MIT Graduate Program in Comparative Media Studies

Nostalgia for a Not-So-Distant Youth: Digital Games and Affect in Urban China
2013-02-07 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Marcella Szablewicz
Young people born in 1980’s and 1990’s China are the focus of a great deal of scholarly attention as they are the country’s first generation of only children. They are also the first generation to come of age with the Internet, and, for many, playing Internet games forms an integral part of the youth experience. This presentation will explore the affective dimensions of digital games from the perspective of urban Chinese youth. What is the significance of an e-sports event that attracts tens of thousands of twenty-somethings, many of whom experience it as a teary-eyed “farewell to their youth”? Or a viral video created by World of Warcraft gamers that urges millions of viewers to “raise their fists in solidarity” to show support for their “spiritual homeland”? What should we make of these phenomena that demonstrate, ever more clearly, the ways in which games are intertwined with people’s spiritual and emotional lives? Are games the imagined utopia they are made out to be in these nostalgic accounts or might these affective attachments prove to be a form of what Lauren Berlant (2011) has called “cruel optimism,” a relationship in which the very thing that is desired becomes an obstacle to flourishing?
Marcella Szablewicz is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication and Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.A. in East Asian Studies from Duke University. Her research focuses on youth and digital media in urban China. She is currently working on a book based on her dissertation, provisionally entitled From Addicts to Athletes: Youth Mobilities and the Politics of Digital Gaming in Urban China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork supported by the Fulbright and National Science Foundations, the book will examine the precarious socio-economic futures of urban Chinese youth through the lens of digital gaming culture, while also considering how dominant discourse about digital leisure practice is shaped by larger cultural debates about patriotism and productivity, class and the crafting of the “ideal citizen”. Her work can also be found in the Routledge volume Online Society in China and in the Chinese Journal of Communication.
Co-sponsored by the Cool Japan Project.

Annotation Studio Workshop
2013-01-31 15:00 - 18:00 | MIT Building 56, Room 180, Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/25
Limited to 20 participants
Have you ever wondered how to annotate online texts with your thoughts, comments, or associations? Does an image better express what you are imagining while reading a literary text? How about sharing your comments with friends, fellow students, or colleagues? How can you integrate digital text annotation in your teaching? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, please join us during IAP for HyperStudio’s workshop on digital annotation tools designed for humanities students, scholars, and educators.
In this hands-on workshop you’ll learn how to create, tag, link, and share annotations in web-based environments. The workshop will include:

Introduction to digital text annotation – evaluate various online text annotation tools
Hands-on sessions – work with your own text using Annotation Studio
Text annotation for teaching and scholarship – Discuss how to best apply these tools in your research and scholarship.

Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Gabriella Horvath, ghorvath@mit.edu

Oral Presentations and the Academic Conversation: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-31 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
This interactive workshop is geared to instructors across the disciplines who are interested in integrating oral presentation into their classes. We will discuss effective strategies to teach the oral component in CI classes as an act of critical thinking. Together, we will define goals for a variety of speaking genres in science and humanities classes. Participants will collaborate in sharing good practices from their own experience. Finally, we will explore some practical templates to teach oral presentation that encourage students to practice the following skills: (1) communicating complex ideas in accessible language; (2) creating presentations that clearly define goals and argument or hypothesis; (3) organizing presentations in the service of developing ideas in the broader context of the field.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Teaching and Learning Lab Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Powerful Feedback: Strategies for Responding to Student Writing: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-29 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
What kind of feedback will help students understand how to revise their essays, reports or articles, or to write their next assignment more effectively? This workshop will help faculty and TA’s to articulate their criteria for student writing and to develop powerful feedback practices, from written comments to rubrics to peer review to individual conferences.= By considering feedback in relation to other forms of instruction, participants will learn to provide the kinds of comments and strategies that will help students understand how to improve their skills as writers.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Teaching and Learning Lab Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Learn to Knit!
2013-01-28 13:00 - 16:00 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/25
Do you want to be able to knit your own cold-weather gear? Participants will learn the basic stitches, knit and purl, and other skills to make their first project: casting on, reading patterns, and understanding yarn and needles. Please bring materials (contact activity leader if you have any questions).
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Ayse Gursoy, agursoy@MIT.EDU

