This course is at once an overview and in-depth study of some of the central theories of media, technology, and information that inform literary studies in the present. Because of our disciplinary placement, we will necessarily emphasize writing technologies and textual studies, but we will also attend to media ecologies more generally and consider sensorial experience, simulation, and recent work in ubiquitous and urban computing. From Friedrich Kittler’s observation that ‘we no longer know what our writing does’ when we use word processing, to Nigel Thrift’s account of the structuring of our technological unconscious, we will consider the ways and means by which we have in a sense been programmed by our media environments. But we will also consider the programming or development of informational technologies by reading a core set of foundational documents from the post-WWII era. The trajectory of the class extends from print to computational and mobile media, with some discussion of cinema as well.
Professor Rita Raley
<rr138 at nyu dot edu>
Dept of English, NYU (Fall 2012)
Monday, 3:30-6:10 | Waverly L370
Office hours: Th 1:00-3:00 & by appointment
Bobst Library course reserve list available from http://tinyurl.com/9v5hpq8
English 800: Media Theory 