CS 400J

TBA

How and why do residual media persist? This course defines and explores residual media by focusing on the continued significance of postcards. In the early twentieth century, postcards were dominant media. Millions of postcards were produced and consumed. Today, postcards are old media, but they are not dead. Postcards are still circulated as contemporary souvenirs and as collectable artefacts. How and why do postcards persists in our digital era? Starting with the provocative premise that postcards persist because they are mobile media, we will discuss, for example, how vintage tourist postcards function as historical and nostalgic documents of place, such as New York City; how propaganda postcards mediate power, politics and patriotism, especially during times of war; how prayer postcards media religious knowledge, belonging and exclusion; and how spectacular postcards of human zoos mediate imperialism, race and speciesism. We will compare postcards, letters and emails with attention to their mobile forms and epistolary styles. We will consider why individuals, libraries, and museums collect postcards and how such collections extend postcard materialities into today’s dominant and emergent media forms, including digital archives for research or merchandising. Assignments will include an exploratory “snapshot” of a postcard archive or collection, an original postcard creation using paper, pixels, textile, 3D printer or other technologies, and an original research paper.