Eric McLuhan


Eric McLuhan was a communications theorist and media ecologist, son of Marshall McLuhan.

Biography

Eric McLuhan was the eldest of Marshall McLuhan's six children. He 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 Laws of Media: The New Science, Media and Formal Cause, and Theories of Communication. According to McLuhan associate Dean Motter, Eric also collaborated with his father on some books as a ghostwriter.
His teaching experiences were in the 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 was the author of Electric Language, The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake and The Sensus Communis, Synesthesia, and the Soul: An Odyssey. He was also editor of the journal McLuhan Studies and has overseen several collections of his father's work: The Book of Probes, Marshall McLuhan Unbound, The Medium and the Light ; and the co-editor of Essential McLuhan.
Recent work included a collaboration with mime Wayne D. Constantineau, produced in a series called The Human Equation, which curiously included 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.
He lived in Ontario, Canada, continuing in retirement to work on new books, projects & collections, his father's works, his own and with collaborators.
He died in Bogotá, a day after delivering the inaugural speech for the Doctorate in Communication at University of La Sabana.

List of works

Editor