Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 - December 31, 1980)

In the early 1950s, McLuhan began the Communication and Culture seminars, funded by the Ford Foundation, at the University of Toronto. As his notoriety grew, he received a growing number of offers from other universities and, to keep him, U of T created the Centre for Culture and Technology in 1963. He published his first major work during this period: The Mechanical Bride (1951) was an examination of the effect of advertising on society and culture.

1964: publishes Understanding Media

McLuhan was named to the Albert Schweitzer Chair in Humanities at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York, for one year (1967-68). While at Fordham, McLuhan was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor; it was treated successfully. He returned to Toronto where for the rest of his life, he worked at the University of Toronto.

---