Introduction
"Media and the Archive: Motions and Transformations" is an undergraduate course taught as part of the USC-Mellon Digital Humanities Program in Summer 2016.
Course Description
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.
About This Book
This Scalar book is a mini archive of the class, and written together by the instructor and all participants of the course.Each page contains the readings and key questions for a specific unit, functioning as a springboard prior to the class meeting(s) on the unit. It also serves as a platform for the students' individual pages, which are reflections and extensions of the themes discussed in the unit.
As a mini archive, this Scalar book is a repository for class materials, as well as a dynamic, media-rich, collaborative space in which students can generate and curate content related to the themes of the course. This book, therefore, is meant to be a critical exploration of what the archive means, and what an engaged, digital archive with content generated by its participants might look and feel like.
We invite you to read along and explore our journey through "Media and the Archive," and welcome comments, feedback, and collaborations on topics related to the question of the archive.