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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201029T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201029T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
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SUMMARY:Lana Swartz\, "New Money: How Payment Became Social Media"
DESCRIPTION:Lana Swartz\, ’09\, is joined by Aswin Punathambekar\, ’03\, to discuss Swartz’s new book New Money: How Payment Became Social Media (Yale University Press). New Money frames money as a media technology\, one in major transition\, and interrogates the consequences of those changes. \n\n\n\nLana Swartz is an Assistant Professor in Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and a 2009 graduate of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies master’s program. Prior to New Money\, she published Paid: Tales of Dongles\, Checks\, and Other Money Stuff (MIT Press). Aswin Punathambekar is Swartz’s colleague at UVa’s Department of Media Studies\, where he is an Associate Professor. He graduated from the Comparative Media Studies program in 2003 and is co-author of the upcoming (provisionally-titled) The Digital Popular: Media\, Culture\, and Politics in Networked India.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lana-swartz-new-money-aswin-punathambekar/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/New-Money-cover-cropped.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201022T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201022T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200814T174249Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201020T183834Z
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SUMMARY:Elinor Carmi\, “Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam\, Noise\, and Other Deviant Media”
DESCRIPTION:Media Distortions is about the power behind producing deviant media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise\, and what it means to our broader understanding of\, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory\, sound studies\, STS\, feminist technoscience\, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces – which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. The book introduces two main concepts – Processed Listening and Rhythmedia – to analyze multiplicities of mediated spaces\, people and objects. \n\n\n\nDrawing on repositories of legal\, technical and archival sources\, the book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise in the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and shows how the digital advertising industry constructed what is legitimate communication while illegitimizing spam. The final story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook constructs unwanted behaviors to engineer a sociality that produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human\, public and private spaces\, and importantly – social and antisocial. \n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbout Elinor Carmi\n\n\n\nElinor Carmi is a researcher\, journalist and ex-radio broadcaster who has a passion for technology\, digital rights\, and feminism. In the past 8 years she has been examining internet standards\, specifically the development of the digital advertising ecosystem such as advertising networks\, real-time-bidding\, and web-cookies/pixels. Currently Dr. Carmi is a Research Associate at Liverpool University\, UK\, working on several projects: 1) “Me and My Big Data – Developing Citizens’ Data Literacies” Nuffield Foundation funded project; 2) “Being Alone Together: Developing Fake News Immunity” UKRI funded project; 3) Digital inclusion with the UK’s Department for Digital\, Culture\, Media and Sport (DCMS). On February 2020\, Carmi was invited to give evidence on digital literacy for the House of Lords’ Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies\, at the British Parliament in London\, UK. In addition\, she has been invited by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a scientific expert to be part of the closed discussions to establish the foundations of Infodemiology. Before academia\, Elinor worked in the electronic dance music industry  for various labels\, was a radio broadcaster and a music television  editor for almost a decade. In 2013\, she published a book about the  Israeli Psytrance culture titled “TranceMission: The Psytrance Culture  in Israel 1989-1999” (Resling Publishing). She also tweets  @Elinor_Carmi.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/elinor-carmi-media-distortions-spam-noise-deviant-media/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elinor-Carmi.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201008T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201008T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200813T131520Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201023T155425Z
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SUMMARY:Eric Gordon\, "Towards a Meaningfully Inefficient Smart City"
DESCRIPTION:[Streamed live at https://mit.zoom.us/j/94087151099.] \n\n\n\n\nMainstream “smart” city discourse offers a technocentric\, efficiency-driven utopian fantasy that elides or exacerbates many urban problems of the past and present. Significant critical literature has emerged in recent years that highlights the importance of lived experience in smart cities\, wherein values of equity\, quality of life\, and sustainability are prioritized. This literature has focused on models that center people in the design and implementation of smart city plans. Instead of maximizing efficiency\, these models strategically produce what I call meaningful inefficiencies into process and outcomes\, or the intentionally designed productive lag in a system wherein users are able to explore\, connect\, and invent in a non-prescribed fashion. In this talk\, Visiting Professor Eric Gordon will discuss a recent project in Boston\, MA in collaboration with the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics\, called Beta Blocks\, that uses meaningful inefficiency as a structuring logic for sourcing\, questioning and making decisions about public realm technologies. \n\n\n\n\nEric Gordon is a visiting professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT and a professor of Media Art at Emerson College\, where he directs the Engagement Lab. His research focuses on the transformation of public life and governance in digital culture\, and the incorporation of play into collaborative design processes. He is the editor of Civic Media: Technology\, Design\, Practice (MIT Press\, 2016) and the author of Meaningful Inefficiencies: Civic Design in an Age of Digital Expediency (Oxford University Press\, 2020).