Integrating Communication Instruction in CI Subjects: A Writing Across the Curriculum IAP Workshop
2013-01-28 - 2013-01-31 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
Instructors of CI subjects often ask how they can more effectively connect writing and speaking instruction with the course content, so that communication assignments are not just additional requirements, but instead help students more deeply engage with the concepts of the course. How can we design instructional and assignment sequences that are organic to each subject, and that help students approach writing and speaking as the space for developing conceptual thinking? Working with some examples from CI-M and CI-H classes, we’ll explore how instructors can break down assignments to demystify research, writing, and presentation in their fields. Improved sequencing will help students experience a more productive writing experience.
Bring examples of assignments from your classes to share.
All WAC workshops are open to faculty and teaching assistants who are interested in integrating writing and speaking into their subjects.
Sponsor(s): Teaching and Learning Lab, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Ashley Caval, 12-117, 617 253-0650, ACAVAL@MIT.EDU

Best of the 2012 European Short Film Festival at MIT
2013-01-23 19:00 - 21:00 | MIT Building 3, Room 133, 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Watch a rarely seen selection of the best European short films from MIT’s 2012 European Short Film Festival. These films give you a glimpse into contemporary short film productions from European film schools, young and established independent filmmakers, and European festivals. 15 films – many of them US premiers – that reflect the most compelling fiction, animation, documentary and experimental film from the 3-day festival in April 2012. A brief introduction will precede the screening.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Gabriella Horvath, ghorvath@mit.edu

Festival of Learning
2013-01-21 - 2013-01-22 | MIT Building E14, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The Festival of Learning is a two-day festival, where anyone from MIT’s Media Lab buildings (E14 and E15) can teach, learn, and collaborate!
Full info, including session suggestions, at fol2013.media.mit.edu.

ModIT Workshop: Online HTML Game Engine/Creation Tool
2013-01-17 13:00 - 16:00 | MIT Building 32 (Stata Center), Room 124, 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment:
Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/16
Limited to 30 participants
Prereq: see description
Introduction to a set of tools for creating games. Modit is currently in private beta but in this workshop, we will showcase our HTML5 game development. ModitTM seeks to transform HTML5 games into a new medium for self-expression by turning players into game creators. By bringing a full development environment into the browser, players will be empowered to modify the games they play and instantly publish and share those creations with the world.
Required of attendees: 1) Familiarity with JavaScript is ideal, but basic understanding of any programming language should be sufficient. 2) Laptop with Google Chrome, or Firefox, and Internet connectability. 3) Gmail account to log into the ModIt platform.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies, Game Lab
Contact: Sara Verrilli, akiru@mit.edu

How to Write a Great Abstract
2013-01-15 10:00 - 11:30 | MIT Building 12, Room 132, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Limited to 20 participants
Prereq: none
For your paper to be successful, people have to actually read it. A compelling abstract is essential for capturing their attention and making them want to read more. But writing an effective abstract is challenging because you need to summarize what motivated you, what you did, and what you found, in a small number of words. In this workshop, we’ll analyze sample abstracts from different fields, learn editing strategies, and practice revising abstracts. You’ll leave with a better understanding of how to write a strong abstract that clearly presents your research.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, 12-120, 617 253-4459, SMSTRANG@MIT.EDU

