Past Events
2011-12 Academic Year
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FALL TERM 2011
December 2: David Alworth (PhD candidate, English) presents “Site Reading: Pynchon’s Malta,” an essay being prepared for publication. Daniel Harris (PhD candidate, English) responds.
November 11: Tracy Fullerton, Associate Professor in the Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts, presents on and discusses her recent work in game design.
October 28: Marianna Martin (PhD candidate, CMS) presents “Feminists and Fanboys: Constructing the Whedonverse,” a chapter from her dissertation.
October 14: Daniel Johnson (PhD student, CMS/EALC) presents “Animated Writing: Group Languages and Mediated Intimacy in Contemporary Japan.”
October 7: Michelle Menzies (PhD candidate, English) presents “An Aesthetics of Movement: Digital Cinema and Enlargement,” a chapter from her dissertation, Archives of Experience: Toward a Digital Aesthetics. Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.
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2010-2011 Academic Year
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SPRING TERM 2011
June 3: Mary Adekoya (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies), presents the proposal for her dissertation, entitled Shadows of Cinema: Popular Indigenous Cinema in Contemporary Nigeria. Nova Smith (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies) responds.
May 20: Erkki Huhtamo, Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA, presents and discusses his paper “Tracing the Topoi: A Certain Way of Doing Media Archaeology.”
May 13: Marianna Martin (PhD candidate, Cinema and Media Studies), presents “Poaching the Poachers: Readers, Texts, and the Rise of the Fan-Practitioner,” a chapter from her dissertation.
April 29: Ian Jones (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies) presents his paper “Coupling with a Fictional Environment: An Enactive Approach to Bodily Transformation and Nonhuman Perception in Videogames.” Shannon Foskett (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies) responds.
April 15: “Drama and Videogames,” a mini panel discussion featuring short presentations by John Muse, Assistant Professor in the department of English Language and Literature, and Kalisha Cornett (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies), as well as demonstrations of the interactive fiction piece Façade and the game Heavy Rain.
WINTER TERM 2011
March 11: Lisa Zaher (PhD candidate, Art History) presents and discusses “Stereoscopophilia, Circa 1968,” a chapter from her dissertation, By Mind and Hand: Hollis Frampton’s Photographic Modernism
February 18: Doron Galili (PhD candidate, Cinema and Media Studies) presents “Synaesthetic Technologies and the Origins of the Post-Medium Condition,” a chapter from his dissertation, Seeing by Electricity: The Emergence of Television and the Modern Mediascape, 1878-1939. Ian Jones (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies) responds.
February 4: Peter Shultz (PhD candidate, Music) presents “Rock Band Etudes: Pleasure and Learning in Music Games and Pedagogical Pieces,” a chapter from his dissertation on music in video games. Jonathan de Souza (PhD candidate, Music) responds.
January 21: Michelle Menzies (PhD candidate, English) presents “Digital Aesthetics in the Lumière Cinema,” a chapter from her dissertation, Archives of Experience: Toward a Digital Aesthetics. Christian Quendler, Assistant Professor of American Studies at University of Innsbruck and visiting scholar in the Radio/TV/Film Department of Northwestern University, responds. (Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.)
January 14: D. N. Rodowick, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and chair of Visual and Environmental Studies and director of Graduate Studies for Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University presents and discusses his paper “The Meaning of Cinema in Hotel Berlin“ (Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.)
January 7: Jim Hodge (PhD candidate, English) presents “Writing, Historical Time, and the ‘Deep Opacity of Contemporary Technics,’” a chapter from his dissertation, Animate Archaeology: New Media and the Aesthetics of History. Ivan Ross (PhD candidate, Cinema and Media Studies) responds.
FALL TERM 2010
November 19: Eddo Stern, Professor of Design Media Arts at UCLA, discusses his recent work
November 13: Screening, co-sponsored by the Film Studies Center: Recent Video Work by Eddo Stern. (Please note the change in meeting day, time, and place: this screening is on a Saturday, in Cobb 306 at 7:00 PM.)
