Documents in Society

The seminar takes a critical view on the role documents (letters, books, photography, film, digital files, etc.) play in society: differing roles, differing contexts, differing technology. A historically-informed, analytical, and comparative examination of theories and practices relating to the roles of documents in human life.

The seminar will be in three sections:

1. Concepts in legal, educational, science, mass media, and bibliographical traditions;
2. Models for the analysis and representation of the production, organization, and use of documents; and,
3. Empirical types of documents defined by topic (e.g. agriculture, fashion, history), medium computer, book, film) or genre (e.g. novels, journalism, music).