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ISIS 250. Critical Studies in New Media. Addresses key issues in the philosophy of new media. Central themes include the materiality of media; media configurations and the co-evolution of human being; computational media and recent discussions of posthumanism; the merger of nano-bio-info-technology and the ubiquity of code; media convergence and the political uses of new media. Examines new media technologies from a transdisciplinary perspective. Builds upon existing expertise in film, literature, and media studies to analyze what is “new” about new media and how they compare with, transform, and remediate earlier media practices. Proposes the development of a critical analytical framework for approaching new media and relating them to other areas of academic discourse. Promotes a hands-on, active engagement with the technologies as a means for analysis and critique of new media innovations in contemporary academic research. Instructor: Tim Lenoir; Assistants: Tony Tost and Patrick Herron

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Week 1: Wednesday Aug 29: Course introduction

Week 2: Wednesday Sept 5: What Are Media?

• Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 3-61.
• Mark Hansen, "Media Theory," Theory Culture & Society 23(2-3) (2006): 297-306.
• Film: Videodrome

Week 3: Wednesday, September 12: What are New Media?

This week's presentation: Tony Tost

• Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Cambridge, Mass.; MIT University Press, 1999, pp. 2-87; pp. 230-271
• Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media , Cambridge , Mass. ; MIT Press, 2001, Introduction and Ch. 1-2, pp. 3-115, and Ch. 5-6, pp 212-333.
• N. Katherine Hayles, ‘‘Translating Media: Why We Should Rethink Textuality,’’ Yale Journal of Criticism 16 (2003), pp. 263–90
• N. Katherine Hayles, “Print Is Flat, Code Is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” Poetics Today, 25:1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 67-90
• N. Katherine Hayles, “Narrating Bits: Encounters between Humans and Intelligent Machines,” Comparative Critical Studies 2.2 (2005):165-90

Week 4: Wednesday, September 19: Writing Différance

This week's presentation: Ryan Vu

• Charles Sanders Peirce, "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," Peirce: Of Signs . (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 54-84.
  
• Jacques Derrida, "Différance", Margins of Philosophy , translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 3-27.
  
• Brian Rotman, "The Emergence of the Metasubject," in Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), pp. 27-56; "Absence of an Origin," pp. 87-107.
  
• Mark Poster, "Derrida and Electronic Writing: The Subject of the Computer," The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 99-128.
  
• Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," in Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, Paul Willis, eds., Culture, Media, Language , London; Hutchinson, 1980, pp. 128-138, anthologized in Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner, Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks , London; Blackwell, 2001, pp. 166-176.

Week 5: Wednesday, September 26: There is No Software

This week's presentation: Grant Bollmer

• David Wellbery, "Post-Hermeneutic Criticism," Forward to Discourse Networks , pp.vii-xxxiii.
  
• Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Nicholas Gane, "Friedrich Kittler: An Introduction," Theory, Culture & Society 2006, Vol. 23(7–8): 5–16
• Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks: 1800/1900, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990, Section II 1900, pp. 177-368.
  
• Friedrich Kittler, "There is No Software," in John Johnston, ed., Friedrich A. Kittler: Essays. Literature, Media, Information Systems , Amsterdam , G+B Arts International, 1997, pp. 147-155.
  
• Friedrich Kittler, "Protected Mode," in Kittler: Essays , pp. 156-168.
  
• Jonathan Sterne, "Audible Technique and Media," The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction , Durham , NC ; Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 137-177.
  
• Jonathan Sterne, "The Social Genesis of Sound Fidelity," The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction , Durham , NC ; Duke University Press, 2003, pp. 215-286.

Week 6: Wednesday, October 3: Cinematic Embodiment

This week's presentation: OPEN

• Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory , Cambridge , MA , Zone Books, 1990, Introduction and Ch. 1-2, pp. vii-169.
  
• Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations , New York ; Harcourt Brace & World, 1968, pp. 217-251.
  
• Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov , Berkeley ; University of California Press, 1995, Annette Michelson, ed., "We: Variant of a Manifesto," pp. 5-9; "The Birth of Kino-Eye," pp. 40-42; Kino-Eye, pp. 60-79.
  
• Michael Taussig, "Physiognomic Aspects of Visual Worlds," in Lucien Taylor, ed., Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R. 1990-1994 , New York and London ; Routledge, 1994, pp. 205-213.
  
• Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1993, pp. 1-64.
• Film: Kino-Eye

Week 7: Wednesday, October 10: Fall Break: No Class

Week 8: Wednesday, October 17: As We May Think

This week's presentation: Eve Marion

• Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Magazine , August, 1945.
  
• J.C.R. Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis," in In Memoriam: J.C.R. Licklider, Report to Digital Systems Research Center, August 7, 1990, pp. 1-19.
  
