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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20191017T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191017T183000
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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:20191024T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191024T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20191107T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191107T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20191114T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191114T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20191121T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191121T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20191205T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20191205T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200213T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200213T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200220T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200220T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200227T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200227T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200305T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200305T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200312T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200312T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200319T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200319T190000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200402T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200402T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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:20200416T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200416T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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/
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:20200423T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200423T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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/
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:20200430T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200430T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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/
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:20200917T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200917T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
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/
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:20201008T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201008T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20200813T131520Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201023T155425Z
UID:35670-1602176400-1602181800@cms.mit.edu
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/
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:20201022T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201022T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20200814T174249Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201020T183834Z
UID:35701-1603386000-1603391400@cms.mit.edu
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/
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:20201029T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201029T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20201005T142550Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201026T131134Z
UID:36545-1603990800-1603996200@cms.mit.edu
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/
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:20201105T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201105T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20201027T132317Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201027T135245Z
UID:36873-1604595600-1604601000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Patricia Saulis\, “Creating Space for Balance: Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science — Two-Eyed Seeing — in Environmental Justice and Media”
DESCRIPTION:Two-eyed seeing has been a contemporary concept  by two Indigenous Mikmaq Elders in Cape Breton Canada. Through the use of Indigenous Oral Tradition\, Elders Dr. Albert Marshall and Dr. Murdena Marshall have participated in many recordings of their concept and teachings. Their appearances at conferences across Canada and the United States provided many venues to share their work. In this presentation\, Patricia Saulis will feature clips of the Elders speaking and provide some perspective on how their work could be brought forward in discussions of Environmental Justice and Media. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbout Patricia Saulis\n\n\n\nPatricia Saulis is Executive Director of the Maliseet Nation Conservation Council and a member of the Maliseet tribe of Indigenous people\, whose lands lie along the Saint John River watershed on both sides of the US and Canadian border in Northeast Maine and Southern New Brunswick. Ms. Saulis is an experienced tribal policy administrator\, environmentalist\, and educational planner\, and has a very extensive background working in tribal organizations on matters of social well-being\, education and environmental sustainability. \n\n\n\nIn the midst of a highly fluid environment of changing political\, economic\, partnership\, and financial circumstances\, Ms. Saulis keeps the mission of restoring Wolastoq/St John Watershed in accordance with Maliseet rights and cultural stewardship squarely in her sights. \n\n\n\nMs. Saulis also has an impressive background in public health issues and policy surrounding First Nations communities throughout Canada. These experiences cover the breadth of important and current issues that impact Indigenous communities and represent her strong background and commitment in ensuring the betterment of not just her own Indigenous community but those of the entirety of North America.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/patricia-saulis-two-eyed-seeing-indigenous-knowledge/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/2021-Patricia-Saulis.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201112T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201112T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20200928T193502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201113T145744Z