Building Story Worlds: Space, Time, Rules, and Narrative in Game Design
2013-01-14 10:00 - 2013-01-18 17:00 | MIT Building 56, Room 180, Access via 21 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/09
Limited to 20 participants
Attendance: Participants must attend all sessions
Visiting Artist Guilherme Marcondes, in conjunction with researchers from the MIT Game Lab and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society, will lead a workshop exploring the role of space in storytelling. The workshop will focus on exploring how artists can use the tools of game design—including space, time, and rule sets—to construct complex narratives that are deeply embedded in the settings in which they unfold. Participants will learn how to design and refine a game prototype through playtesting and observation; produce, gather, organize, and use concept art, music, sounds, and other source materials to establish the mood of a narrative setting; and evaluate their own and others’ creations in a critique-based studio environment.
No prior programming experience is required. Participants will review examples of stories that deal with spatial exploration; explore in and around MIT on foot; and work in teams to create tabletop game prototypes. Students who want to advance their projects may continue working with the researchers Jan. 21-24 & may exhibit and demonstrate these prototypes at a public event on Jan. 24 at the MIT Museum. There is also opportunity in the second week for exploratory visits with faculty and labs.
The MIT Visiting Artists Program will host filmmaker, animator, and mixed-media artist Guilherme Marcondes for a two-week residency. For more information visit http://arts.mit.edu/artists/guilherme-marcondes/.
To register, email Meg Rotzel at mrotzel@mit.edu.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society, MIT Game Lab, Comparative Media Studies

Contact: Meg Rotzel, 617-253-2372, mrotzel@mit.edu

Create a Web Series!
2013-01-12 19:00 - 21:00 | MA
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required

Are you interesting in storytelling or filmmaking? Are you a fan of creative web series such as Dr. Horrible, The Guild, or The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? Would you like to work with other energetic story-lovers? Then you’re invited to get in on the ground floor of developing an MIT-themed web series for debut in 2014! Comedy or drama, sci-fi or mystery, wacky or serious—your creative vision will help shape the show. Together, we’ll acheive our nefarious master plan: to create something so interesting, so entertaining, and so well-made that it will ensnare every procrastinator on campus!
Register by email to get location information as it becomes available.
Sponsor(s): Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Sarah Coe, coesa@mit.edu

Alchemists and Mad Scientists: from Faust to Dr. Strangelove
2013-01-10 19:00 - 2013-01-31 22:00 | MIT Building 3, Room 133, 33 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Curiosity is perhaps the defining characteristic of scientists in the popular mind, but a popular belief asserts that “curiosity killed the cat.” In the popular imagination scientists challenge the boundaries of human knowledge, frequently paying a dire price for their audacity, and sometimes bringing that price down on the population around them. In this activity we will consider how science and scientists have been depicted in popular culture, starting with one manifestation of the widely celebrated Faust legend. We will trace the development in mass media of the evolution of alchemists into mad scientists, using the films “Faust,” “Metropolis,” “The Bride of Frankenstein,” and “Dr. Strangelove” as our texts. Our goal will be a deeper understanding of the history of representations of science and scientists in Western narrative media.
Advance sign-up isn’t required, but please email Stephen Brophy (stephbr@mit.edu) if you plan to attend so he can give you access to the activity’s Stellar site.
Sponsor(s): Science, Technology, and Society, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Stephen Brophy, stephbr@mit.edu
Faust
January 10
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
What do you do when you have it all and it isn’t enough? Faust was the most highly respected philosopher, theologian, and physician of his time, but because he wasn’t satisfied with all that he sold his soul to the Devil. And then what happened?
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Metropolis
January 17
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
Back in the good old days, when you built a city that had sunshine and sport for the 1%, but endless drudgery for the 99% who kept it going, you needed a mad scientist to run it all. And no scientist has ever been madder than Rotwang, the genius behind Metropolis!
Nicole Labruto – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS), Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
The Bride of Frankenstein
January 24
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
What happens when you build a creature with parts collected from graveyards and gallows, but neglect to provide him with a companion? He becomes monstrous in his loneliness. But maybe building a companion from the same materials isn’t the best solution?
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Marie Burks – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS)
Dr. Strangelove
January 31
Thu
7:00PM-10:00PM
3-133
Mad scientists don’t only haunt medieval castles – they also ply their wares in the most up to date War Rooms. What happens when a modern mad scientist builds a Doomsday Machine for the Pentagon? See this movie to learn how to stop worrying and love the Bomb!
Stephen Brophy – Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Benjamin Wilson – PhD Student in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS)

