Siegen Pop-Up University: Popular Archives/Mobile Archives

Hosts Daniel Stein Dean and Marcel Hartwig will focus on the digital dissemination of popular culture and the need to reconsider received notions of materiality and will reassess the institutions that have traditionally preserved cultural memory, such as museums and state archives.

This workshop will motivate participants to develop new ways of studying the digital archives of popular culture in conjunction with the possibilities of more traditional archival work conducted in the U.S. as well as abroad, particularly in Germany. Further, it will discuss the challenges resulting from remote access and ponder the restructuring of access and research in digital environments.

What constitutes the allure of the archive, and how does it impact knowledge networks in the study of popular culture? In what ways will material culture be accessible, and how will more unexpected connections unfold? The workshop will offer participants a selection of digital materials (mostly taken from the field of comic book culture) to explore different methods and tools of digital musealization and archiving. Twitter activities and collectively created Instagram posts will broadcast the workshop activities to a global audience.

This Siegen Pop-Up University event will take place in Hardesty Hall, room 3155, and is free and open to the TU community.