UID:36485-1605200400-1605205800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Adam Charles Hart\, "Beyond the Living Dead: Treasures from the George A. Romero Archive"
DESCRIPTION:With his 1968 debut Night of the Living Dead\, George A. Romero helped to inaugurate a new era of both horror film and independent cinema\, and introduced the world to the zombie as we know it today: re-animated corpses\, stumbling towards the living in search of flesh\, a ghoulish new kind of monster that has\, in the subsequent half-century\, become an essential part of the world’s cultural imaginary. From that moment on\, Romero would become known as the maker of zombie movies\, directing 5 more films set in the Living Dead universe\, an artist completely identified with that initial monstrous creation. \n\n\n\nRomero is a complex figure in American cinema. He worked outside the normal systems of financing and distribution for most of his career\, choosing to live and work in Pittsburgh\, where he built an industry and a community. But while being far from Hollywood ensured that access to funding for his projects would be severely limited\, and often contingent on his branding as the director of the “Dead” movies. The immense\, global impact of Night of the Living Dead ensured he could have a career\, but it restricted the scope and range of that career. \n\n\n\n\nHowever\, Romero’s archives paint a different picture. The University of Pittsburgh has acquired the George A. Romero Archival Collection\, a massive archive that includes materials from the full span of his career\, from his earliest short films to his final projects. There are drafts of genre classics like Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead that show their evolution throughout the process of pre-production\, supplemented by boxes and boxes of documents detailing their production and reception. But the largest and most revelatory component of the archive is the hundreds of projects that Romero never got to make. He only made 16 features in his lifetime\, but he was a hugely prolific writer\, with dozens and dozens of complete screenplays and many many more proposals\, treatments\, and partial works. \n\n\n\nThis talk will give a brief overview of the material in the archive\, focusing on what the unfilmed and unpublished projects tell us about Romero’s larger themes\, with pictures and clips of work from the archive that has rarely or never before been publicly viewed\, and how that work recontextualizes his genre films. It will then focus on the specific case study of his early approaches to “found footage” mockumentary horror\, which he tied to multiple projects about Bigfoot and other pre-human creatures and communities\, before incorporating it into his 2006 zombie movie\, Diary of the Dead. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbout Adam Charles Hart\n\n\n\nAdam Charles Hart is the author of Monstrous Forms: Moving Image Horror Across Media (Oxford UP). He has taught at Harvard University\, North Carolina State University\, and the University of Pittsburgh\, and is currently a Visiting Researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Library. His writings on horror films and video games and on the American avant-garde cinema have appeared in Discourse\, The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies\, Imaginations\, Studies in the Fantastic\, The New Review of Film and Television Studies\, and the edited collections Gothic Cinema (Edinburgh UP) and Companion to the Horror Film (Wiley-Blackwell UP). He is currently at work on two monographs: a critical study of the work of George A. Romero and a history and theory of handheld cinematography in film\, television\, and video called The Living Camera: The History\, Politics\, and Style of Handheld Cinematography from 16mm to GoPro.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/adam-charles-hart-george-romero-archive/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Adam-Hart.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201119T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201119T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20201019T154111Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201020T141813Z
UID:36757-1605805200-1605810600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Mauricio Cordero\, “BORDERx: A Crisis In Graphic Detail”
DESCRIPTION:In 2018\, the United States enacted a “zero tolerance” policy which criminalized the act of seeking asylum. In June 2019\, the inhumane conditions in detention camps across the border were revealed\, and several weeks later the BORDERx project was established. \n\n\n\nBORDERx: A Crisis In Graphic Detail is a comic anthology that examines the border crisis from a variety of points of view and narrative formats\, featuring 70 contributors from all over the world. Proceeds from the project go to South Texas Human Rights Center. Why address the issue with comics? How did we accomplish this enormous project in months instead of years? What were the financial considerations? What are the next steps for BORDERx? How can this platform serve other social issues?This talk will walk us through the project from origin to completion. Mauricio Cordero\, the project founder\, will discuss the journey with Prof. James Paradis\, offering insights and examples from the work.​ \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbout Mauricio Cordero\n\n\n\nMauricio Cordero has worked in the arts and underground scene since the 1980’s. He established the fanzine\, CAUTION! and served as the education coordinator and program director at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA). In France\, he opened his own art gallery in Tours. Returning to the U.S. he served as executive director at the Revolving Museum and was also a founding co-director of Mill No. 5\, an indoor Victorian streetscape. \n\n\n\nCordero now teaches comics primarily and is a part-time lecturer at MIT. He is currently teaching Making Comics and Sequential Art and lecturing in The Visual Story-Graphic Novel. \n\n\n\nHis work has been published in Double Nickels Forever\, Dollars and Sense\, MIT’s GradX Comix series and Fashion Institute of Technology’s Black Stories Matter. BORDERx: A Crisis In Graphic Detail is available at all major online retailers and through the website www.border-x.com.​
