REL 490.001

Capstone Senior Seminar

W | 3:30-5:50

PRH 210

Download Syllabus

In this senior capstone course for REL majors, we will be talking about the way scholars approach and deploy archival research. Specific questions within archive theory relevant to this class include: What kind of authority can an archive be said to have in scholarly renderings of the past? How do contemporary interventions like media studies and posthumanism complicate our understanding of archives as stable artifacts? Looking at archives as exercises in present-day curation rather than windows into history, we will discuss archives as sites of productive tension for social theorists invested in contextual specificity.

K. Merinda Simmons


Readings

Kleinberg, Ethan
Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (*recommended, not required)
Stanford UP, 2017
9781503603387

Books are available at the SUPe Store and online through vendors such as amazon.com.

Online Readings

Blackboard Other texts will be available through the Blackboard course site.