Course Syllabus

Comm 820: Media, Time & Digital Life
Prof. Megan Ankerson (ankerson@umich.edu)
Fall 2020 Graduate Seminar (Scheduled Time: Tues/Thurs 10-11:30am)

No In-Person Meetings

• Asynchronous participation on Tuesdays (Canvas Discussions)
• Synchronous remote meetings on Thursdays from 10-11:30am EST (Zoom, BlueJeans, or Google Meet)

Course description:

There may be no better time to study the power dynamics and social significance of time than right now—2020, the year of a global pandemic, or “COVID time.” Of course, the very idea of “now” cannot be separated from shifting temporal sensibilities associated with new media and communication technologies. After all, what is COVID time without the internet, time zones, or global capitalism?

While space is usually privileged in the study of mobility, circulation, production and exchange facilitated through global networks, this seminar will foreground the question of time in relation to media. What is time? How has it been theorized alongside larger shifts in commerce, empire, globalization, modernity, as well as consciousness and the imagination? This seminar will examine the production and management of time, memory, and history across a diverse range of media—telegraph, print, photography, cinema, broadcast, the internet—in order to better understand everyday life in the digital age. Along the way, we will explore a genealogy that spans sacred time, factory time, real-time, time-shifting, time travel and queer time, as well as a number of key concepts including indexicality, duration, liveness, flow, synchronicity, power-chronography, and virtuality.

Readings include selections from the following texts (all available online through Canvas)

• Raymond Williams, Television as Technology and Cultural Form (1974)
• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980)
• Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space (1983)
• Mary Anne Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time (2002)
• José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then & There of Queer Futurity (2009)
• Paddy Scannell, Television and the Meaning of Live (2010)
• Elizabeth Freeman, Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (2010)
• Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska, Life After New Media: Mediation as Vital Process (2012)
• David Wittenberg, Time Travel: The Popular Philosophy of Narrative (2013)
• On Barak, On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (2013)
• Sarah Sharma, In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (2014)
• Vanessa Ogle, The Global Transformation of Time (2015)
• Alexis Lothian, Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility (2018)
• Melissa Gregg, Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy (2018)
• Stefan Tanaka, History Without Chronology (2019)
• Kara Keeling, Queer Times, Black Futures (2019)

 

Evaluation:

 

• Participation (asynchronous online participation / leading synchronous discussions) 30%
• 300-word conference abstract 5%
• Project proposal (2 pgs) 10%
• 15 min. conference-style presentation (can be pre-recorded) 15%
• Final paper 6,000-8,000 words or final video 6-8 minutes 40%

 

 

Participation and Discussion Preparation:

As a small seminar conducted remotely, this course will require collective commitment and engagement if we all hope to get the most out of this experience. It goes without saying that you must demonstrate substantial critical engagement with the material and participate in course discussions every week.

Since we have limited time in our “live” meetings together, it is expected that before our Thursday 10am EST class you will have:

1. completed all the assigned readings for the week;
2. responded to Tuesday’s discussion questions and reviewed your classmates’ responses;
3. contributed your “In Person” reflection in the “Harmonize Discussion” prompt for the week.

If you are “discussion leader” for the week, it is expected that you will act as moderator for the Thursday meeting and help structure the conversation to address the questions/concerns/confusion raised in Tuesday’s asynchronous discussion. Please provide a PDF handout that summarizes main concepts, arguments, and terminology addressed in the readings under discussion. These handouts will be a collectively authored series of documents shared amongst all seminar participants so that notes and reading summaries will be readily available for future reference.

 

Schedule:

Week 1:  9/1-9/3: WHAT IS “THE NATURE” OF TIME?