• Douglas Engelbart, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," Stanford Research Institute Report AF 49(63-8)-1024.
  
• Alan Kay, "User Interface: A Personal View," Multimedia from Wagner to Virtual Reality , pp. 121-131.
  
• Video: SRI Presentation - Doug Engelbart's 1968 Demo of mouse, hypertext, and collaborative online work environments.

Week 9: Wednesday, October 24: Postmodern Subjects

This week's presentation: Lisa Klarr

• Jean Baudrillard, Simulations, New York; Semiotexte, 1983.
  
• Frederic Jameson, Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, NC; Duke University Press, 1991, pp. 1-54; 55-66.
  
• Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction , Durham , NC ; Duke University Press, 1993, "Introduction," pp. 1-22; Chapter 1, "Terminal Image," pp. 23-99; Chapter 5, "Terminal Resistance/Cyborg Acceptance," pp. 300-329.
• Films: Blade Runner, TRON
  

Week 10: Wednesday, October 31: The Medium is the Body

This week's presentation: Rizvana Arinaz

• Vivian Sobchack, "The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Photographic, Cinematic, and Electronic 'Presence'" and "Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of the Century Alive," Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, Los Angeles; University of California Press, 2004, pp. 135-178.
• Laura Marks, "Video's Body, Analog and Digital," "How Electrons Remember," and "Immanence Online," Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 2002, pp. 147-191.
• Bernadette Wegenstein, "The Medium is the Body," Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory, Cambridge, Mass.; MIT Press, 2006, pp. 119-162.
• Hans Belting, "Image, Medium, Body: A New Approach to Iconology," Critical Inquiry, vol 31 (Winter) 2005, pp. 302-319.

Week 11: Wednesday, November 7: Encoding the Posthuman

This week's presentation: Bruna Zacka

• N. Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 2005, chapters 1, 2, 7, 8 (pp. 15-38; 39-61; 171-192; 193-213.
• Mark Hansen, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media, New York; Routledge, 2006, pp. 25-103

Week 12: Wednesday, November 14: Writing Machines

This week's presentation: Cameron Stoll

• André Leroi-Gourhan, Speech and Gesture (Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press, 1993), pp. 187-266.
• Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: the Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford; Stanford University Press, 1998, Ch. 3, "Who? What? The Invention of the Human," pp. 134-179.
• Terrence Deacon, "Why a Brain Capable of Language Evolved Only Once: Prefrontal Cortex and Symbol Learning." Zygon, Vol. 31(4), 1996: 635-670.
• Recommended: Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, New York; Norton, 1997, Ch. 3, pp. 69-101; Ch. 4, pp. 102-115; Ch. 11, pp. 321-375; Ch. 12, pp. 376-410; Ch. 13, pp. 411-419; 423-432; Ch. 14, pp. 433-464.

Week 13: Wednesday, November 21: No Class

Week 14: Wednesday November 28: Becoming Beside Ourselves

This week's presentation: Peter North

• Torben Grodal, “Stories for the Eye, Ear, and Muscles: Video Games, Media, and Embodied Experiences,” in The Video Game Theory Reader, pp. 129-155.
• Martti Lahti, “As We Become Machines,” The Video Game Theory Reader, pp. 157-170.
• Rodney Brooks, "Intelligence without representation." Artificial Intelligence 47(1991): 139-159.
• Rodney Brooks and L. A. Stein, "Building Brains for Bodies," Autonomous Robots 1(1994): 7-25.
• N. Katherine Hayles, “Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere,” Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 23(7–8) 2006: 159-166.
• Merlin Donald, "Précis of Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition," Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16(1993): 737-791.
• Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds Technologies and the Future of Human Intelligence, Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 13-34; 115-142; 197-198.
• Brian Rotman, "Corporeal or Gesturo-haptic Writing," Configurations, 10(2002): 423-438.
• Eugene Thacker, “What Is Biomedia?” Configurations, Vol 11(no.1), pp. 47-79.
• Eugene Thacker, Biomedia, Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 2004, 63-114.

Week 15: Wednesday December 5: Political Engagements with New Media

This week's presentation: OPEN

• Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire , New York ; Penguin, 2004, "Preface," pp. xi-xviii; Part 2, "Multitude," pp. 99-227.
  
• Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, 1972-1990 , New York ; Columbia University Press, 1995, "Control and Becoming" and "Postscript on Control Societies," pp. 169-182.
  
• Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization , Minneapolis ; University of Minnesota Press, 1996, "Here and Now," pp. 1-23; "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," pp. 27-47.
• Alexander R. Galloway, “Protocol,” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 23 (2006): 317-320.
• Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Protocol, Control, and Networks,” Grey Room, 17, Fall 2004: 6–29.

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