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/mauricio-cordero-borderx-crisis-graphic-detail/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Mauricio-Cordero-illustration-square.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20201203T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20201203T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20201110T191333Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201119T140354Z
UID:36985-1607014800-1607020200@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Reworking the Archive: The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project
DESCRIPTION:What are some unexplored ways that online environments can help us rethink “the archive”? How might i-doc storytelling tools expand what an archive can be as well as public engagement with history itself? This presentation explores these questions through a demonstration of the online Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project. The project is based on a collaboration with the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum\, a small volunteer-led museum in a diverse former steel mill region. The digital archive highlights objects saved and donated by community residents\, what those items meant to donors\, and the stories told around and through these objects. The website uses a variety of online storytelling techniques to help viewers connect with the objects and the histories from which they emerge. It also highlights how the historic conflicts found in this multi-racial working-class community – including those around labor\, immigration\, racial\, and environmental struggles –  continue to resonate in the contemporary moment. The website helps diverse working-class histories come alive for viewers through both objects and the spoken word in ways that are simultaneously striking and reflective of everyday life. Presenters include creative director and i-doc pioneer Jeff Soyk and the project directors\, anthropologist Chris Walley and filmmaker Chris Boebel. \n\n\n\nJeff Soyk is an award-winning media artist with credits as creative director and UI/UX designer on PBS Frontline’s Inheritance (2016 News & Documentary EMMY winner and Peabody-Facebook Award winner) as well as art director\, UI/UX designer and architect on Hollow (2013 Peabody Award winner and News & Documentary EMMY nominee). \n\n\n\nChristine J. Walley is a Professor of Anthropology at MIT. She is the award-winning author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press\, 2013) and a co-creator of a documentary film Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story (2017). \n\n\n\nChris Boebel is Director of Media Development at MIT Open Learning\, where he oversees media production for professional education and explores the uses of media in education\, including VR and interactive media. A filmmaker by training\, he has produced and directed feature films\, documentaries\, and television. His work has been shown on many networks around the world\, including PBS and the BBC\, and at more than 50 film festivals\, including Sundance. 
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/reworking-the-archive-southeast-chicago-archive/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/SECHM-thumb_CMSW.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210225T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210225T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210222T145051Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210223T163331Z
UID:37176-1614272400-1614277800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Charisse L'Pree\, “What is a Media Psychography? A 20-year Methodological Journey”
DESCRIPTION:What is your relationship with media technologies? When we say things like “I love television\,” “I hate the internet\,” or “I can’t live without music\, ” we implicitly answer this question without explicitly asking it. In her new book\, 20th Century Media and the American Psyche: A Strange Love (Routledge 2021)\, Dr. Charisse L’Pree (MIT SB ’03 CMS\, SB ’03 Course 9) addresses the strange love that we have with communication technology – specifically over the past 150 years – and how these relationships with past mediums inform our relationships with newer technologies. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIn this talk\, L’Pree discusses the role of interdisciplinary research and how she has maneuvered a wide variety of methodologies\, including quantitative\, qualitative\, critical\, and applied\, in order to answer life’s questions. \n\n\n\nL’Pree provides here the first chapter for your listening or reading pleasure ahead of time: \n\n\n\nDownloadable .mp3Audio stream (captioned)Chapter text as PDF\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe live talk will focus on the value of cross-methodology research – not just mixed methods – and answer questions from students regarding their own research projects. \n\n\n\nYou can also read her recent interview (Part 1) with Henry Jenkins here on the complexity on writing a historiography of the psychology of media: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2021/2/1/an-interview-with-charisse-lpree-corsbie-massay \n\n\n\nAt Syracuse University\, Charisse L’Pree teaches classes on communication and diversity to professional media students\, specifically how do media affect our understanding of different social categories and how do the social categories of media producers affect the media with which we all engage. She has mentored over 50 McNair Scholars across disciplines at the University of Southern California\, Loyola Marymount University\, and Syracuse University since 2008 and was awarded Teacher of the Year from the Newhouse graduating class of 2017.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/charisse-lpree-media-psychography-20-year-methodological-journey/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Charisse-LPree-Corsbie-Massay-square.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210304T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210304T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210301T160324Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210301T165122Z