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/eric-gordon-towards-a-meaningfully-inefficient-smart-city/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Eric-Gordon.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200917T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200917T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200820T124814Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201023T155643Z
UID:35757-1600362000-1600367400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Kishonna Gray\, "Intersectional Tech: Exploring the Black Cultural Production of Gamers in Transmediated Culture"
DESCRIPTION:[Streamed live at https://mit.zoom.us/j/94087151099.] \n\n\n\n\nWith this presentation\, Dr. Kishonna Gray illustrates a framework for studying the intersectional development of technological artifacts and systems and their impact on Black cultural production and social processes. Using gaming as the glue that binds this project\, she puts forth intersectional tech as a framework to make sense of the visual\, textual\, and oral engagements of marginalized users\, exploring the complexities in which they create\, produce\, and sustain their practices. Gaming\, as a medium often outside conversations on Blackness and digital praxis\, is one that is becoming more visible\, viable\, and legible in making sense of Black technoculture. Intersectional tech implores us to make visible the force of discursive practices that position practices within (dis)orderly social hierarchies and arrangements. The explicit formulations of the normative order are sometimes in disagreement with the concrete human condition as well as inconsistent with the consumption and production practices that constitute Black digital labor. It is\, in fact\, these practices that inform the theoretical underpinnings of Black performances\, cultural production\, exploited labor\, and resistance strategies inside oppressive technological structures that Black users reside. \n\n\n\n\nEngaging intersectionality across transmediated platforms reveals a significant moment of critiquing narratives\, creating content\, and controlling narratives. The aftermath of Mike Brown’s death in 2014\, for instance\, revealed the power of this innovative engagement that the once-invisible could now actively engage\, participate\, and produce content in hypervisible ways. In the context of #BlackLivesMatter\, the combination of the textual and the visual ignited not only a movement\, but a proclamation of reclaiming narratives and identities across media and platforms – from BlackLivesMatter to Black-ish to “The Breakfast Club.” It is important to examine the everydayness of mediated\, intersectional\, counterpublics to examine Black oral\, visual\, and textual culture in digital spaces and how this manifests within gaming culture. The transmediated nature of contemporary gaming communities affords the possibility of reframing traditional narratives\, controlling and producing content\, sustaining Black cultural production. \n\n\n\nDr. Kishonna L. Gray (@kishonnagray) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois – Chicago. Dr. Gray is an interdisciplinary\, intersectional\, digital media scholar and digital herstorian whose areas of research include identity\, performance and online environments\, embodied deviance\, cultural production\, video games\, and Black Cyberfeminism. Dr. Gray’s recent monograph\, Intersectional Tech: The Transmediated Praxis of Black Users in Digital Gaming (LSU Press\, 2020) explores the visual\, textual\, and/or oral engagement of the Black body in transmediated spaces\, focusing on the critical deconstruction of the exploited\, hypervisible\, labor of any associated Black performances (online and ‘IRL’). \n\n\n\nShe is also the author of Race\, Gender\, & Deviance in Xbox Live (Routledge\, 2014) co-editor of Feminism in Play (Palgrave-Macmillan\, 2018) and Woke Gaming (University of Washington Press\, 2018). Dr. Gray has published in a variety of outlets across disciplines and has also been featured in public outlets such as The Guardian\, The Telegraph\, The New York Times\, Business Insider\, CNET\, BET\, and others.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/kishonna-gray-intersectional-tech-black-cultural-production-gamers/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Kishonna-Gray-2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200430T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200430T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200427T191747Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200522T152223Z
UID:34825-1588266000-1588271400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Katha Seidman\, “Historic Drama-Documentaries and Immersive Installations”
DESCRIPTION:Emmy Award-winning production designer Katha Seidman \nKatha Seidman has designed many historic drama-documentaries and built a number of immersive installations. Although these two design challenges often seem to cross-reference\, she believes they should be treated quite differently. This talk will compare the development of one specific set\, a depiction of Lavoisier’s laboratory in 1778 when he discovers oxygen\, with an immersive shadow-play I’m developing that conjures a clandestine meeting of the Vigilant Committee of New York Cityabolitionists in 1851. \nA five-time nominee and three-time Emmy Award winning production designer\, Seidman has designed many historic drama-documentaries for PBS\, the History Channel and the Discovery Channel. In addition\, she creates immersive installations\, some in collaboration with other artists and others as solo shows. She is currently working on two installations\, a collaborative 3-D graphic novel and an immersive shadow-play about an imagined meeting of Abolitionists after the passing of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/katha-seidman-historic-drama-documentaries-and-immersive-installations/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Katha-Seidman.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200423T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200423T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200204T154746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T194928Z
UID:34526-1587661200-1587666600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Lily Bui\, “Centering Peripheries: Warning Systems and Disaster Risk Reduction Planning on the Island City”
DESCRIPTION:Lily Bui\, Ph.D.\, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning \n[Limited to CMS/W community.] \nWarning systems play a crucial role in disaster events on islands\, some of the most vulnerable places in the world. They enable timely communication of risk\, bolstering capacity and counterbalancing the negative force exerted by hazards\, exposures\, and vulnerabilities that threaten island communities. Disasters frequently result in the breakdown of communication due to both structural (i.e.\, power outages\, failed telecommunications equipment\, aging infrastructure) and nonstructural issues (i.e.\, governance\, socioeconomic inequity\, language barriers). Through semi-structured interviews\, participant observation\, document review and spatial data visualization\, this dissertation compares the hurricane warning systems of two U.S. island cities: San Juan\, Puerto Rico\, and Honolulu\, O’ahu\, Hawaii\, during Hurricane Maria (2017) and Hurricane Lane (2018)\, respectively. This talk will share research that proposes a conceptual framework for evaluating warning systems that takes into consideration the temporal aspects of warning. The framework illustrates the ways in which warning and planning are interrelated\, as well as how planning and warning processes take place over time. \nLily Bui received her Ph.D. from MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning\, whose work focuses on disaster early warning systems on urban islands. She holds an S.M. from MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and a dual bachelor’s in International Studies and Spanish from her alma mater\, University of California\, Irvine. She serves as an advisory board member for UC Irvine’s Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Certificate Program.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lily-bui-warning-systems-disaster-risk-reduction-island-city/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Lily-Bui.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200416T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200416T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200204T182438Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T194934Z
UID:34533-1587056400-1587061800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein\, “Data Feminism”
DESCRIPTION:Catherine D’Ignazio ( Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT) and Lauren Klein (Associate Professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University) \n[Limited to CMS/W community.] \nAs data are increasingly mobilized in the service of global corporations\, governments\, and elite institutions\, their unequal conditions of production\, their inequitable impacts\, and their asymmetrical silences become increasingly more apparent. It is precisely this power that makes it worth asking: “Data science by whom? For whom? In whose interest? Informed by whose values?” And most importantly\, “How do we begin to imagine alternatives for data’s collection\, analysis\, and communication?” These are some of the questions that emerge from what Lauren Klein and Catherine D’Ignazio call Data Feminism (MIT Press 2020). Data feminism is a way of thinking about data science and its products that is informed by the past several decades of intersectional feminist activism and critical thought\, emerging anti-oppression design frameworks\, and scholarship from the fields of Critical Data Studies\, Science & Technology Studies\, Geography/GIS\, Digital Humanities and Human Computer Interaction. An intersectional feminist lens prompts questions about how\, for instance\, challenges to the male/female binary can also help challenge other binary (and empirically wrong) classification systems. It encourages us to ask how the concept of invisible labor can help to expose the gendered\, racialized\, and colonial forms of labor associated with data work. And it demonstrates why the data never\, ever\, speak for themselves. In this talk\, D’Ignazio will introduce seven principles for data feminist work: examining and challenging power\, rethinking binaries and hierarchies\, considering context\, embracing pluralism\, making labor visible\, and elevating emotion. The goal of this work is to transform scholarship into action – to operationalize feminism in order to imagine more ethical and more equitable data practices. \nCatherine D’Ignazio is an Assistant Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT\, and director of the Data + Feminism Lab. More information about Catherine can be found on her website\, kanarinka.com. \nLauren F. Klein is an associate professor in the departments of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods at Emory University\, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab. More information about Lauren can be found on her website\, lklein.com.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/data-feminism-catherine-dignazio-lauren-klein/
