Abstract
ABSTRACT This essay offers insights to late German film historian Thomas Elsaesser’s pioneering teaching methods in the field of media archaeology at the beginning of the 21st century. It looks into Elsaesser’s original approach of teaching cinema history at the University of Amsterdam and discusses some of his key conceptual and educational tools such as the epistemic 1900–2000 juxtaposition, the hermeneutics of astonishment, and the S/M dispositifs of non-theatrical cinema. Different from the materialist-machinic method proposed by new media scholars, Elsaesser’s media-archaeological approach takes its cue from early cinema studies that serve as a concrete example of going ‘against the grain’ of traditional film historiography, dismantling its various tales of progress, or false teleologies. Later in his career, Elsaesser would think of media archaeology as a symptom of the various crises in the field of film studies with respect to the notions of progress, narration, and representation. The essay also discusses some of Elsaesser’s more experimental and playful teaching projects, involving locative media, GPS technology, and HyperCard interface design. The overall aim is to pay tribute to Elsaesser’s important role in establishing media archaeology as an academic discipline.
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