UID:37229-1614877200-1614882600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Beyza Boyacioglu and Jeff Soyk\, “Zeki Müren Hotline - Mobile Experience”
DESCRIPTION:Zeki Müren Hotline started as a simple hotline in 2015\, collecting everyday people’s messages to Zeki Müren — Turkey’s most beloved and equally controversial pop star. An homage to the intimacy Müren established with his fans and a throwback to the 1990’s hotline phenomenon\, this participatory project quickly became a sensation in Turkey. During the few months it was active\, the hotline received hundreds of messages\, often expressing nostalgia for the deceased icon and Turkey’s bygone days. The Zeki Müren Hotline mobile experience is an interactive web app* that presents a selection from those messages alongside vignettes from Müren’s life and legacy. \n\n\n\n*Please come prepared with a charged mobile device (phone or tablet) and headphones. \n\n\n\n\nBeyza Boyacioglu (Director) is a filmmaker and editor from Istanbul. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA Doc Fortnight\, IDFA\, RIDM\, Morelia International Film Festival\, !f Istanbul\, Barbican Centre and many other venues and festivals. She received fellowships from Chicken & Egg\, Flaherty Seminar\, Greenhouse/Close Up\, UnionDocs and is a Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective member. Her editing credits include In Search of Bengali Harlem by Vivek Bald and Black Lives Matter: A Global Reckoning: Italy by Vice News. She holds an MSc in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a BA in Visual Arts from Sabanci University. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJeff Soyk (Director) is an award-winning media artist with experience in creative direction\, UX design\, UI design\, HTML5/CSS3/JS\, and film/video. His credits include creative director and UI/UX designer on PBS Frontline’s Inheritance (2016 News & Documentary EMMY winner and Peabody-Facebook Award winner) as well as art director\, UI/UX designer and architect on Hollow (2013 Peabody Award winner and News & Documentary EMMY nominee).
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/zeki-muren-hotline-beyza-boyacioglu-jeff-soyk/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Zeki-Muren-Hotline-Mobile-Experience.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210311T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210311T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210305T144520Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210305T150409Z
UID:37237-1615482000-1615487400@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Joshua Littenberg-Tobias\, “Measuring Equity-Promoting Behaviors in Digital Teaching Simulations: A Topic Modeling Approach”
DESCRIPTION:Digital simulations offer learning opportunities to engage and reflect on systemic issues of racism and structural violence against communities of color. This talk examines how natural language processing tools can be used to better understand participants’ experiences within simulated environments focused on anti-racist teaching and identify changes in participants’ behavior over time. As K-12 schools increasingly reckon with our country’s long history of racist teaching practices\, digital simulations may provide ways to help teachers name\, re-examine\, and reflect on their own practice and move toward anti-racist teaching. \n\n\n\n\nDr. Joshua Littenberg-Tobias is a Research Scientist in the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. His research focuses on measuring and supporting learning within large-scale technology-mediated environments with a focus on civic engagement and anti-racist teaching practices. He received his Ph.D. from Boston College in 2015 in educational research\, measurement\, and evaluation.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/joshua-littenberg-tobias-measuring-equity-promoting-behaviors/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Joshua-Littenberg-Tobias.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210318T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210318T190000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210317T120937Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210318T111951Z
UID:37251-1616088600-1616094000@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Discuss “The Infiltrators” with director Alex Rivera
DESCRIPTION:Alex Rivera is a filmmaker who has been telling new\, urgent\, and visually adventurous Latino stories for more than twenty years. His first feature film\, Sleep Dealer\, won multiple awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. Rivera’s second feature film\, a documentary/scripted hybrid\, The Infiltrators\, won both the Audience Award and the Innovators Award in the NEXT section of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival\, Best Documentary Feature at the Blackstar Film Festival\, and is currently being developed as a scripted series by Blumhouse Television. Rivera’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation\, the Tribeca Film Institute\, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation\, the Open Society Institute\, Creative Capital\, and many others. Alex studied at Hampshire College\, was the Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University\, and is currently a distinguished lecturer of media studies at Queens College. \n\n\n\n\nAbout The Infiltrators\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Infiltrators is available on many platforms\, including Amazon and theinfiltratorsfilm.com.