LOCATION:MA
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Catherine-DIgnazio-and-Lauren-Klein.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200402T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200402T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20191205T144802Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T194947Z
UID:34367-1585846800-1585852200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:POSTPONED UNTIL FALL: Elinor Carmi\, “Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam\, Noise\, and Other Deviant Media”
DESCRIPTION:Elinor Carmi\, Postdoc Research Associate in digital culture and society\, at Liverpool University\, UK \nMedia Distortions is about the power behind producing deviant media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise\, and what it means to our broader understanding of\, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory\, sound studies\, STS\, feminist technoscience\, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces – which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. The book introduces two main concepts – Processed Listening and Rhythmedia – to analyse multiplicities of mediated spaces\, people and objects. Drawing on repositories of legal\, technical and archival sources\, the book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise in the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and shows how the digital advertising industry constructed what is legitimate communication while illegitimizing spam. The final story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook constructs unwanted behaviors to engineer a sociality that produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human\, public and private spaces\, and importantly – social and antisocial. \nElinor Carmi is a digital rights advocate\, feminist\, researcher and journalist who has been working\, writing and teaching on deviant media\, internet standards\, (cyber)feminism\, sound studies and internet governance. Her second monograph will be out by the end of 2019 titled “Digital Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam\, Noise\, and Other Deviant Media”\, published on Digital Formation series at Peter Lang publishing. Currently Elinor is a Postdoc Research Associate in digital culture and society\, at Liverpool University\, UK\, working on several ESRC and AHRC projects and part of the Nuffield Foundation funded project Me and My Big Data: Developing UK Citizens Data Literacies. At the moment she is working on two special issues: for Theory\, Culture & Society together with Brittany Paris about ‘Redesigning Time’\, and for the Internet Policy Review together with Simeon Yates about ‘what digital literacy mean today’. Before academia\, Elinor worked in the electronic dance music industry for various labels\, was a radio broadcaster and a music television editor for almost a decade. In 2013\, she published a book about the Israeli Psytrance culture titled “TranceMission: The Psytrance Culture in Israel 1989-1999” (Resling Publishing). She also tweets @Elinor_Carmi.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/elinor-carmi-media-distortions-understanding-the-power-behind-spam-noise-and-other-deviant-media/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elinor-Carmi.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200319T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200319T190000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200228T173027Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T194949Z
UID:34578-1584637200-1584644400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:CANCELLED: Artificial Intelligence and Ethics
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/artificial-intelligence-and-ethics/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 237\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/POSTER-AI-and-Ethics1-scaled-1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MIT%20Program%20on%20Science%2C%20Technology%20and%20Society":MAILTO:stsprogram@mit.edu
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200312T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200312T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20191125T193332Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T194955Z
UID:34356-1584032400-1584037800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:POSTPONED UNTIL SPRING 2021: Meghan Sutherland\, “Variety\, Genealogy\, History: On the Politics of Media Convergence”
DESCRIPTION:Meghan SutherlandAssociate Professor of Cinema and Visual StudiesUniversity of Toronto \nThis talk illuminates a bond between the variety form\, the concept of genealogy\, and the colonial logics of racial\, ethnic and sexual differentiation that have defined the project of modern liberalism as one of social and technological development. In doing so\, it aims to recast the phenomenon of “media convergence” as a matter of aesthetic form that is not only fundamental to the biopolitical imaginary of liberalism and neoliberalism\, but is fundamental as well to the idea of governmental “technology” on which the latter is predicated–a scenario that stands to change how we think about the political entanglement of form and technology more broadly. \nMeghan Sutherland is Associate Professor of Cinema and Visual Studies at the University of Toronto and a founding co-editor of the online journal World Picture. She is also the author of The Flip Wilson Show (Wayne State University Press\, 2008) and a forthcoming book called Variety: The Extra Aesthetic and the Constitution of Modern Media (Duke University Press)\, and her essays on the intersections between media\, philosophy and politics have appeared in a range of different journals and edited volumes.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/meghan-sutherland-variety-genealogy-history-on-the-politics-of-media-convergence/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Meghan-Sutherland.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200305T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200305T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200206T154207Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195000Z
UID:34471-1583427600-1583433000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Shawna Kidman\, “The Infrastructure of the U.S. Comic Book Industry and the Long History of Superheroes in Hollywood”
DESCRIPTION:Shawna Kidman\, Assistant Professor\, University of California San Diego \nThis talk will discuss the history of the American comic book industry during the 20th century. This medium has dominated the film and television landscape in recent years\, and has come to define contemporary corporate transmedia production. But before moving to the center of mainstream popular culture\, comic books spent half a century wielding their influence from the margins and in-between spaces of the entertainment business. Dr. Kidman will argue that the best way to understand the immense influence of this relatively small business is through a political economic analysis. Specifically\, she will discuss industrial infrastructure—the aspects of our media environment that often lack public visibility\, including distribution\, copyright and contract law\, and financing. These systems channeled the industry’s growth and ultimately gave the medium its shape. Accordingly\, a closer look at the everyday intricacies of the business yields a very different kind of narrative about what comic books are and how they came to be. It also helps explain why comic books and comic book strategies became so central to media production in the 21st century\, and why these trends are likely to persist well into the future. \nShawna Kidman is an Assistant Professor of Communication at UC San Diego where she teaches courses in media studies. Her research on the media industries has been published in Velvet Light Trap\, the International Journal of Learning and Media\, and the International Journal of Communication. She is the author of Comic Books Incorporated: How the Business of Comics Became the Business of Hollywood (UC Press\, 2019)\, a history of the U.S. comic book industry’s convergence with the film and television business. Before earning her PhD in Critical Media Studies at USC\, Shawna worked in the media business\, including as a creative executive at DC Comics.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/shawna-kidman-superheroes-hollywood/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Kidman-Portrait.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200227T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200227T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200117T172319Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195002Z
UID:34459-1582822800-1582828200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Marina Bers\, “Coding in Early Childhood: Storytelling or Puzzle Solving?”
