Midwest Media Aesthetics Workshop 2:
The Center for Global Culture and Communication (CGCC), along with Central European University (CEU) and Center for Transcultural Studies (CTS), is co-sponsoring a week-long summer school titled “Dismantling Democracy from Within.”The “Dismantling Democracy from Within” summer school advances the twin mission of understanding the critical challenges democracy is facing and developing the democratic agendas that will meet these challenges under variable cultural and socio-economic conditions. Such a mission can only be secured by facilitating a robust dialogue among students, activists, and scholars assembled from all over the world. Students will leave the Summer School with a deeper knowledge of the specific challenges facing democracy in different contexts as well as a global understanding of how they are connected.
The application deadline is February 28, 2022. Once admitted, all costs related to participation will be covered by the organizers.
‘Rhetoric and Politics of Protest and Direct Action’
Disobedience in Black BLM and Black Politics Beyond Democratic Sacrifice
Juliet Hooker (Political Science, Brown University)
Respondents
Alan Chavoya (Philosophy, Northwestern University)
Alvin Bernard Tillery, Jr. (Political Science, Northwestern University)
On Zoom, Thursday February 3, 2022, 4 P.M. C.T.
Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrdeqoqT4vG9WL0U8iHGGkR6YBInMbTTjy
Please download the readings here.
‘Questioning the Present Series’
Colegio Nacional Lectures on State and Violence in Contemporary Mexico
Claudio Lomnitz (Anthropology, Columbia University)
Respondents:
Veena Das (Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University)
Fernando Escalante (Sociology, El Colegio de Mexico)
ON ZOOM, Friday, December 10, 2021, 10am C.T.
https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkdeuprzgtHdQHN5wKFJbqDlTgryo_VPxt
For the readings/ lectures please visit
https://thects.org/publications/lomnitzlectures
This event is organized by the Center for Global Culture and Communication in association with the Center for Transcultural Studies
The Democratic Sublime: On Aesthetics and Popular Assembly 
‘Media Aesthetics Series’
Abundance: On the Experience of Living in a World of Information Plenty (Oxford Up, 2021)
Pablo Boczkowski (Communication Studies, Northwestern University)
Respondents:
Charlie Beckett, Media and Communications, London School of Economics
Teresa Correa, School of Communication, Diego Portales University
Marwan M. Kraidy, Dean and CEO, Northwestern University in Qatar
Friday Nov 5, 2021, ON ZOOM, 10 A.M- 12 P.M. CT
Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUlfuChrzsrHtWobi62mWYsyDYqaYTEFMh7
Questioning the Present Online Series
Jointly Sponsored by CGCC and CTS
Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India (Oxford UP, 2021)
by Mukulika Banerjee (Anthropology, London School of Economics, United Kingdom)
Respondents
Deepak Mehta (Sociology & Anthropology, Ashoka University, India)
Lisa Mitchell (South Asia Studies & Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, United States of America)
On ZOOM
Friday, October 29, 2021, 10 A.M C.T. / 4 P.M. B.S.T./ 830 P.M. IST
Register https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0qceCsrjMtE9eh5RC9e7jfHE2hH1k5Md2c
Media Aesthetic III: Structures of Experience
The theme of the 2021 summer institute in media aesthetics is “structures of experience.” In his 1977 book Marxism and Literature, Raymond Williams briefly entertains the phrase “structures of experience” as an alternative formulation of his now-famous notion of “structures of feeling.” This year’s summer institute takes inspiration from this phrase’s suggestive resonance with a range of contemporary topics from structural racism to media infrastructures and from the substitution of ‘experience’ for ‘feelings,’ which might hint at a consideration of modes of living beyond conventional notions of feeling anchored in individuals and toward dimensions of life informed by algorithms, social media, and institutions in ways that challenge, in turn, received conceptions of subjectivity and collectivity. Moreover, in the wake of a year spent on zoom, we hope that the keywords “structures” and “experience” will feel newly fresh and perhaps even open-ended and ready for new thinking. Put otherwise, how must we understand the historical present given the tumultuous events of the very recent past?
