MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing
Episodes
Fall 2017 Alumni Panel
17 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Hear from four alums of the graduate program in Comparative Media Studies as they discuss their experience at MIT and what their careers have looked l...
Cloud Policy: Anatomy of a Regulatory Crisis
27 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Jennifer Holt examines the legal and cultural crises surrounding the regulation of data in “the cloud.” The complex landscape of laws and policies...
Mapping Climate Change: Contested Futures in New York City’s Flood Zone
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As seas rise, coasts erode, deserts spread, and permafrost melts, climate change is altering everyday life in many places. Even with immediate, drasti...
An Evening with Sarah Vowell
05 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Overthrown Hawaiian queens, religious zealots, swindlers, cranky cartographers, presidential assassins, and the people who visit their memorials on va...
The Mediated Construction of Reality - From Berger and Luckmann to Norbert Elias
29 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Nick Couldry outlined the project of his recent book, The Mediated Construction of Reality (Polity October 2016, co-written with Andreas Hepp). The bo...
Platforms in the Public Interest: Lessons from Minitel
22 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Platforms such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook dominate the internet today, providing private infrastructures for public culture. These systems are so...
Walter Menendez: "Engineering Virality: BuzzFeed’s Scientific Approach To Creating Content"
16 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve heard of BuzzFeed, you probably think about our famous articles and quizzes, such as The Dress and Which State Are You Actually From?, as ...
Playful Practice: Designing the Future of Teacher Learning
08 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
All across the world, educational systems are exploring new ways to encourage more ambitious teaching and learning in classrooms: shifting away from r...
Nicole Hemmer: "From Taft to Trump: How Conservative Media Activists Won — and Lost — the GOP"
12 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As Donald Trump built his lead in the Republican primaries, the editors of National Review came out with an entire “Against Trump” issue, a full-t...
The Contingencies of Comparison: Rethinking Comparative Media
04 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Larkin and Stefan Andriopoulos draw on the concept of comparison to examine how the same technologies work in radically different ways across th...
Michael Lee: "The Conservative Canon Before and After Trump"
28 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Michael J. Lee charts the vital role of canonical post–World War II (1945–1964) books in generating, guiding, and sustaining conservatism as a pol...
The Spiciest Memelord - An Interview with Jeopardy Champ Lilly Chin
22 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
"MIT’s Jeopardy champ talks strategy, memes -- and becoming strangers’ media object." In early 2017, Lilly Chin won the Jeopardy College Champion...
An Evening With Aparna Nancherla
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Named one of Variety’s Ten Comics to Watch for 2016, Aparna Nancherla has racked up appearances on Conan, Last Comic Standing, Inside Amy Schumer, a...
Barbie and Mortal Kombat 20 Years Later
07 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Diversifying Barbie and Mortal Kombat, the third edited volume in the series that includes From Barbie to Mortal Kombat and Beyond Barbie and Morta...
Glorianna Davenport, "The Networked Sensory Landscape Meets the Future of Documentary"
24 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At its heart, documentary cinema has always been an experimental medium. Its evolution has been driven on the one hand by the creativity and interests...
Charles Musser, "From Stereopticon to Telephone: The Selling of the President in the Gilded Age"
17 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Contrary to our received notions on the newness of new media, the presidential campaigns of the late nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of medi...
Sexual Harassment and Gender Equity in Science
13 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In October, 2015, BuzzFeed News reporter Azeen Ghorayshi broke an investigative story detailing astronomer Geoffrey Marcy’s long history of sexual h...
Paul Roquet: "Desktop Reveries: Hand, Software, and the Space of Japanese Artist Animation"
01 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
[Videos mentioned in this podcast are available for viewing at http://cmsw.mit.edu/podcast-paul-roquet-japanese-artist-animation] Independent animato...
Race and Racism in the 2016 Presidential Election
23 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The 2016 Presidential election brought issues of race and racism to the forefront of American politics and forced journalists to confront how to cover...
Nathan Matias: "Authoritarian and Democratic Data Science in an Experimenting Society"
16 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How will the role of data science in democracy be transformed as software expands the public’s ability to conduct our own experiments at scale? In t...
Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities
03 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
MIT professor Nick Montfort talks about his new book and how learning to explore code isn't just for the tech-inclined -- programming can be a way for...
Kishonna Gray, "#Misogynoir, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and other forms of Black Digital Feminisms"
09 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Women of color have a variety of responses when employing digital technologies for empowerment. New communication technologies have expanded the oppor...
André Brock: "Black + Twitter: A Cultural Informatics Approach"
01 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Sacca, activist investor, recently argued that Black Twitter IS Twitter. For example, African American usage of the service often dominates user...