Reading Programming Code as a Cultural Object
2013-01-09 16:00 - 17:00 | MIT Building 14E, Room 311, 160 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: First come, first served (no advance sign-up)
Prereq: None
So much around us is driven by programs and written in code, in one or several computer languages. We use algorithms to visualize data, interpret behaviors, read trends, and drive decisions. Programs and algorithms are culturally determined objects, often observable as aesthetic works or philosophical gestures. It’s time to think more about the cultural aspects of code and what goes on “under the hood” of digital manifestations. How is code written and by whom? Under what conditions? How does code circulate? Where do the creative aspects of programming lie? What do porting code and natural language translation have in common? How do we understand the obsolescence of computer languages? Let’s talk about what it means to start reading code differently, as cultural objects and statements. Let’s raise the questions that need to be raised.
Sponsor(s): Libraries, Comparative Media Studies
Contact: Patsy Baudoin, 14S-230, 617 253-4979, patsy@mit.edu

[For Credit] CMS.S98: Special Subject: Comparative Media Studies Qualitative Data Analysis
2013-01-09 - 2013-01-16 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Jan 9: 4-5pm
Jan 10, 14, 16: 2-5pm
Pre-register on WebSIS and attend first class.
Limited to 12 participants.
No listeners
Prereq: Permission of instructor limited to graduate students only
Level: G 3 units Standard A – F Grading Can be repeated for credit
Seminar or lecture on a topic that is not covered in the regular curriculum.
The goal of this class is to provide frameworks and hands on experience in analyzing data collected through interviews, observations and other qualitative methods. We will cover standards for analysis, strategies (such as thematic analysis, discourse analysis, critical analysis and narrative analysis), and analytic processes such as iterative coding, building matrices, and pulling out logics. The instructor will provide a data set of selections from interviews with musicians in which they discuss their understanding of the music business, but if people already have data sets they are eager to work with, they can do that too.

Contact: Becky Shepardson, bshep@mit.edu

Individual Consultations at the Writing and Communication Center
2013-01-07 - 2013-01-31 | MIT Building 12, Room 132, 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Limited: Advance sign-up required
Attendance: Repeating event, participants welcome at any session
Prereq: none
The Writing Center will continue to offer free consultation and advice on oral presentations and on any writing problem, including finding a topic, generating ideas, overcoming writer’s block, improving grammar, crafting effective sentences and paragraphs, organizing ideas, using of evidence, analyzing audiences, and writing strategically. We can help with technical writing; theses in all departments; job, graduate and med school application essays; research and teaching statements; resumes; conference talks; articles for publication; book proposals and chapters; and papers for any course. We also offer help on pronunciation.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, 12-132, 617-253-4459, smstrang@mit.edu

MIT Writers' Group
2013-01-07 - 2013-01-28 | MIT Building 12, Room 134, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Enrollment: Unlimited: Advance sign-up required
Sign-up by 01/04
Attendance: Repeating event on the 7th, 14th, and 28th, participants welcome at any session
Prereq: none
Want to write something creative but need some motivation or support? Join other writers to get advice about your own writing, to help other writers, or to get inspiration to write something to share with the group–any type of creative writing, including fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction,memoirs, personal essays, plays. Open to MIT undergraduate and graduate students, lecturers, staff and faculty.
Sponsor(s): Writing and Communication Center
Contact: Steven Strang, (617) 253-4459, smstrang@mit.edu

