Studies in Literature & the Disciplines (486-0-20)
Instructors
Domietta Torlasco
847/491-8269
1860 S. Campus Drive, Crowe Hall #2-131
Meeting Info
Kresge Centennial Hall 3-410: Tues 3:00PM - 5:50PM
Overview of class
Media Times
Time, World, Power: this course explores how audiovisual technologies have contributed to ordering of the world by ordering time. We will start by considering the ways cinema has contributed to reshaping the very idea of time in conjunction with the expansion of capitalism, industrialization, and colonial rule; to remapping the world according to standards of temporal calculation and synchronization; to turning the dictum "time is money" into a maxim of subject formation at the very level of the sensorium. We will then consider how this logic of temporal control has mutated with the diffusion of digital technologies and under the pressure of finance capitalism. But we will also attend to the ways specific cinematic practices have resisted or subverted this logic and pointed in the direction of non-hierarchical forms of differentiation. Texts from film and media theory, feminist/queer theory, critical race theory, post-autonomist Marxism. Films/installations by John Akomfrah, Charlie Chaplin, Maya Deren, Harun Farocki, Jean-Luc Godard, Ousmane Sembène, Hito Steyerl.
Class Materials (Required)
Materials available on Canvas.