Editing Marshall McLuhan (section)

== Life and career ==
McLuhan was born on July 21, 1911, in [[Edmonton]], Alberta, and was named "Marshall" from his maternal grandmother's surname. His brother, Maurice, was born two years later. His parents were both also born in Canada: his mother, Elsie Naomi (née Hall), was a [[Baptist]] school teacher who later became an actress; and his father, Herbert Ernest McLuhan, was a [[Methodism|Methodist]] with a real-estate business in Edmonton. When the business failed at the start of [[World War I]], McLuhan's father enlisted in the [[Canadian Forces|Canadian Army]]. After a year of service, he contracted [[influenza]] and remained in Canada, away from the front lines. After Herbert's discharge from the army in 1915, the McLuhan family moved to [[Winnipeg]], Manitoba, where Marshall grew up and went to school, attending [[Kelvin High School|Kelvin Technical School]] before enrolling in the [[University of Manitoba]] in 1928.{{Sfn|Gordon|1997|pp=99–100}}

=== Undergraduate education ===
After studying for one year as an engineering student in Winnipeg, McLuhan changed majors and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree (1933), winning a University Gold Medal in Arts and Sciences.{{sfnm |1a1=Gordon |1y=1997 |1p=34 |2a1=Marchand |2y=1998 |2p=32}} He went on to receive a Master of Arts degree (1934) in English from the University of Manitoba as well. He had long desired to pursue graduate studies in England and was accepted by [[Trinity Hall, Cambridge]], having failed to secure a [[Rhodes scholarship|Rhodes Scholarship]] to study at [[Oxford University|Oxford]].<ref name=":0" />

Though having already earned his BA and MA in Manitoba, Cambridge required him to enroll as an undergraduate "affiliated" student, with one year's credit towards a three-year [[bachelor's degree]], before entering any [[Doctor of Philosophy|doctoral studies]].{{efn|McLuhan later commented  "One advantage we Westerners have is that we're under no illusion we've had an education. That's why I started at the bottom again."<ref>{{cite news |last=Dobbs |first=Kildare |author-link=Kildare Dobbs |date=March 10, 1962 |title=What Did You Say, Professor? |work=Star Weekly}} Cited in {{harvnb|Marchand|1998|p=35}}.</ref>}}{{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=40}} He went up to [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] in the autumn of 1934, studied under [[I. A. Richards]] and [[F. R. Leavis]], and was influenced by [[New Criticism]].<ref name=":0">Marchand, pp. 33–34</ref> Years afterward, upon reflection, he credited the faculty there with influencing the direction of his later work because of their emphasis on the "training of perception", as well as such concepts as Richards' notion of "[[I. A. Richards#Feedforward|feedforward]]".<ref>Marchand, pp. 37–47.</ref> These studies formed an important precursor to his later ideas on technological forms.<ref name="LAC">"[https://web.archive.org/web/20191201234701/https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/index-e.html Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan]." ''[[Collections Canada]]''. [[Government of Canada]]. [1998] 2008. Archived from the [http://www.collectionscanada.ca/innis-mcluhan/ original] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019012924/http://www.collectionscanada.ca/innis-mcluhan/ |date=2017-10-19 }} on 1 December 2019.</ref> He received the required bachelor's degree from Cambridge in 1936{{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=94}} and entered their graduate program.