[For Credit] 21W.794: Graduate Technical Writing Workshop
2013-01-05 - 2013-01-17 | MIT Building 2, Room 147, 182 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Pre-register on WebSIS and attend first class.
Listeners welcome at individual sessions (series)
Prereq: Level: G 3 units Standard A – F Grading
Draft a thesis proposal, thesis chapter, journal article, progress report, or specification, and review basics of engineering writing. Sessions cover the processes of organizing and drafting professional papers, improving writing style, and revising documents. Students determine own projects; each project increment receives instructor’s editorial suggestions.
IAP version:This course focuses on improving your ability to communicate technical information. Through a combination of lecture, assignments, and in-class writing exercises, we will cover the basics of working with sources, including summarizing & paraphrasing, synthesizing source materials, citing, quoting, and avoiding plagiarism. We will also cover how to write an abstract and a literature review.
You must attend all three meetings. No rescheduling is possible. NO LISTENERS.
Contact: Nick Altenbernd, 14E-303, x3-7894, altenb@mit.edu
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Mechanical Engineering students or others who need this time.
Tue Jan 15, 22, Thu Jan 24, 10am-01:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Aero-Astro students, and Chemical Engineering students or others who need this time.
Tue Jan 15, 22, Thu Jan 24, 02-05:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Civil-Environ Engr students, Media Studies students, and Nuclear Engineering students or others who need this time.
Thu Jan 17, Wed Jan 23, Fri Jan 25, 10am-01:00pm, 2-147
Steven Strang, Pamela Siska
This section is for Supply Chain Management students, and TPP-ESD students or others who need this time.
>Thu Jan 17, Wed Jan 23, Fri Jan 25, 02-05:00pm, 2-147

New Forms, New Markets for Independent Film
2012-12-06 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Independent film-maker Andrew Silver will discuss emerging forms of hybrid media, some promising new pathways for distributing films and his career as a director and producer in this colloquium, which will include clips from his most recent film, Second Wind. Debra Wise of MIT’s Central Square Theater will join the discussion. Andrew and Debra played husband and wife in Radio Cape Cod, a Silver production shot in Woods Hole. Andrew Silver is a graduate of MIT and the Harvard Business School, co-author of a chapter in the HBS anthology Breakthrough Thinking, and a long-time member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. His films are distributed by Tesco, the second largest global retail chain:

Second Wind, 13 min
Overboard, 16 min
Downward Facing, 6 min

GO ASK A.L.I.C.E: A Panel Discussion
2012-11-29 17:30 | Harvard University Science Center, Room 469, 1 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
The Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard University’s Department of the History of Science is hosting a semester-long exhibit, “GO ASK A.L.I.C.E: Turing Tests, Parlor Games, & Chatterbots”, highlighted in part by this special panel discussion on November 29.
GO ASK A.L.I.C.E explores the strange afterlife of the Turing Test as it has circulated in popular, scientific, and commercial cultures. It reexamines elements of Alan Turing‘s own interactions with humans and machines, later imaginations of thinking machines, as well as a famous attempt to translate Turing’s parlor game into a real test of artificial intelligence: the Loebner Prize.

Minding the News
2012-11-29 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Sponsored by the MIT Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory (ICE Lab)
See Part 1 of this series, from September 6, featuring Francis Steen.
Mark Turner
The Red Hen Lab is a distributed laboratory for the study of network news. In an earlier talk, Professor Francis Steen provided a technical overview of the activities of Red Hen and surveyed the study by Francis Steen and Mark Turner of international network news coverage of the Anders Bering Brevik event in Oslo, Norway, in July, 2011, with an emphasis on the way in which network news is occupied with the assessment of culpability, blame, and credit.
This talk will discuss research on the cognitive underpinnings of network news, with an emphasis on blended joint attention, story-telling, counterfactuality, and hypotheticals.
Mark Turner is Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University.
He is the founding director of the Cognitive Science Network. His most recent book publications are Ten Lectures on Mind and Language and two edited volumes, The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, and Meaning, Form, & Body, edited with Fey Parrill and Vera Tobin. His other publications include Cognitive Dimensions of Social Science: The Way We Think about Politics, Economics, Law, and Society, The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language, and many more. He has been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Advanced Study of Durham University. He is a fellow of the Institute for the Science of Origins, external research professor at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study in Cognitive Neuroscience, distinguished fellow at the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology, and Extraordinary Member of the Humanwissenschaftsliches Zentrum. In 1996, the Académie française awarded him the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises. For 2011-2012, he is a fellow of the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Cultural Production and Social Media as Capture Platforms: How the Matrix Has You
2012-11-15 17:00 - 19:00 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Hector Postigo
This presentation develops a theoretical framework (rooted in Science and Technology Studies) for understanding how, generally, social media’s technical feature-sets create a system of capture and conversion. Capture describes the persistent ways in which social web platforms record and fix online/offline social and technical practices. Conversion applies to the way in which technical architectures convert what is captured into value (both culturally contingent and economic). The notions of capture and conversion are developed in light of other work in the field that seeks to understand how social web platforms use technology to leverage user generated content (UGC). The framework bridges a focus on ongoing social practice within/through platforms with analysis of technology as a determinant of probable practice. Ultimately this work is part of a larger project that seeks to develop a way of critically engaging the political economy of the social web while at the same time not ignoring the subject positions of those whose lives on display make it compelling.
Hector Postigo is Associate Professor in Media Studies and Production at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication. He is the co-founder of the blog culturedigitally.org and most recently the author of The Digital Rights Movement: The Role of Technology in Subverting Digital Copyright from MIT Press and co-editor of Managing Privacy Through Accountability from Palgrave Press. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation and the European Commission. He teaches and writes about video game culture, labor in digital networks, and privacy and copyright on the social web.

