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New Media, Memory, and the Visual Archive

Instructor(s): Mark J. V. Olson

Explores impact of new media on the nature of archives as technologies of cultural memory and knowledge production. Sustained engagement with major theorists of the archive through the optics of ‘media specificity’ and the analytical resources of visual studies. Themes include: storage capacity of media; database as cultural form; body as archive; new media and the documentation of ‘everyday life;’ memory, counter-memory, and the politics of the archive; archival materiality and digital ephemerality. Primary focus on visual artifacts (image, moving image) with consideration of the role of other sensory modalities in the construction of individual, institutional and collective memory.

Course Code(s): VMS 565S

Curriculum Code(s): STS, ALP

Day(s) & Times(s): T 1:25 – 3:55 PM

Location: Smith Warehouse Bay 11 A233