MIT Graduate Program in Comparative Media Studies

Comics 2003 -- A Fast-Changing Landscape
2003-01-15 19:00 (America/New_York) | MIT Building 10, Room 250, 222 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Cartoonist Scott McCloud discusses recent developments in comics and graphic novels and the recently accelerated evolution of comics on the Web.

Comics: Theory and Practice
2003-01-13 09:00 | MIT Building 1, Room 145, 33 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02319, United States
A visual lecture and intensive hands-on workshop with Scott McCloud in the art of making comics. Strong emphasis will be given to developing clarity, storytelling skills and personal expression. Students will learn and apply a variety of techniques for presenting narratives through comics, as well as a wide arsenal of skills applicable to any form of graphic communication. The course culminates in the creation of original comics short features, written and drawn by each student.

Media in Transition 2: Globalization and Convergence
2002-05-10 - 2002-05-12 | MA
Media in Transition 2: Globalization and Convergence
Will globalization reduce or expand the world’s cultural diversity? How do we reconcile the competing forces of media convergence and media fragmentation that are shaping the current communications infrastructure? What patterns can we discern among convergent content and audiences across media forms and international borders? These are among the issues to be explored at the Media in Transition 2 international conference on globalization and convergence.

Race in Digital Space
2001-04-27 - 2001-04-29 | MIT Building E51, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Race in Digital Space: A National Conference on Race and New Media Technologies
Cyberspace has been represented as a race-blind environment, yet our everyday encounters with race have consequences–both “inside and outside the box.” Although most discussions of the “digital divide” have tended to erase the numerous contributions of minority artists, activists, entrepreneurs, journalists, and scholars, this conference celebrates those accomplishments, while situating them against the backdrop of the challenges we still must confront in order to insure equal access to information technologies. What cultural and social baggage do we carry into the digital domain? How does the “race” for connectivity, access, and linkage relate to other races for visibility and equal opportunity? How are communities tackling political and economic inequalities in order to bridge the “digital divide”? How have minority communities deployed digital tools to comment on digital culture, to reconfigure the history of racism, and to claim a more powerful voice in shaping the future? Racism affects all Americans and so we are bringing together speakers of many different races and backgrounds to share their experiences and offer their solutions.

Digital Cinema Conference
2000-11-03 - 2000-11-05 | MIT Building E51, Room 345, 70 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Part of an ongoing series of events focused on creativity in the digital age, the MIT Conference on Digital Cinema brings together filmmakers, critics, and media industry leaders to explore the nature of digital cinema and its cultural significance. The conference will combine screenings of significant works in digital cinema with panel discussions centered on such issues as the political consequence of broadening media access, the shifting status of amateur filmmaking, the aesthetics of this emerging media form, the economics of digital film production and distribution, the historical antecedents of digital cinema, and the ways in which digital cinema may influence our media future.
The MIT Conference on Digital Cinema is sponsored by ALWAYSi.com, the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, and the MIT Communications Forum.

Computer and Video Games Come of Age Conference
2000-02-10 - 2000-02-11 | MIT Building 26, Room 100, Access Via 60 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The computer and video game industry has now completed its first quarter century and has become a strong and vibrant force within the American entertainment industry. There is no question that interactive games are a medium which can already celebrate significant accomplishments and social and cultural contributions. The most exciting developments are surely yet to come.
The time has come to take an inventory of today’s game industry and envision tomorrow’s technological innovations and creative implications, not only from industrial and professional perspectives but from research being explored by cultural and media scholars. In much the same way industry leaders and academics worked together to establish a serious national conversation about the aesthetic and cultural importance of cinema in the 20th century, we believe that academic and industry exchanges can promote the art of digital entertainment media for the 21st century.
As a first step, the Program in Comparative Media Studies and the Communications Forum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in cooperation with the Interactive Digital Software Association, invite you to a national conference to be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Thursday, 10 February and Friday, 11 February 2000. Industry insiders and academic researchers will contribute to conversations designed to:

Assess the state of the computer and video game industry;
Evaluate how the industry has made use of the potentials of digital media;
Discuss how it is responding to more diverse consumer tastes and interests;
Speculate where games may go as a genre in the next decade.

Media in Transition Conference
1999-10-08 - 1999-10-10 | MA
Media in Transition Conference
To celebrate the launch of the graduate program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, this final event of the Media in Transition Project aims to establish a broad-gauged discussion of our emerging computer culture in the perspective of ancestor technologies and older media. The conference will include some 75 presentations on many aspects of this subject, a series of multi-media demonstrations and films offered in parallel with the presentations, and three plenary “conversations” in which distinguished panelists will speak briefly and then participate in extended dialogue with the audience. Among the panelists: Phil Agre, Robert Darnton, Henry Jenkins, Elaine Kamarck, Adam Powell, Mitchel Resnick, Paul Starr, Bob Stein, Maria Tatar, Sherry Turkle.