DESCRIPTION:Professor Marina Bers\, Tufts University \nComputer programming is an essential skill in the 21st century and new policies and frameworks are in place for preparing students for computer science. Today\, the development of new interfaces and block-programming languages\, facilitates the teaching of coding and computational thinking starting in kindergarten. However\, as new programming languages that are developmentally appropriate emerge\, it is not enough to copy models developed for older children\, which mostly grew out of traditional STEM (Science\, Technology\, Engineering and Math) disciplines and instructional practices. In this talk\, Prof. Marina Bers will describe current research on a  pedagogical approach for early childhood computer science education called “Coding as Another Language” (CAL)\, grounded on the principle that learning to program involves learning how to use a new language (a symbolic system of representation) for communicative and expressive functions. Due to the critical foundational role of language and literacy in the early years\, the teaching of computer science can be augmented by models of literacy instruction.  Case studies of young children using either the KIBO robot or the ScratchJr app\, designed by Prof Bers\,  to illustrate the instructional practices of CAL curriculum will be presented\, as well as novel approaches using fMRI to explore what regions of the brain activate when coding. \n\nMarina Umaschi Bers (tufts.edu/~mbers01) is a professor at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development and an adjunct professor in the Computer Science Department at Tufts University. She heads the interdisciplinary Developmental Technologies research group. Her research involves the design and study of innovative learning technologies to promote children’s positive development. She also developed and serves as director of the graduate certificate program on Early Childhood Technology at Tufts University. \nProf. Bers is passionate about using the power of technology to promote positive development and learning for young children. Bers’ philosophy and theoretical approach  as well as the curriculum and assessment methods can be found in her books “Coding as Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom” (Routledge\, 2018); “The Official ScratchJr Book” (2015; No Starch Press); “Designing Digital Experiences for Positive Youth Development: From Playpen to Playground” (2012\, Oxford University Press); and “Blocks to Robots: Learning with Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom” (2008; Teacher’s College Press). \nProf. Bers loves teaching and in 2016 she received the Outstanding Faculty Contribution to Graduate Student Studies award at Tufts University which recognizes her mentorship.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/marina-bers-coding-early-childhood-storytelling-puzzle-solving/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Marina-Bers-16x9-1.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200220T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200220T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200128T155913Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195008Z
UID:34484-1582218000-1582223400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Desmond Upton Patton\, “Contextual Analysis of Social Media: The Promise and Challenge of Eliciting Context in Social Media Posts with Natural Language Processing”
DESCRIPTION:Desmond Upton Patton\, Associate Professor of Social Work\, Columbia University \nWhile natural language processing affords researchers an opportunity to automatically scan millions of social media posts\, there is growing concern that automated computational tools lack the ability to understand context and nuance in human communication and language. Columbia University’s Desmond Upton Patton introduces a critical systematic approach for extracting culture\, context and nuance in social media data. The Contextual Analysis of Social Media (CASM) approach considers and critiques the gap between inadequacies in natural language processing tools and differences in geographic\, cultural\, and age-related variance of social media use and communication. CASM utilizes a team-based approach to analysis of social media data\, explicitly informed by community expertise. The team uses CASM to analyze Twitter posts from gang-involved youth in Chicago. They designed a set of experiments to evaluate the performance of a support vector machine using CASM hand-labeled posts against a distant model. They found that the CASM-informed hand-labeled data outperforms the baseline distant labels\, indicating that the CASM labels capture additional dimensions of information that content-only methods lack. They then question whether this is helpful or harmful for gun violence prevention.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/desmond-patton-contextual-analysis-social-media-natural-language-processing/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Desmond-Upton-Patton-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200213T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200213T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20200128T153943Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195012Z
UID:34480-1581613200-1581618600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Matthew Berland\, “Creative Agency: Making\, Learning\, and Playing towards Understanding Computational Content”
DESCRIPTION:Matthew Berland\, Associate Professor of Design\, Informal\, and Creative Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison \nPeople often learn complex computational content most easily and deeply when they have “creative agency” – the social network\, ability\, skills\, resources\, and support to collaboratively and playfully make creative computational content in feedback-rich environments. This talk will present a lens on how we can create environments where learners are supported in developing creative agency\, and how we might assess or evaluate success. Matthew Berland will cover his projects in museums\, computer science classrooms\, after-school clubs\, and universities\, showing how we can use design-based research\, learning analytics\, and games to enable creative agency towards more equitable outcomes and better understand how\, why\, and when people make and learn complex computational content together. \nMatthew Berland is an Associate Professor of Design\, Informal\, and Creative Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison\, spending 2019-2020 as a visiting scholar in CMS/W at MIT. In addition\, he is the director of the UW Games Program and the Complex Play Lab and Affiliate Faculty in Computer Sciences\, Information Studies\, STS\, and the Learning Sciences. He uses design-based research and learning analytics to design\, create\, and study learning environments that support students’ creativity in learning computational literacies\, systems literacies\, and computer science & engineering content.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/matthew-berland-creative-agency-computational-content/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Matthew-Berland.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191205T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191205T170000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190903T182431Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195045Z
UID:34110-1575565200-1575565200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:T.L. Taylor\, “Play as Transformative Work”
DESCRIPTION:T.L. Taylor\, Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT \nProfessor of Comparative Media Studies T.L. Taylor will explore the ways game live streamers are transforming their otherwise private play into public entertainment. She will focus on this new form of creative labor and offer a challenge to current models of IP and fandom\, suggesting the work of professional live streamers is not easily captured by non-commercial frameworks nor simple work/play dichotomies. \nT.L. Taylor is Professor of Comparative Media Studies and co-founder and Director of Research for AnyKey\, an organization dedicated to supporting and developing fair and inclusive esports. She is a qualitative sociologist who has focused on internet and game studies for over two decades. Dr. Taylor’s research explores the interrelations between culture and technology in online leisure environments. Her book Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming (MIT Press\, 2012) chronicles the rise of esports and professional computer gaming. Her book about game live streaming – Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming (Princeton University Press) – is now out and is the first of its kind to chronicle this emerging media space.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/t-l-taylor-play-as-transformative-work/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/TL-Taylor-square.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191121T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191121T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190918T181655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195048Z
UID:34158-1574355600-1574361000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Paloma Duong\, “Portable Postsocialisms [postsocialismos de bolsillo]”