=== Conversion to Catholicism ===
At the University of Manitoba, McLuhan explored his conflicted relationship with religion and turned to literature to "gratify his soul's hunger for truth and beauty,"{{sfnm |1a1=Edan |1y=2003 |1p=10 |2a1=Marchand |2y=1998 |2p=20}} later referring to this stage as agnosticism.{{sfn|Edan|2003|p=11}} While studying the [[trivium]] at Cambridge, he took the first steps toward his eventual conversion to [[Catholic Church|Catholicism]] in 1937,{{sfn|Gordon|1997|pp=54–56}} founded on his reading of [[G. K. Chesterton]].{{sfn|Lapham|1994|p=xvii}} In 1935, he wrote to his mother:<ref>McLuhan, Marshall. [1935] 2011. "[http://www.mcluhanonmaui.com/2011/07/probe-letter-to-elsie-september-5-1931.html Letter to Elsie September 5, 1931] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200627132237/http://www.mcluhanonmaui.com/2011/07/probe-letter-to-elsie-september-5-1931.html |date=June 27, 2020 }}." ''McLuhan on Maui''. Retrieved 24 June 2020; also cited in {{harvnb|M. McLuhan|1987|p=73}}.</ref><blockquote>Had I not encountered Chesterton I would have remained agnostic for many years at least. Chesterton did not convince me of religious faith, but he prevented my despair from becoming a habit or hardening into misanthropy. He opened my eyes to European culture and encouraged me to know it more closely. He taught me the reasons for all that in me was simply blind anger and misery.</blockquote>At the end of March 1937,{{efn|{{harvnb|Gordon|1997|p=74}}, gives the date as March 25; Marchand (1990), p.44, gives it as March 30.}} McLuhan completed what was a slow but total conversion process, when he was formally received into the [[Catholic Church]]. After consulting a minister, his father accepted the decision to convert. His mother, however, felt that his conversion would hurt his career and was inconsolable.<ref>Marchand (1990), pp. 44–45.</ref> McLuhan was devout throughout his life, but his religion remained a private matter.<ref>Marchand (1990), p. 45.</ref> He had a lifelong interest in the number three{{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=75}} (e.g., the trivium, the [[Trinity]]) and sometimes said that the [[Blessed Virgin Mary|Virgin Mary]] provided intellectual guidance for him.{{efn|Associates speculated about his intellectual connection to the Virgin Mary, one saying, "He had a direct connection with the Blessed Virgin Mary. ... He alluded to it very briefly once, almost fearfully, in a please-don't-laugh-at-me tone. He didn't say, 'I know this because the Blessed Virgin Mary told me,' but it was clear from what he said that one of the reasons he was so sure about certain things was that the Virgin had certified his understanding of them."{{sfn|Marchand|1998|p=51}}}} For the rest of his career, he taught in Catholic institutions of higher education.

=== Early career, marriage, and doctorate ===
[[File:Marshall McLuhan at Cambridge University.jpg|right|thumb|upright|McLuhan at Cambridge, {{Circa|1940}}]]
Unable to find a suitable job in Canada, he went to the United States to take a job as a teaching assistant at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]] for the 1936–37 academic year.{{sfn|Gordon|1997|pp=69–70}} From 1937 to 1944, he taught English at [[Saint Louis University]] (with an interruption from 1939 to 1940 when he returned to Cambridge). There he taught courses on [[Shakespeare]],<ref>Marchand, p. 48</ref> eventually tutoring and befriending [[Walter J. Ong]], who would write his doctoral dissertation on a topic that McLuhan had called to his attention, as well as become a well-known authority on communication and technology.{{citation needed|date=January 2018}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Farrell |first=Thomas J. |date=January 2023 |title=Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan, and Eric McLuhan's Two Books on Menippean Satire |url= |journal=ETC: A Review of General Semantics |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=15, 18 |via=EBSCO}}</ref>

McLuhan met Corinne Lewis in St. Louis,<ref>{{cite news |last=Fitterman |first=Lisa |date=April 19, 2008 |title=She Was Marshall McLuhan's Great Love Ardent Defender, Supporter and Critic |work=The Globe and Mail |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080419.OBMCLUHAN19//TPStory/Obituaries |url-status=dead |location=Toronto |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081205144146/http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080419.OBMCLUHAN19/TPStory/Obituaries |archive-date=December 5, 2008 |access-date=June 29, 2008}}</ref> a teacher and aspiring actress from [[Fort Worth, Texas|Fort Worth]], Texas, whom he married on August 4, 1939. They spent 1939–40 in Cambridge, where he completed his master's degree (awarded in January 1940){{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=94}} and began to work on his doctoral dissertation on [[Thomas Nashe]] and the verbal arts. While the McLuhans were in England, [[World War II]] had erupted in Europe. For this reason, he obtained permission to complete and submit his dissertation from the United States, without having to return to Cambridge for an oral defence. In 1940, the McLuhans returned to Saint Louis University, where they started a family as he continued teaching. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in December 1943.{{sfn|Gordon|1997|p=115}}

He next taught at [[Assumption University (Windsor)|Assumption College]] in [[Windsor, Ontario|Windsor]], Ontario, from 1944 to 1946, then moved to [[Toronto]] in 1946 where he joined the faculty of [[University of St. Michael's College|St. Michael's College]], a Catholic college of the [[University of Toronto]], where [[Hugh Kenner]] would be one of his students. Canadian economist and communications scholar [[Harold Innis]] was a university colleague who had a strong influence on his work. McLuhan wrote in 1964: "I am pleased to think of my own book ''[[The Gutenberg Galaxy]]'' as a footnote to the observations of Innis on the subject of the psychic and social consequences, first of writing then of printing."<ref>McLuhan, Marshall. [1964] 2005. ''Marshall McLuhan Unbound.'' Corte Madera, CA : [[Gingko Library|Gingko]]. v. 8, p. 8.