Futures of Entertainment 6
2012-11-09 - 2012-11-10 | MIT Building E51, Wong Auditorium, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Futures of Entertainment is an annual event exploring the current state and future of media properties, brands, and audiences. This year’s event, Nov. 9-10 at MIT, will look at how media producers and audiences are relating to one another in new ways in a spreadable media landscape.
Register at the FOE website.

New Media in West Africa
2012-11-08 19:00 - 21:00 | MIT Building E25, Room 111, 45 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
(Note time.)
This forum launches the Futures of Entertainment 6 conference at MIT. Despite many infrastructural and economic hurdles, entertainment media industries are burgeoning in West Africa. Today, the Nigerian cinema market–“Nollywood”–is the second largest in the world in terms of the annual volume of films distributed behind only the Indian film industry. And an era of digital distribution has empowered content created in Lagos, or Accra, to spread across geographic and cultural boundaries. New commercial models for distribution as well as international diasporic networks have driven the circulation of this material. But so has rampant piracy and the unofficial online circulation of this content. What innovations are emerging from West Africa? How has Nigerian cinema in particular influenced local television and film markets in other countries across West Africa, and across the continent? What does the increasing visibility of West African popular culture mean for this region–especially as content crosses various cultural contexts, within and outside the region? And what challenges does West Africa face in continuing to develop its entertainment industries?

Derrick N. Ashong leads the band Soulfège, a group that produces an eclectic blend of hip-hop, reggae, funk, world beat and West African highlife music and has been featured in such major media as MTV Africa and NPR. Also known as DNA, which is the name of his blog, Ashong hosted Oprah Radio’s The Derrick Ashong Experience and Al-Jazeera English’s social media TV show The Stream.
Fadzi Makanda is a business development manager in the New York office for iROKO Partners, a distributor of African—and particularly Nollywood—entertainment. Makanda leads the development and execution of U.S. advertising sales strategies for the company.
Colin M. Maclay is the managing director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Both as co-founder of Harvard’s International Technologies Group and at Berkman, Maclay’s research pairs hands-on multi-stakeholder collaborations with the generation of data that reveal trends, challenges and opportunities for the integration of communications technologies in developing communities.
Ralph Simon is founder of the Mobilium Advisory Group, which studies innovation in mobile usage in such countries as Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa. He has served as an executive at Capitol Records, Blue Note Records, and EMI Music, and he co-founded the Zomba Group with Clive Calder of South Africa. Simon earned the title “Father of the Ring Tone” when he created the first ring tone company in 1997.

Digitizing the Culture of Print: The Digital Public Library of America and Other Urgent Projects
2012-11-01 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The role of the library in the digital age is one of the compelling questions of our era. How are libraries coping with the promise and perils of our impending digital future? What urgent initiatives are underway to assure universal access to our print inheritance and to the digital communication forms of the future? How is the very idea of the library changing? These and related questions will engage our distinguished panelists, who represent both research and public libraries and two of whom serve on the steering committee for the Digital Public Library of America.
Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard, Director of the Harvard University Library and one of America’s most distinguished historians. He serves on the steering committee of the Digital Public Library of America and has been a trustees of the New York Public Library since 1995. In a recent essay in the New York Review of Books, Darnton defended a NYPL plan to liquidate some branches in the system while renovating the main Fifth Avenue branch. The essay sparked a number of responses. In November of last year, Darnton provided a status report on the DPLA. Darnton is the author of many influential books including The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future and The Great Cat Massacre.
Susan Flannery is director of libraries for the City of Cambridge and past president of the Massachusetts Library Association.