DESCRIPTION:Paloma Duong\, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies \nHow do Cuban culture and media register the defining aspects of its transformation at the turn of the 21st century: the expansion of transnational capitalist markets\, the proliferation of digital media\, and the simultaneous reorganization of its official state ideology and its social imaginaries? This talk will explore competing narratives about Cuba’s postsocialist moment across a range of cultural and media practices—from music to memes—inviting us to consider whether we can continue to frame Cuba as a regional exception. We will also examine how revisiting our assumptions about digital media and cultural agency\, both in Cuba and in the broader hemispheric context\, can speak to the dreams and demands of constituencies that operate between\, beneath\, and beyond the pressures of global markets and the nation-state. \n Paloma Duong is Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies at MIT. At the intersection of cultural studies\, media theory\, and political philosophy\, Paloma researches and teaches modern and contemporary Latin American culture. She works with social texts and emergent media cultures that speak to the exercise of cultural agencies and the formation of political subjectivity. She is currently writing Portable Postsocialisms: Culture and Media in 21st century Cuba\, a book-length study of Cuba’s changing mediascape and an inquiry on the postsocialist condition and its contexts. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies\, Art Margins\, and Cuban Counterpoints: Public Scholarship about a Changing Cuba.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/paloma-duong-portable-postsocialisms-postsocialismos-de-bolsillo/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Paloma-Duong-e1590602042365.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191114T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191114T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190923T165220Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195055Z
UID:34168-1573750800-1573756200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Eric Klopfer\, “Design Based Research on Participatory Simulations”
DESCRIPTION:Professor Eric Klopfer \nAn important part of the work done at the The Education Arcade is based on a process of Design Based Research (DBR). In DBR\, we design products that are meant to fill real classroom needs and then iteratively test and refine them. Eric Klopfer and The Education Arcade are currently working on a set of “Participatory Simulations”: mobile collaborative systems-based games. \nDuring this talk\, attendees will have a chance to play a couple of these games and participate in a design discussion with one of the games that is currently in progress. \nProfessor Klopfer\, currently Head of Comparative Media Studies/Writing\, is Director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program and The Education Arcade at MIT. He is also a co-faculty director for MIT’s J-WEL World Education Lab.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/eric-klopfer-design-based-research-on-participatory-simulations/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Eric-Klopfer-square.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191107T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191107T170000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190903T172512Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201002T130622Z
UID:34105-1573146000-1573146000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Lucy Suchman\, “Artificial Intelligence & Modern Warfare”
DESCRIPTION:Lucy Suchman\, Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology\, Lancaster University \nIn June of 2018\, following a campaign initiated by activist employees within the company\, Google announced its intention not to renew a US Defense Department contract for Project Maven\, an initiative to automate the identification of military targets based on drone video footage. Defendants of the program argued that that it would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of US drone operations\, not least by enabling more accurate recognition of those who are the program’s legitimate targets and\, by implication\, sparing the lives of noncombatants. But this promise begs a more fundamental question: What relations of reciprocal familiarity does recognition presuppose? And in the absence of those relations\, what schemas of categorization inform our readings of the Other? The focus of a growing body of scholarship\, this question haunts not only US military operations but an expanding array of technologies of social sorting. Understood as apparatuses of recognition (Barad 2007: 171)\, Project Maven and the US program of targeted killing are implicated in perpetuating the very architectures of enmity that they take as their necessitating conditions. Taking any apparatus for the identification of those who comprise legitimate targets for the use of violent force as problematic\, this talk joins a growing body of scholarship on the technopolitical logics that underpin an increasingly violent landscape of institutions\, infrastructures and actions\, promising protection to some but arguably contributing to our collective insecurity. Lucy Suchman’s concern is with the asymmetric distributions of sociotechnologies of (in)security\, their deadly and injurious effects\, and the legal\, ethical\, and moral questions that haunt their operations. She closes with some thoughts on how we might interrupt the workings of these apparatuses\, in the service of wider movements for social justice. \nLucy Suchman is a Professor of Anthropology of Science and Technology in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University\, in the United Kingdom.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lucy-suchman-artificial-intelligence-modern-warfare/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Lucy-Suchman.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191024T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191024T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190923T164228Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195105Z
UID:34166-1571936400-1571941800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:William Uricchio\, “Why Co-Create?  And Why Now?  Reports from A Field Study”
DESCRIPTION:William Uricchio\, Professor of Comparative Media Studies and Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab \nCo-Creation is picking up steam as a claim\, aspiration\, and buzz-word du jour. But what is and why does it matter? Drawing on a just-released field study\, Collective Wisdom\, this session will address those questions and explore the method’s implications for just and equitable creation. It will consider co-creation in the arts with communities\, across disciplines and organizations\, and with non-humans (both biological and AI systems)\, calling out precedents and best practices in a broad array of communities\, including historically marginalized groups. What are the trends\, opportunities\, and challenges bound up in co-creation and its various deployments\, and why it is increasingly urgent in our time? \nWilliam Uricchio is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT\, where he is also founder and Principal Investigator of the MIT Open Documentary Lab and Principal Investigator of the Co-Creation Studio. He\, together with Katerina Cizek\, authored Collective Wisdom — a field study on co-creation. His current research considers co-creation\, documentary\, and the epistemological crisis that characterizes our time.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/william-uricchio-why-co-create-and-why-now-reports-from-a-field-study/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/William-Uricchio-2x1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191017T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191017T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20191007T134028Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195111Z
UID:34218-1571331600-1571337000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Vivek Bald\, “If I Could Reach the Border...”
DESCRIPTION:Vivek Bald\, filmmaker and Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media \nVivek Bald\, Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media\, will read from a new essay that uses a teenage encounter with police and the justice system to explore questions of immigrant acceptability\, racialization\, and the South Asians American embrace of model minority status. He will also provide an update on his documentary film\, In Search of Bengali Harlem\, recently funded by the PBS-affiliated Center for Asian American Media\, and currently being edited by Comparative Media Studies master’s alum\, Beyza Boyacioglu. Between the essay and film\, Bald will reflect on South Asian American experiences of multi-racial identity and histories of cross-racial community-making. \nBald is a scholar\, writer\, and documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on histories of migration and diaspora\, particularly from the South Asian subcontinent. He is the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press\, 2013)\, and co-editor\, with Miabi Chatterji\, Sujani Reddy\, and Manu Vimalassery of The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press\, 2013).