• Stephen Kern, “Preface,” “Introduction,” and “The Nature of Time” in The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (1983): pp. 1-35
• Jo Ellen Barnett, “Introduction," and chaps 1, 2, 3, 4 in Time’s Pendulum (1998): pp. 1-52   [Library access]
• Feilding Cage, “Why Time Feels so Weird in 2020” (Reuters Graphics, 6 July 2020) https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/TIME/gjnvwwjegvw/
• John Hall, “Time, Culture, and COVID-19” (14 Aug 2020) https://asaculturesection.org/2020/08/14/time-culture-and-covid-19/
  
  
• Screening: Carlo Rovelli: The Nature of Time (YouTube, 2020, 50 min.) https://youtu.be/NrjFE_Rd2OQ

 

Week 2:  9/8-9/10: GEO Strike-- class cancelled

 

Week 3:  9/15–9/17: GLOBAL NETWORKS & UNIFORM TIME

• James Carey, “Technology and Ideology: The Case of the Telegraph” in Communication and Culture (1983): pp. 303-325 [Library access]
• Vanessa Ogle, “Introduction,” “National Times in a Globalizing World,” “A Battle of Colonial Times,” and “Conclusion” in The Global Transformation of Time (2015): 1-46; 99-119; 203-213 [Library access]
• On Barak, “Introduction: Another Time?” in On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (2013): pp. 1-20 [Library access]

 

Week 4:  9/22–9/24: OBJECTIVITY, SYNCHRONICITY & THE MEASURE OF TIME

• Loraine Daston and Peter Galison, excerpt from Objectivity (2007): pp. 1-39 [Library access]
• Peter Galison, “Synchronicity” in Einstein’s Clocks and Poincare’s Maps (2003): 13-47
• Henri Poincare, “The Measure of Time” (1898) pp. 142-149
• On Barak, “Ch 4: Harmonization and its Discords” and “Conclusion: Countertemporality” in On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (2013): 115-144; 236-250 [Library access]
• James Evans and Adrian Johns, “The New Rules of Knowledge,” Critical Inquiry 4 (2020): 806-812.

 

Week 5:  9/29-10/1: WORK TIME—LABOR, CLASS, & CAPITAL

• Melissa Gregg, “The Productivity Imperative” and “A Brief History of Time Management” in Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy (2018): pp. 3-45. [Library access]
• Judy Wajcman, “How Silicon Valley Sets Time,” New Media & Society 6 (2019): 1272-1289.
• Sarah Sharma, “Introduction” and “Dharma at the Desk,” In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics (2014): 1-26; 81-107. [Library access]
• Wayne Hope, “Time and Global Capitalism” in The Oxford Handbook of Time and Politics (2018): 1-23.

Screening : Modern Times (1936) - available through Kanopy

 

Week 6:  10/6-10/8: MEDIATING TIME—INSTANT, DURATION, CUT

• Maryanne Doane, “The Representability of Time,” “Temporal Irreversibility and the Logic of Statistics,” and “The Instant and the Archive,” in The Emergence of Cinematic Time (2002): 1-32; 108-139; 206-234.
• Sarah Kember and Joanna Zylinska, “Intro," "Mediation and the Vitality of Media,” “Cut! The Imperative of Photographic Mediation,” in Life After New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process (2012): 1-99.
• Christian Pentzold, "Between moments and millennia: temporalising mediatisation." Media, Culture & Society (2018): 927-937

Screening: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962) - available through Vimeo

 

Week 7:  10/13-10/15: LIVENESS & REAL-TIME

• Paddy Scannell, excerpt Television and the Meaning of Live (2010).
• Philip Auslander, Karin van Es, and Maren Hartmann, "A Dialogue About Liveness." Mediated Time (2019): pp. 275-296.
• Megan Ankerson, “The Periscopic Regime of Live-streaming,” in Appified (2018): 227-236.
• Sangeet Kumar, “Twitter as Liveness: #ShamedInSydney and the Paradox of Participatory Live Television,” in Global Digital Cultures (2019): 184-202.