November 12: Clint Froehlich (PhD student, Cinema and Media Studies) presents his paper “Cinema on Video as Porous Media: A Journey from the Pause Button to Hi-Def Digital Liquid.” Patrick Jagoda, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English, responds.
October 22: Patrick Jagoda, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English, gives a presentation entitled “Emergence: TransMedia Play and Gaming as Social Practice”
October 8: Eugene Thacker, Associate Professor of Media Studies at The New School, discusses his essay “Mediation and Antimediation” (this workshop is preceded by a lecture by Professor Thacker on October 7th, 4:30 pm in Rosenwald Hall 405, entitled “Darklife: Philosophy and Supernatural Horror,” presented by the Department of English)
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2009-2010 Academic Year
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SPRING TERM 2010
May 28: James J. Hodge, Ph.D. Candidate, English Language & Literature, presents, “Precarious Information: Animating the End of the Book.” Response by Ivan Ross, Ph.D. Candidate, Cinema & Media Studies.
May 14: Andrew Johnston, Ph.D. Candidate, Cinema & Media Studies, presents, “The Color of Prometheus: Thomas Wilfred’s Lumia and the Projection of Transcendence.” Response by Ian Jones, Ph.D. student, Cinema & Media Studies.
April 30: Peter Shultz, Ph.D. Candidate, Music, presents, “Music Incorporated: Style, Genre, and Topic in Video Game Music.” Response by Roger Moseley, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Musicology.
April 16: Matt Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland, presents on digital materiality
April 13: jonCates, Assistant Professor of Film, Video and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, presents on experimental machinima
April 2: Luis-Manuel Garcia, Ph.D. Candidate, Music, presents “Hardening Something: Music, Affect, and the Sense of the Social.” Response by Shayna Silverstein, Ph.D. Candidate, Music.
WINTER TERM 2010
March 12: Scott Richmond, Ph.D. Candidate, Cinema & Media Studies, presents “The Body, Unbounded: Pleasure, Proprioception, and Aisthesis in Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance.” Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.
Feb 26-27: The Material and the Code: Disciplinary Crossings of Cinema and New Media
Feb 26: Alexander R. Galloway, Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University, discusses his essay, “The Unworkable Interface.”
Jan 13: W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor (English & Art History) discusses selections from his new book, Cloning Terror. Co-sponsored by the American Literatures and Cultures Workshop.
FALL TERM 2009
Dec 4: James J. Hodge (English) presents “Animate Archaeology: New Media and the Aesthetics of History.”
Nov 19: Kris Cohen, (Art History) presents “Intimacy without Reciprocity: Suffragists, Internet Trolls, and Sharon Hayes’ Love Letters.” Co-sponsored by the Contemporary Art Workshop.
Nov 13: Domietta Torlasco, Assistant Professor of Italian Studies and Screen Cultures, Northwestern University, and MFA candidate in Film, Video and New Media at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, presents Against House Arrest: Digital Memory and the Impossible Archive.
Oct 30: Andrew Johnston (Cinema & Media Studies) presents “Signatures of Motion: Len Lye’s Scratch Films and the Energy of the Line”
Oct 16: Hollis Frampton: Meta-History and Media Archaeology, a discussion co-led by Lisa Zaher (Art History) and James J. Hodge (English)
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2008-2009 Academic Year
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SPRING TERM 2009
May 21 & 22: Barbara Lattanzi
May 15: New Media and Materiality: Andrew Johnston (CMS) & James J. Hodge (English) lead a discussion of three texts that explore the forensic & formal materiality of new media. Texts to be discussed include ch. 1 of Matthew Kirschenbaum’s Mechanisms, John Cayley’s essay “The Code is Not the Text (unless it is the Text)” and ch. 1 & the afterword from Racing the Beam by Nick Montfort & Ian Bogost.
May 8: Eduardo Kac, Professor of Art & Technology Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in conversation with WJT MITCHELL, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor in English & Art History at the University of Chicago.
April 24: Doron Gallili, Ph.D. Candidate, Committee on Cinema & Media Studies, “‘A Prolonged Optic Nerve’: Cultural and Technological Ideas of Television in the Nineteenth Century.”
