Schedule + Readings

Lists of Supplemental Resources for Most of our Weekly Themes

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Week 1: Aug. 28:    
Introductions + Historicizing Information Overload

TEXTS REFERENCED IN CLASS  (You needn’t read these, but you’re welcome to!): 

 

ARCHIVES

Week 2: Sept. 4         
Exploring the Archives

FIELD TRIP: New York City Municipal Archives, w/ Ken Cobb, Assistant Commissioner of the Department of Records and Information Services, and Archivist MJ Robinson

Meet at 4:00 at 31 Chambers (@ Centre). Take 4/5/6 (front of train) to Brooklyn Bridge. Please bring picture ID.

READINGS:

These will provide some context for our tour:

We’ll discuss the following in class next week:

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Week 3: Sept. 11
What’s in the Archive?

READINGS:

We’ll discuss the following, as well as our readings from last week, in relation to our field trip:

We’ll continue our discussion of some of this week’s themes – including the relationships between archival memory and storage, ephemerality and erasure – in our “Databases” unit, particularly when we discuss Vannevar Bush.

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Week 4 Sept. 18
Who’s In the Archive?

PRESENTATIONS: Angelica + Others?

READINGS/SCREENING  


September 25 
NO CLASS: Yom Kippur

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Week 5: Oct. 2
Archival Aesthetics

PRESENTATIONS: Andrea, Stephen

READINGS/LISTENINGS

X

LIBRARIES

Week 6: Oct. 9
Ordering Media’s “Innumerable Species”

IN-CLASS SCREENING: Mike Wesch, “Information R/evolution” (12 October 2007).

PRESENTATIONS: Willy, Oz

READINGS/SCREENING  

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October 7-13

Archives Week

Friday, October 12

Archivists’ Roundtable: “Archives & Activism” Symposium,
Theresa Lang Center

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Week 7: Oct. 16        
Libraries: From Mesopotamia to Madison Avenue

FIELD TRIP: Morgan Library, 225 Madison Ave @ 36th Street

READINGS           

The following will prepare us for our field trip:

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Saturday, Oct. 2o, 2pm

Optional – but highly recommended! – Field Trip to the Reanimation Library:
534 Union Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn [directions]
Check out their Tumblr!

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Week 8: Oct. 23        
Idiosyncratic and Unorthodox Libraries

PRESENTATIONS: Harry, Erik

READINGS           

The Warburg Library

The Prelinger Library

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Week 9: Oct. 30
NO CLASS BECAUSE OF HURRICANE SANDY     
The Future Library

IN-CLASS SCREENING: Holmes Films, The Librarian, 1947; Alain Resnais, Toute la Mémoire du Monde, 1956

READINGS           

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Week 10: Nov. 6       
Plug-In Week

This week we’ll do what you want. We could return to a topic from earlier in the semester that you’d like to explore more fully. Or we could address something new. We could invite visitors to join us, go on a field trip, do a group hands-on project… Whatever.

Because we missed class last week, thanks to the hurricane, we’ll have to reorganize our schedule a bit:

  • We’ll begin with Erik’s presentation, rescheduled from two weeks ago
  • We’ll then spend a half-hour or so conducting a SWOT analysis of the future academic and public library, drawing on our readings from last week
  • Then, for our last hour, we’ll head over to the Kellen Archives to chat with Kellen’s Director Wendy Scheir and University Librarian Ed Scarcelle about some of the issues in which you expressed interest — e.g., how the library will fit into the new University Center; what plans exist for archiving and making available student work; possible future roles that the library and archives might play in the university community; etc.

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DATABASES

Week 11: Nov. 13     
Tabula
of Relationships, Orders of Things

PRESENTATION: Chris, Lara

READINGS

  • Michel Foucault, Preface to The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books [1970]1994): xv-xxiv.
  • DatabaseOxford English Dictionary (2010).

Paul Otlet

Vannevar Bush

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Nov. 20
NO CLASS: Wednesday Classes Meet Instead

Project Proposals Due by End of Day

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Week 12: Nov. 27
A Database Episteme

PROJECT PROPOSALS: Everyone shares their final project ideas.

READINGS

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Week 13: Dec. 4        
Database Aesthetics

Shannon in Sweden

GUESTS: Ted Byfield, Parsons Faculty; Rory Solomon, Parsons Faculty & Media Studies Student

READINGS (Our guests will choose their readings by 11/27, so the following list is subject to change until then)

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Week 14: Dec. 11
Plug-In Week

This week we’ll do what you want. We could return to a topic from earlier in the semester that you’d like to explore more fully. Or we could address something new.

We’ll be visiting Ann Hamilton’s the event of a thread installation at the Park Avenue Armory, which you can read about on e-flux. Our tickets have been paid in advance. We’ll meet at the Armory, at 643 Park Avenue (at 67th Street), at 4:15pm (to allow a little extra transit time, in case you’re coming uptown from TNS), and we’ll wrap up around 5:30 (again, to allow transit time back to campus). For more info, see this blog post.

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Week 15: Dec. 18
FINAL PRESENTATIONS      

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