Topics in German Media Theory & History: The Modes of Documentary: Epistemic, Didactic, Aesthetic, Forensic

This course covers the three major historical moments of documentary work from its emergence in the interwar avant-gardes to its rediscovery in the 1960s and the contemporary documentary turn. With an eye toward the specific political conditions, technologies, and formal conventions that established the boundary between reality and representation at each of these three moments, this seminar considers: deskilling and the industrialization of writing; the contest between literature and technical media; the emergent properties of mass culture; changing conditions of authorship; documentation, the archive and forensic investigation.