric, ed. Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe (Vancouver: UBC P, 2011) 365-385.
  • “Vorwort” to Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg-Galaxis: Die Entstehung des typographischen Menschen (Berkeley / Hamburg: Gingko P, 2011): 4-6.
  • Afterword: Mediating Anne,” in Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, ed. Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre (Toronto: U Toronto P, 2010): 212-21.
  • “Specters of McLuhan: Derrida, Media, and Materiality,” in Transforming McLuhan, ed. Paul Grosswiler (N.Y.: Peter Lang, 2010) 135-161
  • “McLuhan’s Borderline Case Revisited,” Comment comparer le Canada avec les Etats-Unis aujourd’hui: enjeux et pratiques, éds. Hélène Quanquin, Christine Lorre-Johnston et Sandrine Ferré-Rode (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2009): 25-50.
  • “McLuhans Gespenster: Elf Anmerkungen für ein neues Lesen” [Specters of McLuhan: 11 Notes for a Re-Reading],  McLuhan neu lesen: Kritische Analysen zu Medien und Kultur im 21. Jahrhundert, trans. Michael Barchet (Bielefeld: Transcript P, 2008): 270-284.
  • “McLuhan and the Body as Medium,” in Sk-Interfaces: Exploding Borders – Creating Membranes in Art, Technology, and Society, ed. Jens Hauser (Liverpool: U Liverpool P / Foundation for Art and Creative Technology [FACT], 2008) 32-41.
  • “World Famous Across Canada, or Transnational Localities,” in Trans.Can.Lit.: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature, ed. Smaro Kamboureli and Roy Miki (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier P, 2007) 85-92.
  • “Histories of Forgetting: Canadian Representations of War and the Politics of Cultural Memory,” in Serge Jaumain and Éric Remacle, eds., Mémoire de guerre et constructions de la paix: Mentalités et choix politiques—Belgique / Europe / Canada (Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2006): 67-80.
  • “Madama Butterfly and the Absence of Empire,” for A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts and Contexts of ‘Madame Butterfly,’ ed. Jonathan Wisenthal et al, (Toronto: U Toronto P, 2006): 155-169.
  • “‘An Ordered Absence’: Defeatured Topologies in Canadian Literature,” in Downtown Canada: Writing Canadian Cities, ed. Justin D. Edwards and Douglas Ivison (Toronto: U Toronto P,  2005) 14-31
  • “Material Querelle: The Case of Frye and McLuhan,” in Gary Genosko (ed.), Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (N.Y.: Routledge, 2005) 242-261 [reprinted from Essays on Canadian Writing 68 (2000): 238-261]
  • ”McLuhan and Spatial Communication,” in Gary Genosko (ed.), Marshall McLuhan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory (N.Y.: Routledge, 2005) 91-107 [reprinted from Western Journal of Communication 63.3 (1999): 348-363]
  • “Transvestic Sites: Postcolonialism, Pedagogy, and Politics,” anthologized in Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism, ed. Cynthia Sugars (Peterborough: Broadview P, 2004): 335-348
  • “‘Dreaming Awake’: Mass Media as Ritual,” in Ritual Economies [Working Papers in the Humanities 13], ed. Lorenzo Buj (Windsor: U Windsor P, 2004) 35-55.
  • “McLuhan in Space,” in At the Speed of Light There is Only Illumination: A Reappraisal of Marshall McLuhan, ed. John Moss and Linda Morra (Ottawa: U Ottawa P, 2004): 165-184.
  • “McLuhan in Spatiu [McLuhan in Space],” Jurnalism & Comunicare: Revista Romana de Stiinte ale Comunicarii [Journalism & Communication: Romanian Science of Communication Review] 4 (2003): 27-44 (trans. Radu Dobrescu)
  • “Baroness Elsa and the Aesthetics of Empathy: A Mystery and a Speculation,” in The Politics of Cultural Mediation: Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Felix Paul Greve (Edmonton: University of Alberta P, 2003): 25-39; co-published as vol. 29.1 of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature
  • “Photographic Pedagogies,” in Integrating Visual and Verbal Literacies, ed. W.F. Garrett-Petts and Donald Lawrence (Winnipeg: Inkshed, 1996): 101-105.
  • “Theorizing Canadian Space: Postcolonial Articulations,” Canada: Theoretical Discourse / Discours théoriques, eds. T. Goldie, C. Lambert, R. Lorimer (Montréal: Association for Canadian Studies, 1994): 75-104
  • “Representing Writing: The Emblem as (Hiero)Glyph,” in The European Emblem: Selected Papers from the Glasgow Conference, ed. Bernard F. Scholz, Michael Bath and David Weston (Leiden: Brill, 1990): 167-190
  • “‘Visibile parlare’: Verga, Derrida and the Poetics of Voice,” in Perspectives on Nineteenth-Century Italian Novels, ed. Guido Pugliese [University of Toronto  Italian Studies 5] (Toronto: Dovehouse, 1989): 135-144
  • “Bakhtin Reads De Mille: Canadian Literature, Postmodernism, and the Theory of  Dialogism,” in Future Indicative: Canadian Literature and Literary Theory, ed. John  Moss (Ottawa: U Ottawa P, 1987): 205-211