This is a reprint of McLuhan's introduction to the 1964 edition of Innis's book ''[[The Bias of Communication]]'' first published in 1951.</ref> Tom Cooper's ''Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thought of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan'' explores the relationship of Innis and McLuhan in depth.<ref>Cooper, Tom. 2025. Wisdom Weavers: The Lives and Thoughts of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan. Brewster, MA : [[Connected Education|Connected Editions]]. pp. 10 ff.</ref>

=== Later career and reputation ===
[[File:Marshall McLuhan with and on television (cropped).jpg|thumb|upright|McLuhan with a television showing his own image, 1967]]
In the early 1950s, McLuhan began the Communication and Culture seminars at the University of Toronto, funded by the [[Ford Foundation]]. As his reputation grew, he received a growing number of offers from other universities.<ref name="LAC" /> During this period, he published his first major work, ''[[The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man|The Mechanical Bride]]'' (1951), in which he examines the effect of advertising on society and culture. Throughout the 1950s, he and [[Edmund Snow Carpenter|Edmund Carpenter]] also produced an important academic journal called ''[[Explorations (journal)|Explorations]]''.{{sfn|Prins|Bishop|2002}} McLuhan and Carpenter have been characterized as the [[Toronto School of communication theory]], together with [[Harold Innis]], [[Eric A. Havelock]], and [[Northrop Frye]]. During this time, McLuhan supervised the doctoral thesis of [[Modernist literature|modernist writer]] [[Sheila Watson (writer)|Sheila Watson]] on the subject of [[Wyndham Lewis]]. Hoping to keep him from moving to another institute, the University of Toronto created the [[McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology|Centre for Culture and Technology]] (CCT) in 1963.<ref name="LAC" />

From 1967 to 1968, McLuhan was named the [[Albert Schweitzer]] Chair in Humanities at [[Fordham University]] in the Bronx.{{efn|During the time at Fordham University, his son [[Eric McLuhan]] conducted what came to be known as the [[Fordham Experiment]] about the different effects of "light-on" versus "light-through" media.}} While at Fordham, he was diagnosed with a [[Benign tumor|benign]] [[brain tumor]], which was treated successfully. He returned to Toronto where he taught at the University of Toronto for the rest of his life and lived in [[Wychwood Park]], a bucolic enclave on a hill overlooking the [[Downtown Toronto|downtown]] where [[Anatol Rapoport]] was his neighbour.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

In 1970, he was made a Companion of the [[Order of Canada]].<ref>{{OCC|2180}}</ref> In 1975, the [[University of Dallas]] hosted him from April to May, appointing him to the McDermott Chair.<ref>Gordon, Terrence. July 2002. "[https://www.marshallmcluhan.com/biography/ Marshall Who?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180514034909/https://www.marshallmcluhan.com/biography/ |date=2018-05-14 }}." ''The Estate of'' ''Marshall McLuhan''. Retrieved 24 June 2020.</ref> Marshall and Corinne McLuhan had six children: [[Eric McLuhan|Eric]], twins Mary and Teresa, Stephanie, Elizabeth, and Michael. The associated costs of a large family eventually drove him to advertising work and accepting frequent consulting and speaking engagements for large corporations, including [[IBM]] and [[AT&T]].<ref name="LAC" />

=== Death ===
In September 1979, McLuhan suffered a stroke which affected his ability to speak. The University of Toronto's School of Graduate Studies tried to close his research center shortly thereafter, but was deterred by substantial protests. McLuhan never fully recovered from the stroke and died in his sleep on December 31, 1980.<ref name="nytimesobituary">{{cite news |last=Whitman |first=Alden |author-link=Alden Whitman |date=January 1, 1981 |title=Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/home/mcluhan-obit.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=August 19, 2012 |archive-date=May 5, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130505021953/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/home/mcluhan-obit.html |url-status=live }}</ref> He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in [[Thornhill, Ontario|Thornhill]], Ontario, Canada.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}