\n\n\n\n\nWithout warning\, Claudio Rojas is detained by ICE officials outside his Florida home. He is transferred to the Broward Transitional Center\, a detention facility used as a holding space for imminent deportations. Terrified of never seeing him again\, Claudio’s family contacts the National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA)\, a group of activist Dreamers known for stopping deportations. Believing that no one is free as long as one is in detention\, NIYA enlists Marco Saavedra to self-deport with the hopes of gaining access to the detention center and impeding Claudio’s expulsion. Once inside\, Marco discovers a complex for-profit institution housing hundreds of multinational immigrants\, all imprisoned without trial. \n\n\n\nDirectors Cristina Ibarra (in her Sundance debut) and Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer\, 2008 Sundance Film Festival) design a hybrid cinematic language\, combining familiar documentary form and scripted narrative to map an uncharted domain: inside an Obama-era immigration detention system. Based on true events\, The Infiltrators is both a suspenseful account of a high-stakes mission and an emotionally charged portrait of visionary youth fighting for their community.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/the-infiltrators-alex-rivera/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/The-Infiltrators-poster-square.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210401T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210401T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210330T163635Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210330T165835Z
UID:37291-1617296400-1617301800@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:Lisa Nakamura\, “Women of Color and the Digital Labor of Repair”
DESCRIPTION:This paper traces the history of women of color labor creating the material infrastructure for digital media\, moving from the sixties to the present day to demonstrate why and how this gendered and racialized labor has been devalued and made invisible. Their work maintaining and creating digital networks has traditionally been defined as menial\, thereby extracting it of its status\, standing\, and cultural and economic value. The refusal to define this work as “real” work set the stage for our contemporary moment’s hostility against women of color’s work witnessing and documenting racism online and moderating digital environments. While paid content moderation deploys underpaid women and people of color (Roberts\, 2019)\, when these same people report user violations relating to race and gender to social media platforms they are far more likely to be banned or suspended than other users (Gillespie\, 2018). This paper analyzes two social media campaigns by young women of color to demonstrate how they envision and enact the labor of digital repair. \n\n\n\n\nLisa Nakamura is the Director of the Digital Studies Institute and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan.  She is the author of several books on race\, gender\, and the Internet\, most recently Racist Zoombombing (Routledge\, 2021\, co-authored with Hanah Stiverson and Kyle Lindsey) and Technoprecarious (Goldsmiths/MIT\, 2020\, as Precarity Lab).
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/lisa-nakamura-women-of-color-digital-labor-of-repair/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cms.mit.edu/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Lisa-Nakamura-square.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20210408T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20210408T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T194611
CREATED:20210329T131533Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210329T133526Z
UID:37276-1617901200-1617906600@cms.mit.edu
SUMMARY:James Wynn\, “There’s No Place Like Home: Promotional Narratives\, Science Fiction\, and the Case for Mars Colonization”
DESCRIPTION:Given the enormous impact that colonialism has had\, and continues to have\, in the United States\, scholars frequently look to our colonial past to understand the American present. This focus on the past\, though valuable\, has discouraged attention to newly emerging colonial enterprises. Perhaps one of the more conspicuous neo-colonial projects has been the push towards planting human colonies on Mars. In James Wynn’s talk\, he will explore one of the many problems addressed by the rhetoric of this current colonial moment: How do you persuade people to leave their indigenous communities to start new ones in a foreign and sometimes hostile place? To explore the current rhetorical solutions to this problem\, Wynn will assess the strategies used by science fiction writers to help audiences imagine life and human settlement on Mars. By comparing their efforts to lure people to the red planet with the “promotional literature” created by supporters of the English colonization of North America in the early modern period\, he will show that though these colonial enterprises face similar rhetorical challenges\, the material-historical contexts in which they occur significantly influence the available means for addressing them. \n\n\n\n\nJames Wynn is Associate Professor of English and Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. His research and teaching explore science\, mathematics\, and public policy from a rhetorical perspective. His first book Evolution by the Numbers (2012) examines how mathematics was argued into the study of variation\, evolution\, and heredity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His most recent monograph Citizen Science in the Digital Age explores how the Internet and Internet-connected devices are reshaping the landscapes of argument occupied by scientists\, lay persons\, and governments. Currently\, he is awaiting the publication of Arguing with Numbers\, a collection of essays co-edited with G. Mitchell Reyes whose contributors investigate the relationship between rhetoric and mathematics. He is also working on a new book project on the rhetoric of Mars colonization.Professor Wynn teaches classes in Rhetoric of Science\, Rhetoric and Public Policy\, Climate Change\, Argumentation\, and Introduction to Professional and Technical Writing.
URL:https://cms.mit.edu/event/mars-colonization-james-wynn/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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