Topics in German Media Theory & History: Ecopolitics of Media: Material, Knowledge, Resource Regimes

The media of literature, art, science and knowledge formation in general depend on a constant supply of so-called 'natural resources' such as fibers, metals, wax, vinyl and rare earths. This seminar combines discourse-analytical approaches from literary and media studies and the history of science with new methods of media ecology, critical infrastructure analysis and environmental studies to critically analyze these medial resource dependencies at different scales, both local and global, interrogating the normative, epistemic, aesthetic, geopolitical and economic frameworks that have co-constituted modern media.