CMS 597 B: Special Topics in Cinema and Media Studies

This course will provide a graduate-level introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology. Rather than focus on the newness and modernity of media, this course will examine archaic, obsolete, or just plain old-fashioned media viewed as both material artifacts and discursive phenomena, as both physical objects and the focus of critical and theoretical writing. Although the course will circulate around the topic of media archaeology, it will also venture into film theory, television, philosophy, sound studies, visual culture, science and technology studies, and other disciplines. The reading may begin with precursors of media archaeology like Walter Benjamin and Marshall McLuhan, as well as foundational work by Friedrich Kittler, Siegfried Zielinski, Carolyn Marvin, Laurent Mannoni, Jonathan Crary, and Wolfgang Ernst. The second half of the course will be devoted to more contemporary developments in the field, including Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka’s wide-ranging introductions to the concept of media archaeology, as well as recent work by Alexander Galloway, Lorraine Daston, Lisa Gitelman, Jonathan Sterne, and others. Final projects will involve an in-depth media archaeological examination of a particular object of your choosing.