Approaching Media Archaeology from a Digital Humanities Perspective: Introduction, Tools, and Techniques

Dates: 14th-17th May 2024

This workshop enables participants to examine the ways in which media archeology works as an effective research methodology for Digital Humanities (DH) scholarship. Extending from DH scholars such as Alan Liu (2012; 2013) and Matthew Kirschenbaum (2013), this course examines how media archeology is crucial to reckoning with the historical and ongoing targeting of marginalized and vulnerable individuals and populations, in particular those who are racialized and gendered, and sourcing what Ezikiel Dixon-Roman calls “hauntings” (2017) of technical progress, funding, data practices and other historical trajectories within contemporary media technologies. 

As outlined by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, media archaeology is cross-disciplinary and nomadic, and its nimbleness and tolerance for multi-pronged analysis allow for a greater understanding of digital media’s “interactivity, navigability, and digital representation and transmission” (3; 2012). Media archeologies thus enable DH scholars to engage in inter-/cross-disciplinary conversations with scholars in science and technology studies, philosophy of science, DH and other disciplines. This course is intended for a wide audience interested in learning about media archeology as a digital humanities method to approach questions of knowledge and power. We welcome undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty to explore techniques of analyses that integrate digital humanities tools with historical research.

Instructors: Arun Jacob and Paula Sanchez Nuñez de Villavicencio