Edited by Zachary J. McDowell and Nathanael Bassett

The emerging field of media archaeology has opened up new avenues of research across fields and provided a way to challenge accepted historical layers of social and technical arrangements. Drawing from a variety of entangled theories and methodologies, bringing in German media theory, new materialism, digital humanities, software studies, cultural studies, Foucauldian frameworks, and others, media archaeology interrogates dead media, alternative technological schema, the composition of infrastructures, everyday objects, and other phenomena, providing new insights and recontextualization for scholars from an array of backgrounds. However, despite the interconnected promise of Media Archaeology, the practices and theories remain limited in their engagement with much of critical cultural communication and media studies.

In the introduction to “What is Media Archaeology,” Jussi Parikka notes that “we need to be prepared to refresh media archaeology itself.” This collection is meant to continue exactly that - to highlight and connect ways to theorize and “refresh” the concepts related to media archaeology in connection with the study of communication. We have gathered an array of intersectional engagements with and applications of media archaeological practices as they function theoretically, methodologically, spatially, institutionally, and in the study of communication.

With this issue, the first of two in this collection, we hope to begin providing scholars a space in which to explore the promise of media archaeology as a critical set of lenses.

Articles

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Dialogues

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