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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

 

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.

Midwest Media Aesthetics Workshop 1

A Graduate Student Conference

A Collaborative Project between Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan

Friday, February 12, 2021

Events 2020 and prior

Automating the News. How algorithms are rewriting the media. November 13, 2020 (jpg)

Democracy Without Shortcuts. October 23, 2020 (jpg)

Media Aesthetics Symposium. November 22, 2019 (jpg)

Roderick P. Hart. Local Voices and Why Hope Survives. October 31, 2019

MEDIA AESTHETICS – 2019 RHETORIC AND PUBLIC CULTURE SUMMER INSTITUTE — July 15-19, 2019

Popular Sovereignty, Majority Rule, and Electoral Politics — May 30 – June 1, 2019

MEDIA, GENDER, FEMINISM — May 20-21, 2019

A PREHISTORY OF THE CLOUD – GRADUATE WORKSHOP WITH TUNG-HUI HU — MAY 16, 2019

MEDIA AESTHETICS: A WORKSHOP — MAY 17, 2019

GRADUATE WORKSHOP – DECONSTRUCTING THE IDEOLOGIES OF“SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM” – NICK COULDRY — MAY 15, 2019

THE EMERGING SOCIAL ORDER OF DATA COLONIALISM:WHY CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORY STILL MATTERS! – NICK COULDRY — MAY 13, 2019

GRADUATE WORKSHOP – EMPOWERED: POPULAR FEMINISM AND POPULAR MISOGYNY – SARAH BANET-WEISER — APRIL 19, 2019

DON’T LET THE MISOGYNISTS GRIND YOU DOWN: POPULAR FEMINISM AND THE HANDMAID’S TALE – SARAH BANET-WEISER — APRIL 18, 2019

GRADUATE WORKSHOP ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: HOW TO UNDERSTAND A TECHNOLOGICAL DISRUPTION FOR NEWS – CHARLIE BECKETT — April 18, 2019

EMOTION AS AN ORGANISING PRINCIPLE FOR UNDERSTANDING AND CREATING NETWORKED JOURNALISM – CHARLIE BECKETT — April 17, 2019

Symposium on Visual Rhetoric: Reframing the Public Image – February 15, 2019 (jpg)

Critical Theory in Critical Times: EXILE, STATELESSNESS, MIGRATION – A Discussion With Seyla Benhabib — November 9th, 2018

VOLATILITY: SCALE AND AFFECT – October 25-26, 2018

Christian Thorne – The Novel at Sea — October 12, 2018

New Modes of Political Protest: 1968 to 2018 — 2018 RHETORIC AND PUBLIC CULTURE SUMMER INSTITUTE – July 9-13, 2018

5th Annual Global Race Studies Workshop – Racism, Patriotrism and Black Protest (jpg)

II NU-LSE SYMPOSIUM – POPULAR CULTURE, POPULIST POLITICS, AND MEDIA ETHICS – April 26-27, 2018

PAUL FROSH Communication & Journalism Hebrew University of Jerusalem – NOTES ON THE SCREENSHOT: REMEDIATED PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE POETICS OF DIGITAL MEDIA, FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Elizabeth Povinelli – The Four Axioms of Existence – February 7, 2018

DISTANT THUNDER: POLITICS AND POETICS OF A RECEDING OCTOBER REVOLUTION – OCTOBER 25, 2017

GLOBALIZATIONS, GLOBAL, AND WORLD: HISTORY, LITERARY CRITICISM, AND SPACES OF THE PRESENT – OCTOBER 19-20, 2017, Keynote

GLOBALIZATIONS, GLOBAL, AND WORLD: HISTORY, LITERARY CRITICISM, AND SPACES OF THE PRESENT – OCTOBER 19-20, 2017

The Politics and Rhetoric of New Populims – July 17-21,2017

2017 Summer Institute In Performance Studies Improvisation, Narrative, Beauty – July 10-14, 2017

After Obama: The Politics of Difference And The Rhetoric of Nationalism – May 12, 2017

Democratic Agendas: Negotiating Climate Change, Capitalism, and the New Populisms – April 19-21, 2017

Charles Taylor, March 9, 2017

Craig Calhoun, Debt and the New Populisms. March 3, 2017 [jpg]

NIKOLAS KOMPRIDIS, Philosophy and Political Thought & Institute for Social Justice, Australian Catholic University – Nov, 2016

The Ethics of Mediation – Oct, 2016

The Public Image – Oct. 8, 2016 [jpg]

Summer Institute, July 19-23

Spring 2016 Events

Claudio W. Lomnitz, May 24

Alejandro Dujovne, May 23

Face, Body, and Image in Cinema, May 19-20

John Durham Peters. May 9

Bart Cammaerts. April 28 [jpg]

Bart Cammaerts. April 27 [jpg]

Jason Read. April 22 [jpg]

Jason Read. April 21 [jpg]

Jean-Christophe Plantin. April 18 [jpg]

Winter 2016 Events

Fall 2015 Events

Sounds of South Asia Series

Global Perspectives on Race, Knowledge and Institutions in the 21st Century. February 18-19, 2016.

Charles Taylor (McGill University) Retrieving Realism. February 12, 2016.

Conference on Beauty and Form. January 28-29, 2016.

Critical Theory in Critical Times Workshop. November 13, 2015.