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/vivek-bald-if-i-could-reach-the-border/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/bengali-harlem-frontcover.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191010T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191010T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190812T155035Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195113Z
UID:34020-1570726800-1570732200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Anushka Shah\, “How Entertainment Can Help Fix the System”
DESCRIPTION:Anushka Shah\, founder of Civic Studios and the Civic Entertainment project at the Center for Civic Media\, MIT Media Lab. \nAround the world\, citizens are saying the system is broken. If it’s education and schools one day\, it’s healthcare the next. Our trust in politics and public institutions is falling globally\, and our confidence in the ability to solve problems around us is teetering. \nCan entertainment and pop culture be a way out? Can films\, television shows\, and digital content become spaces to teach us how to fix our systems? Can we create influential media that changes how we talk about identity\, social justice\, public institutions\, and citizen power? \nIn this talk\, Anushka Shah\, founder of the production house Civic Studios and the Civic Entertainment project at the MIT Media Lab\, explores how entertainment can provide alternate narratives of citizen participation. \nShah’s Civic Entertainment project explores the intersection of civic participation with film\, television\, radio\, theatre and digital entertainment. The project focuses on researching the media effects of fiction towards thought and behavior change\, explores how methods of social change available to citizens can be best represented in entertainment media\, and investigates the representation of protest and activism in current popular culture. \nHer production firm Civic Studios focuses on creating such civic entertainment content for Indian audiences. The aim of the content is to empower audiences by addressing the lack of trust in public institutions\, knowledge of government and democratic systems\, and increasing self-efficacy to participate in change as a citizen. \nOriginally from Mumbai\, India\, Anushka divides her time between Mumbai\, Boston\, and Chicago. She has a background in applied statistics and digital text analysis\, and has also previously worked with non-profits and political parties in India.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/anushka-shah-how-entertainment-can-help-fix-the-system/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Anushka-Shah.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191003T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191003T170000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190906T185241Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195121Z
UID:34128-1570122000-1570122000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Helen Elaine Lee: "Pomegranate"
DESCRIPTION:Professor Helen Elaine Lee \nAt this week’s colloquium\, Helen Elaine Lee reads from the manuscript of her novel\, Pomegranate\, about a recovering addict who is getting out of prison and trying to stay clean\, regain custody of her children\, and choose life. Professor Lee\, who teaches writing in Comparative Media Studies/Writing\, is also Director of MIT’s Program in Women’s & Gender Studies. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Her first novel\, The Serpent’s Gift\, was published by Atheneum and her second novel\, Water Marked\, was published by Scribner. Her short story “Blood Knot” appeared in the spring 2017 issue of Ploughshares and the story “Lesser Crimes” appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of Callaloo. She recently finished The Unlocked Room\, a novel about a group of people who are incarcerated in two neighboring U.S. prisons and the woman who comes to teach them poetry as she searches for her lost brother.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/helen-elaine-lee-pomegranate/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Helen-Lee.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190926T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190926T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190816T184231Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195129Z
UID:34035-1569517200-1569522600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Nick Montfort\, “Poet/Programmers\, Artist/Programmers\, and Scholar/Programmers: What and Who Are They?”
DESCRIPTION:Nick Montfort\, Professor of Digital Media at MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing \nComputer programming is a general-purpose way of using computation. It can be instrumental (oriented toward a predefined end\, as with the development of well-specified apps and Web services) or exploratory (used for artistic work and intellectual inquiry). Professor Nick Monfort’s emphasis in this talk\, as in his own work\, is on exploratory programming\, that type of programming which can be used as part of a creative or scholarly methodology. He will say a bit about his own work but will use much of the discussion to survey how many other poet/programmers\, artist/programmers\, and scholar/programmers are creating radical new work and uncovering new insights. \nNick Montfort is Professor of Digital Media at Comparative Media Studies/Writing. He develops computational poetry and art and has participated in dozens of literary and academic collaborations. Recent books include The Future and Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities (MIT Press) and several books of computational poetry: Hard West Turn\, The Truelist\, #!\, the collaboration 2×6\, and Autopia. He has worked to contribute to platform studies\, critical code studies\, and electronic literature.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/nick-montfort-poet-programmers-artist-programmers-and-scholar-programmers-what-and-who-are-they/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Nick-Montfort.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190919T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190919T170000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190909T173301Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195133Z
UID:34134-1568912400-1568912400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Ian Condry\, “Sound\, Learning and Democracy: The Curvature of Social Space-Time through Japanese Music\, from Underground Techno to Pop Idols”
DESCRIPTION:Professor Ian Condry\, cultural anthropologist in MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing \nThe talk will explore contemporary Japanese music\, with a comparison of diverse examples\, such as female Japanese rappers\, underground techno festivals\, the virtual idol Hatsune Miku\, and the pop idol group AKB48. How can music help us understand the curvature of social space-time?  What does this mean for our understanding of society\, culture\, and media? \nIan Condry is a cultural anthropologist in the department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing at MIT\, where he has taught since 2002. He is the author of two books\, Hip-Hop Japan and The Soul of Anime\, both of which have been translated into Japanese.  He organizes the MIT/Harvard Cool Japan research project and a new initiative called Dissolve Music\,which brings together musicians\, sound artists\, technologists and educators to use audio experiences to dissolve the structures of inequality.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/ian-condry-japanese-music-underground-techno-pop-idols/
LOCATION:MIT Building E15\, Room 318 (Common Area)\, 20 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/condry.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190912T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190912T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190807T144428Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195136Z
UID:34001-1568307600-1568313000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Christopher Weaver\, “Amplius Ludo\, Beyond the Horizon”
