Speakers

Critical Media and Digital Studies

A series of presentations and conversations with the theme Critical Media and Digital Studies, featuring speakers invited to visit Penn State. Its goal is to present critical perspectives on digital culture and media; to explore emerging ideas about the politics and culture of the technology industry, the processing and production of data, and technologism as an ideological form; and to integrate with the study of digital culture the studies of social class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, and postcoloniality, as well as non-Western and non-academic cultural perspectives.

2023-24

2022-23

2021-22

  • April 21, 2022: webinar on “Ecology and Technology” with Alenda Chang, UCSB and Yuriko Furuhata, McGill University; video HERE
  • April 7, 2022: webinar on “Times of Digital Production” with Marc Steinberg, Concordia University and James J. Hodge, Northwestern University; video HERE
  • March 30, 2022: webinar on “Race and Media Philosophy” with Michael Sawyer, University of Pittsburgh and Armond Towns, Carleton University; video HERE

2020-21

  • March 22, 2021: Co-sponsored lecture by Thomas Lamarre, McGill University: “Media Ecology: Television and Animation”

2019-20

  • November 12, 2019: Max Larson, postdoctoral fellow at Penn State and author of “Optimizing Chess: Philology and Algorithmic Culture” (Diacritics 46.1, 2018). Presentation title: “Computational ± Imperial Stylistics: J.M. Coetzee and the Limits of the Digital” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)

2018-19

  • March 28, 2019: Olivia Banner, University of Texas at Dallas, author of Communicative Biocapitalism: The Voice of the Patient in Digital Health and the Health Humanities (University of Michigan Press, 2017): “Technopsyence and Afro-Surrealism’s Cripistemologies” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • March 14, 2019: Aden Evens, Dartmouth College, author of Logic of the Digital (Bloomsbury, 2015): “Ontological Limits of the Digital” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)

2017–18

  • April 19, 2018: Justin Joque, University of Michigan, author of Deconstruction Machines: Writing in the Age of Cyberwar (University of Minnesota Press, 2018): “Deconstruction and the Weaponization of Knowledge” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • April 5, 2018: Jennifer Rhee, Virginia Commonwealth University, author of The Robotic Imaginary: The Human and the Price of Dehumanized Labor (University of Minnesota Press, 2018): “Drone Warfare, Drone Art, and the Limits of Identification” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • October 12, 2017: Stephanie Boluk, University of California at Davis, author with Patrick LeMieux of Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames (University of Minnesota Press, 2017): “From Metagames to Moneygames.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)

2016–17

  • April 14, 2017: Margaret Schwartz, Fordham University, author of Dead Matter: The Meaning of Iconic Corpses (University of Minnesota Press, 2015): “On Revolutionary Tenderness: Towards a Feminist Ethics of Care for the Digital Age.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • March 31, 2017: Pooja Rangan, Amherst College, author of Immediations: The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary (Duke University Press, 2017): “Autism, Voice, and the Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • March 17, 2017: Andrew Kopec, Indiana University – Purdue University, Fort Wayne: “Data Trouble: Toward a General Theory.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • November 29, 2016: Co-sponsored lecture by David Gunkel, Northern Illinois University: “How to Survive the Robot Apocalypse: Machine Learning and the Ethics of Robot Rights”
  • October 6, 2016: Anna Everett, University of California at Santa Barbara: “Gaming Matters: Playing with Black Womyn MPCs.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)

2015–16

  • April 21, 2016: Tom Eyers, Duquesne University: “Formalism in a Positivist Age.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • March 31, 2016: Matt Tierney, Penn State: “Critical Cyberculture in the Large World House.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)
  • December 3, 2015: Anna Everett, University of California at Santa Barbara: “Gaming Matters: Playing with Black Womyn MPCs.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information). Event canceled (2015–12–01)
  • September 22, 2015: Siona Wilson, City University of New York: “Anarchy in the ICA: COUM Transmissions’ Queer Aesthetic.” • Resource page (includes event flyer and other information)

2014–2015