Technology and Memory

The course:
offers an overview of modern theoretical and conceptual approaches as well as a historical overview of the thematization of technology at the intersection of media and memory studies, cultural studies, philosophy and history of technology
offers support and guidance in choosing a topic, developing an idea for an academic presentation in the form of a discussion or essay
encourages reflection on everyday life, and broader socio-political and economic conditions of contemporaneity in the context of knowledge about and imagination of the past.
encourages the reflecting on literature and theoretical and conceptual approaches, encourages the integration of different approaches and disciplinary emphases, and reflects on and testing different methodological, theoretical and conceptual approaches
Competences
The student will develop the skills of written and oral academic argumentation, open discussion or debate.
Develop and upgrade autonomous research topic selection, using appropriate tools and methodology
Autonomously identifies and approaches research challenges

No specific enrollment conditions or completed study obligations are required for the course.

The course is complementary with Crossborder Histories, Culture, Borders, Memory, and Heritage between Interculturality, Equality, and Sustainability.

The course deals with the relationship between memory and technology and takes into account the history of technology, the social role of the media and variously related memory practices as these have formed in the relationship between humans and technology.
Memory is fundamentally dependent and intertwined with technology, that is, with materialities and practices that enable the exosomatisation of memory through technical objects. Civilisation and culture starts with the inscription and reading of memory from technical objects, as these objects enable a spatial and temporal transfer of knowledge across time and are thus a fundamental prerequisite for community reproduction, rearticulation and reinvention.
The issue of memory as a practice of individuals and communities plays a critical role, as it is established and shown through mutual and intercultural and intertemporal interactions, negotiations, challenges between ways of making sense of current reality through current events.
The course deals with the intertwining of technology and memory through a combination of the following select thematic emphases:
technology and civilization;
ecology and memory;
print and memory;
media technologies and modernity;
memory, media and digital culture
memory, oblivion and contemporaneity.

After passing the exam, the student will:
Have fundamental understanding of the interdependence of memory and technology in contemporary culture and in historical perspective (from print to digitization), and of the differences between European and other traditions.
Be able to produce various types of texts in dialogue with critical reading and analysis of contemporary scientific and other literature.
Develop an understanding of culture, everyday life, as well as the broader socio-political and economic conditions of contemporaniety in the context of techno-cultural practices of the imagination of the past.
Be familiar with scientific and public discourses on the role of technology in society and history, and be able to critically assess media and political discourses on the technologicalization and digitalization of society.

• Burke, Peter Asa Briggs, Social History of the Media, Polity Press, 2010. Catalogue
• Couldry, Nick, Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice, Polity Press, 2012.
• Couldry, Nick. Media in modernity: a nice derangement of institutions. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 281(3) 2017: 259–279. E-version
• Ernst, Wolfgang, Digital Memory and the Archive, University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
• Forster, Chris, Modernism and its Media, Bloomsbury, 2021. Catalogue
• Hjarvard, Stig, The Mediatization of Culture and Society, Routledge, 2013. Catalogue
• Hodkinson, Paul, Media, Culture and Society, Sage Publications, 2001.Catalogue
• Huhtamo, Erkki in Jussi Parikka, Media Archaeology, Approaches, Applications and Implications, University of California Press, 2011.
• Hui, Yuk, The Question Concerning Technology in China, Essay in Cosmotechnics, Urbanomic Media, 2016. Catalogue
• Innis, Harold, The Bias of Communication, University of Toronto Press, 2006.
• Keightley, Emily, Michael Pickering, The Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• Leroi-Gourhan, André, Gesture and Speech. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (1993 [1964]). E-version
• Peters, John Durham, The Marvellous Clouds, University of Chicago Press, 2015. Catalogue
• Stiegler, Bernard, Technics and Time (1, 2, 3), Stanford University Press, 1998–2011. E-version
• van Dijck, José, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age, Stanford University Press, 2007.

essay and discussion 80 %
active participation in discussions 20 %

Martin Pogačar is a cultural studies scholar with a doctorate in changing memory practices in digital media (University of Nova Gorica) and a master's degree in Central and South-Eastern European Studies (School of Slavonic and East-European Studies, University College London).
His research interests include memory in digital media ecologies, connections between technology and memory, as well as Yugoslav popular culture and industrial heritage. He is particularly interested in the influence of the media on the processes and practices of transmitting, recording, and re-presencing the past and the related social imaginaries that emerge out of the intertwining of technology, media, and memory practices. In addition, he explores the history of the development of technology in socialist Yugoslavia. Dr. Pogačar regularly publishes articles exploring these issues from the perspective of philosophy of technology, post-socialist studies, and popular culture studies.
Dr. Pogačar is a member of the editorial board of the journals Memory Studies and Memory, Mind & Media, and the editor-in-chief of the book series Thought, Society, Culture, Slovenian and South Eastern Perspectives, published in collaboration between ZRC SAZU and Peter Lang.