April 3: Laura Mulvey, Professor of the History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck College, University of London. Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.
WINTER TERM 2009
March 13: Scott Richmond, Ph.D. Candidate, Committee on Cinema & Media Studies presents “What Does the Cinema Afford? Or, an Ecological Approach to Cinematic Kinesthesis.”
Feb 26 & 27: Zoe Beloff
Feb 13: James Chandler, Director of The Franke Institute for the Humanities, Department of English Language and Literature, and Committee on Cinema and Media Studies presents “The Affection-Image and the Movement-Image”
Jan 30: Chris Bench, Ph.D. Student, Department of English Language and Literature presents Innate Constraints on Literary Realism as Evidenced by Eye-Tracking Research.
Jan 29: Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University presents Post-Cinematic Affect. Co-sponsored by the Affective Publics Reading Group.
Jan 23: Joyce Cheng, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History presents “Of Dolls, Puppets, Gods: Walter Benjamin and the Mediation of Playthings.” Co-sponsored by the Mass Culture Workshop.
FALL TERM 2008
Dec 5: Play, Games, New Media: Matt Hauske (Cinema & Media Studies), Peter Shultz (Music), & James J. Hodge (English) lead a discussion of theories of play from Caillois to Galloway, focusing on Giorgio Agamben’s essay, “In Playland” and the relation between play and history. In addition, we will play Wii and take a brief tour of the history of tennis in media art. Click here for more details.
Nov 14: Andrew Raffer Dewar, Assistant Professor of Music and Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Alabama presents “Sonic Arts Union: Aesthetics of an American ‘Tinkering’ Technoculture.”
Nov 7: Peter Shultz, Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Music, discusses “Music and Narrative Death in Video Games: Grief and Routine in Final Fantasy VII,” a chapter from his dissertation.
Oct 17: Kris Cohen, Ph.D. Candidate in the department of Art History, presents ” Statement in the Form of a Question (Search Engines and Self-Encounter),” a chapter from his dissertation. Co-sponsored by The Contemporary Art Workshop.
Oct 3: Introductory Meeting, All are welcome! plus: James J. Hodge, Ph.D. Candidate in the department of English Language & Literature, presents “Algorithms of History.”
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2007-2008 Academic Year
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SPRING TERM 2008
May 19: Alan Liu, Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
May 12: Arnika Fuhrmann, Ph.D. Student in Art History. (Joint meeting with The Contemporary Art Workshop).
May 2: Zach Cahill, MFA ’07, University of Chicago presents recent video work.
April 26: Christophe Wall-Romana (University of Minnesota), “Re-Viewing Photogénie.” (Note: In conjunction with “Jean Epstein’s Interdisciplinary Cinema,” a symposium hosted by the Committee on Cinema and Media Studies.)
April 18: Ranciere Discussion – continued. Reading: The Future of the Image.
April 4: Christa Robbins, Ph. D. Candidate in the Department of Art History, discusses a chapter from her dissertation in progress.
CO-SPONSORED SPRING EVENTS:
April 5: ALTERNATIVE NONFICTION: ESSAY FILMS, HYBRIDS, AND EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARIES, University of Chicago’s Committee on Cinema and Media Studies Graduate Student Conference.
WINTER TERM 2008
March 10: Adam Hart, Ph.D. Student in the Committee for Cinema and Media Studies.
February 25: Bruce Jenkins, Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and former Cavell Curator of the Harvard Film Archive, discusses Hollis Frampton.
February 15: Group Discussion of the work of Jacques Rancière, led by Michelle Menzies, Ph.D. Student in the Department of English Language and Literature.
January 28: Kris Cohen, Ph.D. Student, Art History, discusses his dissertation in progress.
FALL TERM 2007
December 9: Beowulf, the IMAX Experience, followed by a discussion on Digital Film, and “Photorealism.”
December 3: Shannon Herbert, Ph.D. Candidate in English Language & Literature.
November 12: Kristine Nielson, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History.
October 31: Lynn Spigel, Professor and Chair of the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University.
Ocotober 15: Introductory Session: What’s New(er) in New Media
