You are here: Home → Courses & Schedules

188A-2 - Topics in Literary & Critical Theory

Topic: Object, System, Network: Models for Media/Technology Studies

Nathan Brown

What is an object? What is a system? What is a network? How do we distinguish these concepts? How are they related to one another? And how do they operate as models of of agency, communication, observation, and cohesion in media/technology studies? These are some questions we'll try to think through in this class. We will focus primarily on theoretical texts (by Norbert Wiener, Niklas Luhmann, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Alexander Galloway & Eugene Thacker), while also attending to the operation of objects, systems, and networks in fiction, poetry, and film.

Grading

Attendance Participation: 10%
Seminar Presentation: 15%
Discussion Posts: 15%
Term Paper: 40%
Final Exam: 20%

Texts

Remainder, Tom McCarthy
Crystallography, Christian Bok
The Reality of the Mass Media, Niklas Luhmann
We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour
The Exploit, Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker
Course Reader