‘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?

A talk by Souleymane Bachir Diagne

‘Postcolonial Bergson‘ traces the influence of Bergson’s thought through the work of two major figures in the postcolonial struggle, Muhammad Iqbal and Léopold Sédar Senghor.

Discussants
Naveeda Khan (Anthropology, The Johns Hopkins University)
Charles Taylor (Philosophy, Professor emeritus, McGill University)
Gary Wilder (Anthropology/French, Graduate Center, CUNY)

On Zoom June 3, 2021 10 A.M. to 12 P.M. C.T.

Register: https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwvce2opjspEt0DyT2Dt8kUcXGuv1haIvLq

‘The Politics of Nonviolence’

Karuna Mantena

Discussants

Dilip Gaonkar (Communication Studies, NU)

José Maria Medina (Philosophy, NU)

On Zoom, Thursday, May 20, 2021, 11 A.M.- 1 P.M. C.S.T

Gandhi and King insisted that nonviolent action was both morally and practically superior to the use of force in waging political conflict, overcoming oppression, and advancing social change.  And yet the political or practical logic of nonviolence remains obscure and/or controversial, despite the continued global prevalence of nonviolent protest.

I explore the theoretical underpinnings of the politics of nonviolence to better understand how and why nonviolent protest (1) uses tactics of disruption on a mass scale, (2) dramatizes injustice and dissent through forms that display and perform discipline, (3) tries to persuade and provoke crises through direct action.

Please email ViduraBahadur2023@u.northwestern.edu for the readings

To Register:  https://northwestern.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpcO6srj0qE9NelgD-yoTvIYh-WLumk-Ic

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)

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

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

James J. Hodge
and
Shane Denson

Zoom Event
Friday, April 2, 2021
2 p.m. CST / 12 p.m. PST