[300 word abstract is due]

 

Week 8:  10/20-10/22:  PROGRAMMING FLOW

• Raymond Williams, “Preface,” “Chap 1: The Technology and the Society,” “Chap 4: Programming: Distribution and Flow,” in Television as Technology and Cultural Form (1974): pp. vii-xiii; 1-25; 77-120 [Library access]
• Michele Hilmes, “Under the cover of daytime” in Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952 (1997): pp. 151-182.
• Christopher M. Cox, "Programming–Flow in the convergence of digital media platforms and television." Critical Studies in Television4 (2018): 438-454.
• Stine Lomborg, Nanna Thylstrup and Julie Schwartz, “The temporal flows of self-tracking: Checking in, moving on, staying hooked,” New media & society 12 (2018): 4590-4607.

 

Week 9:  10/27-10/29: CHRONOLOGY & HISTORICITY

• Charles W. Mills, "The chronopolitics of racial time," Time & Society 2 (2020): 297-317
• Stefan Tanaka, “Introduction,” “Chap 2: History has a History,” “Chap 3: Heterogeneous Times,” and “Coda” in History Without Chronology (2020): 1-20; 51-114; 147-158 [Library access]
• Elizabeth Freeman, “Introduction " and “Chap 3: Time Binds, or, Erotohistoriography” in Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories. (2010): 1-20; 95-136 [Library access]

 

Week 10:  11/3-5: STORY TIME & NARRATIVE

• Jared Gardner, "Serial/Simultaneous,” in Time A Vocabulary of the Present (2016): 161-176.
• David Wittenberg, “Introduction: Time Travel and the Mechanics of Narrative,” “Historical Interval II: Three Phases of Time Travel,” Chap 4: Paradox and Paratext: Picturing Narrative Theory” in Time travel: The popular philosophy of narrative (2013): 1-32; 79-90; 116-142 [Library access]
• Jennifer Terry, "Time Lapse and Time Capsules: The Chronopolitics of Octavia E. Butler’s Fiction," Women's Studies, 48:1 (2019): 26-46.

[Proposals due]

  

Week 11:  11/10-11/12: QUEER TEMPORALITIES

• Judith Halberstam, “Queer temporality and postmodern geographies,” In a Queer Time and Place (2005): 1-21
• Claire Dinshaw, et. al, “Theorizing Queer Temporalities: A Roundtable Discussion” (2007): 177-194
• JoséMuñoz, “Introduction: Feeling Utopia” and "Chap 1"  in Cruising Utopia (2009): pp. 1-18
• Elizabeth Freeman, “The Queer Temporalities of Queer Temporalities." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies1 (2019): 91-95.
• Sarah Murray and Megan Sapnar Ankerson, “Lez takes time: Designing lesbian contact in geosocial networking apps,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 1 (2016): pp. 53-69 [Library access]

 

Week 12:  11/17-11/19: MEMORY, MEDIA & TIME

• Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (1980) [book is relatively short]
• Martin Hand, “Memory and Classification: Between the album and the Tag Cloud” in Ubiquitous Photography (2013): pp. 143-184
• Jose van Dijck, “Connective Memory: How Facebook Takes Charge of Your Past” in Memory Unbound: Tracing the Dynamics of Memory Studies (2016): pp. 151-172.
• Jussi Parikka “The Underpinning Time: From Digital Memory to Network Microtemporality.” In Digital Memory Studies: Media Pasts in Transition, (2017): 156–172.

 

Week 13: 11/24-11/26: THANKSGIVING

 

Week 14:  12/1-12/3: PREDICTIONS & FUTURECASTING

• James Carey and John J. Quirk, “The History of the Future” in Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (1992): pp. 173-200
• Claudia Aradau and Tobias Blanke, "Politics of prediction: Security and the time/space of governmentality in the age of big data." European Journal of Social Theory (2017): 373-391
• Hearn, A., & Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Future tense: Scandalous thinking during the conjunctural crisis, European Journal of Cultural Studies (2020):
• Kara Keeling, "Intro" Queer times, Black futures (2019).
• [optional]
  • Jenna N. Hanchey, “Desire and the Politics of Africanfuturism,”Women's Studies in Communication, 43:2 (2020): 119-124.

 

Week 15:  PRESENTATIONS / Q&A

  

Final Projects (Paper or Video) are due December 15, 2020 by 11:59pm EST.