DESCRIPTION:Christopher Weaver \nWhile the appeal of games may be universal and satisfy our innate desire to play\, the powerful dynamics that govern our behavior within games is even more interesting than the play itself. Can we broaden our understanding of play mechanisms by applying the subliminal mechanics of play beyond games? Join Christopher Weaver\, Founder of Bethesda Softworks\, who teaches engineering and computational media respectively at MIT and Wesleyan\, as he explores these important issues in a lecture entitled “Amplius Ludo\, Beyond the Horizon”. Prof. Weaver will discuss how games work and why they are such potent tools in areas as disparate as military simulation\, childhood education\, and medicine. \nChristopher Weaver is Research Scientist and Lecturer\, MIT Comparative Media Studies\, Visiting Scientist and Lecturer\, MIT Microphotonics Center and Distinguished Professor of Computational Media at Wesleyan University. \nWeaver received his SM from MIT and was the initial Daltry Scholar at Wesleyan University\, where he earned dual Masters Degrees in Japanese and Computer Science and a CAS Doctoral Degree in Japanese and Physics. The former Director of Technology Forecasting for ABC and Chief Engineer to the Subcommittee on Communications for the US Congress\, Weaver founded Bethesda Softworks\, and developed a physics-based\, realtime sports engine used to create the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts. Bethesda is well known for The Elder Scrolls role-playing series of which Skyrim was the latest major installment. An adviser to both government and industry\, Weaver holds patents in interactive media\, security\, and telecommunications engineering.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/christopher-weaver-amplius-ludo-beyond-the-horizon/
LOCATION:MIT Building 56\, Room 114\, Access via 21 Ames Street\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Christopher-Weaver.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190501T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190501T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190424T180613Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195141Z
UID:33543-1556730000-1556735400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:POSTPONED: “No Yankee Rule for Us”: Annexation Rumors and the Interwar Circum-Caribbean Black Press
DESCRIPTION:We hope to reschedule this event for the 2019/2020 academic year. \n\nReena N. GoldthreeAssistant Professor of African American StudiesPrinceton University \nIn the aftermath of World War I\, rumors that the United States was planning to annex the islands of the British West Indies swept across the Caribbean\, sparking panics in Trinidad\, Jamaica\, Barbados\, Grenada\, and elsewhere. Annexation rumors were transmitted by sailors and migrants as well as by the cosmopolitan circum-Caribbean black press\, which reprinted stories from throughout the Americas. In this talk\, Reena N. Goldthree\, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University\, examines how Caribbean newspapers–published in the islands and in the diaspora–both facilitated the spread of annexation rumors and provided a crucial platform for West Indians to challenge U.S. imperial expansion.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/no-yankee-rule-for-us-annexation-rumors-and-the-interwar-circum-caribbean-black-press/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 270\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Reena-Goldthree.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190417T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190417T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190402T155553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201019T134243Z
UID:33464-1555520400-1555525800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Civic Arts Series\, "Do-it Yourself Cinema: Portable Film Projectors as Media History"
DESCRIPTION:Haidee WassonIllustration by Mauricio Cordero \nHosted with MIT Arts\, Culture\, and Technology and The Boston Cinema/Media Seminar. \nIntroduction by Lisa Parks\, Professor\, CMS/W \nHaidee Wasson’s talk will explore the long and vibrant place of portable film devices in the history of small media\, repositioning the ‘movie theatre’ as the singular or even central figuration of film presentation and viewing. From its earliest days\, film was – in a sense – born portable. Yet\, our attention to and affection for the movie theater has obscured our view to the parallel and paradigmatic development of a far more numerous and arguably more significant development: the international\, post-war proliferation of portable projectors. These small devices were used widely and for a sizable range of purposes: political\, industrial\, artistic\, cultural. They fundamentally changed the conditions in which films could be seen — and ultimately imagined — as complex projected\, often interactive and highly applied\, forms. Drawn from a book-length study\, this paper will highlight the productivity of “portability” as a concept and practice for opening up our understanding of film history as media history\, identifying key insights that expand our understanding of what cinema has long been\, a highly iterative media form. \nHaidee Wasson is Professor of Film and Media in the School of Cinema\, Concordia University\, Montreal.  She is author or editor of four books\, including the award-winning Museum Movies\, Inventing Film Studies (with Lee Grieveson) Useful Cinema  (with Charles Acland) and Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex (with Lee Grieveson). She is the founder of Fieldnotes\, an oral history project on the history of film and media studies\, and the recent recipient of the Distinguished Service Award\, Society for Cinema and Media Studies.  Her current research investigates the design and expansive use of film projectors by industrial\, military and government sectors\, exploring the transformation of cinema from an entertainment machine into a highly diversified display and performance device.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/civic-arts-series-do-it-yourself-cinema-portable-film-projectors-as-media-history/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 270\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Civic Arts
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Haidee-Wasson.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190410T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190410T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190301T141437Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195152Z
UID:33381-1554915600-1554921000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Civic Arts Series: “Thumbs Type and Swipe” featuring DIS's Lauren Boyle
DESCRIPTION:Lauren Boyle – Illustration by Mauricio Cordero \nIntroduction by Amy Rosenblum Martín\, Independent Curator and Educator\, Guggenheim \n\nDIS (est. 2010)  is a New York-based collective composed of Lauren Boyle\, Solomon Chase\, Marco Roso\, and David Toro. Its cultural interventions are manifest across a range of media and platforms\, from site-specific museum and gallery exhibitions to ongoing online projects. \nIn 2018 the collective transitioned platforms from an online magazine\, dismagazine.com\, to a video streaming edutainment platform\, dis.art\, narrowing in on the future of education and entertainment. \nDIS Magazine (2010-2017); DISimages (2013)\, DISown (2014)\, Curators of the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art\, The Present in Drag (2016); DIS.art (2018–); Exhibited and organized shows at the de Young Museum\, San Francisco; La Casa Encendida\, Madrid; Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art\, Winnipeg; Baltimore Museum of Art; and Project Native Informant\, London. DIS has also been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1\, Museum of Modern Art\, and the New Museum all in New York; and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; ICA Boston; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Kunsthal Charlottenborg\, Copenhagen\, among others. \nThe material presented by DIS today is the result of a change in attitude towards the present and aims to meet the demands of contemporary social\, political\, and economic complexity at eye level. \n\nIntroducer Amy Rosenblum Martín is a bilingual (English/Spanish) curator of contemporary art\, committed to equity and community engagement. Formerly a staff curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (when it was MAM) and The Bronx Museum\, she has also organized exhibitions\, written and/or lectured independently for la Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros\, MoMA\, The Metropolitan\, MACBA in Barcelona\, the Reina