This mini-course aims to introduce students to the field of media studies by zooming in on the question of time. Some strands of the field have offered illuminating approaches to understanding the technical and material conditions of possibility for a specific mode of thinking. Others have helped us dissect the workings of imperialism, geopolitical maneuvers, and sociocultural control facilitated by technology. And still others bring to light how various technical media have shaped and reshaped configurations of “the human”—for instance, how current digital technology is bringing about unprecedented human-machine assemblages.

The advantage of concentrating on time in media studies is twofold: methodology-wise and “content”-wise. For instance, the concern with time is constitutive of media theory as a discipline: be it media archaeology or Kittler-inspired theory of cultural techniques, media theory is centrally premised on the imperative of applying Foucauldian archaeology to the study of technical media and discourse networks. On the other hand, some of the most groundbreaking output of the field is distinctly derived from scholars’ engagement with time or temporality, from the founding period of the area through today.

Topics include the following:

--How a particular technology may have influenced writers and artists’ ways of thinking, and how that influence is materialized in their works;

--How digital technology may bring about new senses of time, and how artists reconsider conventions of time measurement via art;

--How media studies help us take the elements—and many other things—as media (or mediums), and how such a view of what scholars call elemental media may inspire thought-provoking scholarship in various fields;

--How media studies broach the Anthropocene discourses and environmental issues.