The Center for Global Culture and Communication (CGCC) was founded in 2002 as an interdepartmental forum for bringing together School of Communication faculty and students to address the emerging importance of globalization in communication studies. No theme better captures the intellectual challenges of the new century than globalization, especially as mediated by cultural flows and communication technology; and no academic unit of Northwestern University is better positioned to address those challenges than the School of Communication. Although established in the School of Communication, the CGCC offers the opportunity for interdisciplinary scholarly exchanges to members of all Northwestern academic units.
A presentation and dialogue on two recent books on digital culture and aesthetics
A presentation and dialogue on two recent books on digital culture and aesthetics: Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification by Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago) and The Play in the System: The Art of Parasitical Resistance by Anna Watkins Fisher (University of Michigan).
The Play in the System explores what artistic resistance looks like in the twenty-first century, when disruption and dissent have been co-opted and commodified in ways that reinforce dominant systems.
Experimental Games draws on the history of economics, affect theory, media theory, and game studies to explore video games as cultural counterparts of neoliberalism and as experimental forms that can complicate this paradigm from the inside out.
On Zoom, Friday, May 7, 2021 at 12 p.m. C.S.T
Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrcOurqDspHNR3gRInwAuCQLCFLhVp2P-K
‘Theory of the Gimmick– Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form’ by Sianne Ngai (English, University of Chicago)
‘Theory of the Gimmick– Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form’ by Sianne Ngai (English, University of Chicago)
Discussants
Mark Greif (English, Stanford University)
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon (University of California, Irvine)
Leigh Claire LaBerge (The City University of New York)
Repulsive and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick is a form that can be found virtually everywhere in capitalism. It comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and as working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention).
On Zoom, April 29, 2021 at 10 a.m C.S.T.
Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIvcOisrj8qGNwQeQ9wQcBpDWpCdY4DwxZ8
A Talk by Partha Chatterjee, I AM THE PEOPLE, Reflections on Popular Sovereignty Today
I AM
THE PEOPLE
Reflections on Popular Sovereignty Today
by Partha Chatterjee
On ZOOM Thursday, April 8, 2021, at 10 a.m. CST
In I Am the People, Partha Chatterjee reconsiders the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people.”
To register: https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJItceGrrzIuHNASqImjGa6WqAYuO6TKTFbd
Sensations of History and Discorrelated Images
James J. Hodge
and
Shane Denson
Zoom Event
Friday, April 2, 2021
2 p.m. CST / 12 p.m. PST
Talk by Zha Jianying, ‘China’s Heart of Darkness: Prince Han Fei and Chairman Xi Jinping’
Writer, journalist, and cultural critic Zha Jianying will present and discuss her five-part essay, China’s Heart of Darkness: Prince Han Fei and Chairman Xi Jinping, a study of the legacy of Chinese Legalist philosophy and its influence on the rule of Xi Jinping. This essay was published in China Heritage, July 14-22, 2020.
Discussants
Loubna El Amine, Political Science, Northwestern University
Geremie Barmé, College of the Asia & Pacific, Australian National University
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Contributing Editor at Indian Express, formerly vice-chancellor of Ashoka University
Organized by the CGCC in collaboration with the CTS, this webinar is part of a larger series of conversations ‘Questioning The Present’, a forum on contemporary issues.