Sofía\, and Kunsthaus Bregenz as well as the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum. Her 20 years of interdepartmental museum work include 10 years at the Guggenheim. Rosenblum Martín’s expertise is in Latin America\, focusing on transhistorical connections among Buenos Aires\, Montevideo\, Rio de Janeiro\, São Paulo\, Caracas\, Havana\, Miami\, and New York. \nShe has worked with Janine Antoni\, Lothar Baumgarten\, Guy Ben-Ner\, Janet Cardiff\, Eloísa Cartonera\, Consuelo Castañeda\, Lygia Clark\, Willie Cole\, Jeannette Ehlers\, Teresita Fernández\, Naomi Fisher\, Marlon Griffith\, Lucio Fontana\, Dara Friedman\, Luis Gispert\, Felix Gonzalez-Torres\, Adler Guerrier\, Ann Hamilton\, Quisqueya Henríquez\, Leslie Hewitt\, Nadia Huggins\, Deborah Jack\, Seydou Keita\, Gyula Kosice\, Matthieu Laurette\, Miguel Luciano\, Gordon Matta-Clark\, Ana Mendieta\, Antoni Miralda\, Marisa Morán Jahn\, Glexis Novoa\, Hélio Oiticica\, Dennis Oppenheim\, Nam June Paik\, Manuel Piña\, Miguel Angel Ríos\, Bert Rodriguez\, Marco Roso\, Nancy Rubins\, George Sánchez-Calderón\, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz\, Tomás Saraceno\, Karin Schneider\, Regina Silveira\, Lorna Simpson\, Valeska Soares\, Javier Tellez\, Joaquín Torres García\, and Fred Wilson\, among many other remarkable artists.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lauren-boyle-dis-thumbs-type-and-swipe/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 270\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Civic Arts,Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Lauren-Boyle-DIS-Collective.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190403T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190403T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190306T153234Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195154Z
UID:33400-1554310800-1554316200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:The Battle of Algiers as Ghost Archive: Specters of a Muslim International
DESCRIPTION:The Battle of Algiers\, a 1966 film that poetically captures Algerian resistance to French colonial occupation\, is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time\, having influenced leftist and anti-colonial struggles from the Palestine Liberation Organization\, to the Black Panther Party and the Irish Republican Army amongst others. But the film is more relevant and urgent than ever in the current “War on Terror” – having been screened by the Pentagon in 2003 and taught in Army war colleges as a blueprint for U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine. This talk will examine the film as a “ghost archive” of competing narratives\, a battleground over the meaning and memory of decolonization and Western power\, and a site for challenging the current imperial consensus. As the “War on Terror” expands and the threat of the Muslim looms\, the films’ afterlives reveal it to be more than an artifact of the past but rather a prophetic testament to the present and a cautionary tale of an imperial future\, as perpetual war has been declared on permanent unrest. \nCo-Sponsored by Global Studies & Languages’ French Program. \nAbout Sohail Daulatzai\nSohail Daulatzai\, author and founder of Razor Step \nSohail Daulatzai’s is the founder of Razor Step\, an L.A. based media lab. His work includes scholarship\, essay\, short film/video/installation and the curatorial. He is the author and co/editor of several books\, including of Fifty Years of “The Battle of Algiers”: Past as Prologue; Black Star\, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America; With Stones in Our Hands: Writings on Muslims\, Racism and Empire; Return of the Mecca: The Art of Islam and Hip-Hop; and Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas’s Illmatic.  He is the curator of the celebrated exhibit Return of the Mecca: The Art of Islam and Hip-Hop and Histories Absolved: Revolutionary Cuban Poster Art and the Muslim International. His video/installation work includes short film essay pieces with Yasiin Bey\, a ciné-geography with Zack de la Rocha\, as well as an installation piece entitled cas·bah /ˈkazˌbä/noun\, 1. A place of confinement for the natives\, yet reclaimed. He wrote liner notes for the Sony Legacy Recordings Release of the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set of Rage Against the Machine’s self titled debut album\, the liner notes for the DVD release of Freestyle: The Art of Rhyme\, the centerpiece in the museum catalog Movement: Hip-Hop in L.A.\, 1980’s – Now\, as well as an essay in iconic photographer Jamel Shabazz’s retrospective Pieces of a Man.  His other writings have appeared in Artbound\, The Nation\, Counterpunch\, Al Jazeera\, Souls\, and Wax Poetics\, amongst others. He teaches in Film and Media Studies\, African American Studies\, and Global Middle East Studies at the University of California\, Irvine. More of his work can be found at openedveins.com.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/sohail-daulatzai-battle-of-algiers-ghost-archive/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 270\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Sohail-Daulatzai.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20190320T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20190320T183000
DTSTAMP:20260407T053340
CREATED:20190219T192450Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T195200Z
UID:33335-1553101200-1553106600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Civic Arts Series\, "Gaming the Iron Curtain: Computer Games in Communist Czechoslovakia as Entertainment and Activism"
DESCRIPTION:Jaroslav Švelch\, Postdoctoral Researcher\, University of Bergen \nBased on the recent book Gaming the Iron Curtain\, this lecture will outline the idiosyncratic and surprising ways in which computer hobbyists in Cold War era Czechoslovakia challenged the power of the oppressive political regime and harnessed early microcomputer technology for both entertainment and activism. In the 1970s and 1980s\, Czechoslovak authorities treated computer and information technologies as an industrial resource rather than a social or cultural phenomenon. While dismissing the importance of home computing and digital entertainment\, they sponsored paramilitary computer clubs whose ostensible goal was to train expert cadres for the army and the centrally planned economy. But these clubs soon became a largely apolitical\, interconnected enthusiast network\, where two forms of tactical resistance could be identified. First\, the clubs offered an alternative spaces of communal hobby activity\, partially independent of the oppression experienced at work or at school. The club members’ ambitious DIY projects often substituted for the deficiencies of the state-controlled computer industry. Hobbyists not only built joysticks and programmed games\, but also introduced new standards for data storage and ran large-scale bottom-up education programs. Second\, especially in the late 1980s\, local authors started making games that were openly subversive. Several anti-regime text adventure games were made in 1988 and 1989\, including The Adventures of Indiana Jones on Wenceslas Square\, January 16\, 1989\, which pitted the iconic Western hero against riot police during an anti-regime demonstration. These games rank among the world’s earliest examples of activist computer games. \nAbout Jaroslav Švelch\nJaroslav Švelch is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergen and assistant professor at Charles University\, Prague. He is the author of the monograph Gaming the Iron Curtain: How Teenagers and Amateurs in Communist Czechoslovakia Claimed the Medium of Computer Games (MIT Press\, 2018). He has published research on history and theory of computer games\, on humor in games and social media\, and on the Grammar Nazi phenomenon. His work has been published in journals including New Media & Society\, International Journal of Communication\, or Game Studies\, and in anthologies published by Oxford University Press\, Bloomsbury and others. He is currently researching history\, theory\, and reception of monsters in games.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/jaroslav-svelch-gaming-the-iron-curtain/
LOCATION:MIT Building 4\, Room 270\, 182 Memorial Drive (Rear)\, Cambridge\, MA\, 02139\, United States
CATEGORIES:Civic Arts,Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Jaroslav-Švelch.jpg
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR