GERM 283 - Databases of Control: Engaging with the Library Collection

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

(Same as MEDS 283 and STS 283) What is accessible and to whom? What gets collected, indexed, and preserved, and what disappears? And, most importantly, who has the power to decide these questions? This course treats databases as infrastructures of control that shape our everyday lives: they decide whether we can vote, cross borders, or even whether we are surveilled by a government agency. Records, however, are not objective documentation. They are the result of collection processes that mirror long histories of governmental control and repression. Working through theoretical texts and cinematic case studies from German-speaking and transnational contexts, we examine how seemingly mundane tools of record-keeping exert power over our lives.

The course involves a collaboration with Debra Bucher, Head of Collections & Discovery, to approach the Vassar Library’s holdings as a database, a system of classification shaped by institutional decision-making. Together we examine how bias enters collections and how libraries have responded to the legacies of racism and systemic marginalization. The final project is a video essay in which students apply the course’s critical framework to analyze a database that has a direct bearing on their lives. Anna Mayer.

Readings and discussions are in English.

Second six-week course.

Two 50-minute periods.

Course Format: CLS