BECOMING OTHER:
NEW APPROACHES AT THE INTERSECTION OF HISTORY, SCIENCE, AND MEDIA
Orit Halpern
Assistant Professor
Historical Studies
The New School
80 Fifth Ave
Room 507
New York, NY 10011
t: 212.229.5376x2990
e:HalpernO@newschool.edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment.
Required texts:
Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Strange History of the Senses, Routledge,
1992.
Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford University Press: 1999
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema, Verso: 1997
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer, October, 1992.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard University Press, 1997
Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, Harvard University Press, 2005
Reader—Available at the Copy store on 13th street, East Side Copy
Course Requirements:
One 20 page research paper at the end of the semester on a topic of your choosing, and
leading one classroom discussion.
1/24
Introduction
Roger Caillois, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia” (1935), [on-line]
Franz Kafka Report to the Academy and The Metamorphosis [in reader]
Antonin Artaud, excerpts from The Theater and Its Double [in reader]
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1/31
Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture” and “The Question Concerning Technology”, in The
Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt, pp.3-35, pp.115-154.
[reader]
Walter Benjamin, On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, from Illuminations, pp.155-200. [reader]
Walter Benjamin, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, from Illuminations,
pp.250-262, pp.89-139. [reader]
SECTION ONE: Archeology, Genealogy, and Perception
2/5: Sensation
Michael Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A particular History of the Senses,,Preface, Section One [New
York: Routledge, 1993]
2/14: Perception
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy, ix-60, pp.171-174. [in reader]
Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, [Harvard University Press, 2003], excerpts pp.ix68, 115-135,[reader]
Mary Ann Doane, Temporality, Storage, Legibility:Freud, Marey and the Cinema, Critical Inquiry , vol.
22 Winter 1996. [On-line]
Recommended/Optional:
Dziga Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera [film]
Horst Bredekamp, The Lure of Antiquity and the Evolution of Nature, Art, and Antiquity, Introduction,
Chapter 5
Sigfired Zilinski, Deep Time:Towards and Archeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means
[Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006], Introduction, Conclusion
2
Dziga Vertov, Kino-eye,preface, [handout]
Marinetti, Futurist Manifestos [handout]
2/21: Perception (cont.)
Kittler Film, Gramophone, Typewriter, Preface, pp.1-135.
Supplementary
Fredrich Kittler, excerpts from Discourse Networks 1800/1900 [in reader]
2/28: Perception (cont.)
Fredrich Kittler, Gramophone, Typewriter, Film (cont.)
ASSIGNMENT: Hand in a preliminary proposal for final research project.
3/6: Subjects
Michel Foucault Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, [on-line]
Jonathan Crary, The Techniques of the Observer, [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990]
Supplementary:
John Rajchmann, Foucault’s Art of Seeing, October [on-line]
3/13
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Epistemologies of the Eye, , pp. 9-53[in reader]
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, The Image of Objectivity
Representations, No. 40, Special Issue: Seeing Science (Autumn, 1992), pp. 81-128 [on-line]
Donna Haraway, Primate Visions, [New York: Routledge, 1990] [Introduction, Teddy Bear Patriarchy,
Conclusion, pp.1-18,26-58,368-382. [in reader]
Supplementary:
John Rajchmann, Foucault’s Art of Seeing. October 1988. Vol.44;p.pp. 88-117
Deleuze, Negotiations, “Letter to a Harsh Critic”, On Anti-Oedipus, On Thousand Plateaus [handout]
3/20: SPRING BREAK
3/27:
Gilles Deleuze, Postscript to the Society of Control [on-line]
Gilles Deleuze, Foucault, pp.45-132[ [in reader]
3
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, Introduction, Chapter 2:1914, Chapter 6:Bodies
without Organs, Chapter 12:The War Machine [Reader]
4/3:
Bruno Latour, Drawing Things Together, [hand-out]
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003]
4/10: Networks
Bruno Latour, The pasteurization of France, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005]
4/17: NETWORKS (cont.)
Michael Hardt, Negri, excerpts from Empire, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000] pp xi-66,
pp.353-413.{in reader]
Thomas Lamarre, Bacterial Culture and Linguistic Colonies, in positions 6:3, 1998. [on-line]
4/24
Rheinhold Martin, excerpts from The Organizational Complex, [Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003]
Eyal Weizmann, Strategic Points, Flexible Lines, Tense Surfaces, Political Volumes: Ariel Sharon and
the Geometry of Occupation The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXXV, No. 2, Summer 2004. [On-line]
Weizman, Seeing Through Walls: The Split Sovereign of the One-Way Mirror, Grey Room, 24, Summer
2006. [On-line]
5/1
James Siegel, Introduction, Chapter One, and 9, and Epilogue from Fetish, Recognition, Revolution,
[Princetion: Princeton University Press, 1997] pp.2-53, 231-254.
Ann Stoler, The Pulse of The Archive unpublished manuscript [on-line]
5/8
4
5/13: In class screening
Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (film)
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