Online Information Session
2012-11-01 14:00 - 16:00, 2012-10-04 08:00 - 10:00 | cms.mit.edu

On-Campus Information Session
2012-10-25 09:30 - 16:30 | Comparative Media Studies: MIT Building E15, Room 335, 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States

Gediminas Urbonas
2012-10-18 17:00 - 19:00 | MIT Building 4, Room 231, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Gediminas Urbonas
Gediminas Urbonas is artist and educator, and co-founder (with Nomeda Urbonas) of Urbonas Studio – an interdisciplinary research program that advocates for the reclamation of public culture in the face of overwhelming privatization, stimulating cultural and political imagination as tools for social change. Often beginning with archival research, their methodology unfolds complex participatory works investigating the urban environment, architectural developments, and cultural and technological heritage.
The Urbonases have established their international reputation for socially interactive and interdisciplinary practice exploring the conflicts and contradictions posed by the economic, social, and political conditions of countries in transition. Working in collaboration they develop models for social and artistic practice with the interest to design organizational structures that question relativity of freedom.
They use art platform to render public spaces for interaction and engagement of the social groups, evoking local communities and encouraging their cultural and political imagination. Combining the tools of new and traditional media, their work frequently involves collective activities such as workshops, lectures, debates, TV programs, Internet chat-rooms and public protests that stand at the intersection of art, technology and social criticism.
They are also co-founders of VILMA (Vilnius Interdisciplinary Lab for Media Art), and VOICE, a net based publication on media culture. They have exhibited internationally including the San Paulo, Berlin, Moscow, Lyon and Gwangju Biennales

Script as Image
2012-09-27 17:15 - 19:00 | MIT Media Lab, Room 633, 75 Amherst St., Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The first event in the Ancient and Medieval Studies Seminar Series and co-sponsored by Literature, HTC, and the SHASS Dean’s Office.
Jeffrey Hamburger
Writing, in relation to such affiliated topics as literacy, linguistics, cognition, and media studies, has a central place across and beyond the humanistic disciplines. It is time, in turn, for historians of medieval art to take a broader view of paleography, rather than view it primarily as a means of dating or localizing monuments, or, at the most literal level, deciphering illustrated texts or epigraphic inscriptions.
Within the realm of visual imagery, the written word can rise to a form of representation in its own right, prior to and independent of the complex phenomena generally considered under the rubric of “text and image”—a generalization as true of modern art as it is of the Middle Ages. In contrast to modernity, however, through much of the Middle Ages, as in Antiquity, the primary status of the spoken word and oral delivery ensured that writing, no less than picturing, was subject to suspicion.
Professor Hamburger’s presentation will survey some, if hardly all, of the many aspects of medieval script as a pictorial form, using examples ranging from Late Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and beyond.
Jeffrey Hamburger’s teaching and research focus on the art of the High and later Middle Ages. Among his areas of special interest are medieval manuscript illumination, text-image issues, the history of attitudes towards imagery and visual experience, and German vernacular religious writing of the Middle Ages, especially in the context of mysticism. Much of his scholarship has focused on the art of female monasticism. His current research includes a project that seeks to integrate digital technology into the study and presentation of liturgical manuscripts, a study of narrative imagery in late medieval German prayer books and a major international exhibition on German manuscript illumination in the age of Gutenberg.
Professor Hamburger’s books include The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Medieval West and The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany.
Hamburger holds both his B.A. and Ph.D. in art history from Yale University. He previously held teaching positions at Oberlin College and the University of Toronto. He has been a guest professor in Zurich, Paris, Oxford and Fribourg, Switzerland.
