MEDIA AND THE ARCHIVE: Motions and Transformations Main Menu Theories of the Archive The Everyday Archive The Affective Archive The Remixed Archive Archives of Trauma & Transformation ONE Archives Authors

Introduction

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The “archive” comes from the Greek word arkheion, a repository for official documents, and a place where the archons, the rulers, reside. Archives, in other words, are places of power where specific, important materials are kept.

The 21st century has seen a burgeoning of various kinds of archives—personal, community, institutional, and hybrid—facilitated by the affordances of digital technologies. Indeed, there is an explosion of the meanings and uses of the “archive.”

This course examines the theoretical and practical facets of the “archive,” with a particular focus on digital media. What is an archive? What and who is the archive for? How have digital technologies changed our relationship to the past, present, and future? We will emphasize the social and cultural aspects of archival productions, as well as the digital representation of diverse voices whose stories exist on the margins of archival formations. We will begin with some definitions, and proceed to explore a variety of multimedia archives; each analysis of a specific archive will be accompanied by theoretical readings. 

Header image: Brian Dettmer, "World Series"

"Media and the Archive: Motions and Transformations" is an undergraduate course taught in Summer 2016 as part of the USC-Mellon Digital Humanities Program. 

This page has paths:

  1. MEDIA AND THE ARCHIVE: MOTIONS & TRANSFORMATIONS Viola Lasmana

Contents of this path:

  1. Theories of the Archive
  2. The Everyday Archive
  3. The Affective Archive
  4. The Remixed Archive
  5. Archives of Trauma & Transformation
  6. Authors