COML 6932

Digital Discourse: Humanities, Art, Theory, Archive

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

What is the relation of the theory and archival practice of the 'digital turn' to the overall question of the humanities? The course will consider a range of critical pressure points that have been central to the digital humanities and the production of new media art and theory. How have the developments of digital culture and theory impacted the critical commonplaces of archive, analogy, time, sound, motion, network, body, narrative? Does the destabilization of the archive by open source software and accumulative databases alter the conditions of academic research, the space of artistic practice, and the place of ideology critique?  How do recent trends in "media archeology" and "new materiality" correspond to or contrast with the virtuality of "new media" and the theoretical precedents of poststructuralism. In dialogue with critical paradigms that have been fundamental to the discourse of critical theory, from affect and trauma or aesthetics and archive, to colonialism and politics, sexuality and race, we will reflect on the parameters of a deeply significant archeological shift emphasized, if not wholly embodied, by the digital condition.

When Offered Fall.

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