Fall 2016 Alumni Panel
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Hear from four alums of the graduate program in Comparative Media Studies as they discuss their experience at MIT and what their careers have looked l...
An Evening with John Hodgman
16 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 2005, a little-known author was invited on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his book, an almanac chronicling fake histories ranging from ...
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, "Using Social Listening Tools to Understand the Presidential Campaign"
04 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The 2016 presidential election has been historic for the ways that social media has been used to drive the news agenda and rally supporters to the cau...
The Turn to “Tween”: An Age Category and Its Cultural Consequences
24 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Even though people age nine through twelve have always been with us, the same cannot be said for the category “tween.” When did this category emer...
Time Traveling with James Gleick
18 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
International best-selling author and science historian James Gleick discusses his career, the state of science journalism, and his newest book Time T...
Allison Hahn, "Mobile Media, Protest, and Debate in Maasai and Mongolian Land Disputes"
07 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How has mobile media changed the ways that nomadic communities receive and send information, engage state actors, and participate in international del...
Douglas O'Reagan: "Next Stage Planning for the Digital Humanities at MIT"
30 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
As a Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at MIT, Douglas O’Reagan will study how the digital humanities can best aid the specific strengths, m...
Christine Walley: "The Exit Zero Project"
24 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Exit Zero Project (www.exitzeroproject.org) is a transmedia exploration of the traumatic effects of the loss of the steel industry in Southeast Ch...
Sun-ha Hong: "Knowledge's Allure: Surveillance and Uncertainty"
19 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The present age is one of growing faith in machinic knowledge. From state surveillance to self-tracking technologies, we find lofty promises about the...
“Innovation” and “Engagement”: Experiments with What Industry Buzzwords Can Mean in Practice
09 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
CMS/W alum Sam Ford (S.M., CMS, ’07) has spent most of the last decade exploring points of connection and contention between the media and marketing...
Virtual Reality Meets Documentary: A Deeper Look
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
(This is obviously better enjoyed as a video! Watch this talk and the accompanying visuals at http://cmsw.mit.edu/video-virtual-reality-meets-document...
Fox Harrell: "Reflections On Advanced Identity Representation"
03 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly everyone these days imaginatively uses virtual identities such as social media profiles, e-commerce accounts, and/or videogame characters. Yet,...
Nick Seaver: "What Do People Do All Day"
20 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The algorithmic infrastructures of the internet are made by a weird cast of characters: rock stars, gurus, ninjas, wizards, alchemists, park rangers, ...
Michael Taussig: "Mooning Texas"
14 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
“Mooning Texas” – an adventure story involving social energy + art + Emile Durkheim’s “take” on Mauss + Hubert’s “take” on mana + th...
Being Muslim in America (and MIT) in 2016
12 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Last December, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. In March, he added that “...
Lisa Glebatis Perks: "Media Marathoning and Affective Involvement"
04 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Although the popular press primarily uses the negatively connoted phrase “binge-watching,” Lisa Glebatis Perks employs the label “media marathon...
A Conversation with Guy Maddin
13 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Guy Maddin and his partners are communing with the spirits of long-lost movies. In a conversation with William Uricchio, Maddin discusses why we shoul...
Excellence in Teaching
03 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What separates a good teacher from a great one? How are digital technologies challenging traditional teaching methods? And are there distinctions betw...
Vincent Brown: "Designing Histories of Slavery for the Database Age"
27 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Multimedia scholarship invites reconsideration of how history has been, could be, and should be represented. By wrestling creatively and collectively ...
Caroline Jack: "How Facts Survive In Public Service Media"
24 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Economic literacy has long been touted as a potential solution to national economic crisis and individual financial precarity. But what does it mean t...
Is There a Future for In-Depth Science Journalism?
19 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Traditional media outlets have been facing budget cuts and layoffs for years, with specialized reporters often among the first to go. And yet last yea...
Amanda Lotz: "Television Didn't Die -- But Broadband Distribution Revolutionized It"
09 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Beginning in the late 1990s, the technology and even mainstream press opined extensively on the coming death of television. A decade later—and a tim...
John Jennings: "The Cipher Back To Here"
04 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
John Jennings is an Associate Professor of Art and Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York. He is the co-author of th...
Vivek Bald: "Documenting South Asian America's Interracial Past"
24 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Vivek Bald, an Associate Professor in CMS/W and member of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, discusses his transmedia project documenting the lives of Beng...
CMS alumni panel: On the virtues of preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist
12 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
"Each spring, the CMS side of CMSW catapults ten more master’s program graduates into the world. And each fall, we invite a bunch back to talk with ...
Comparative Media Studies graduate alumni panel, Fall 2015
21 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
On the heels of the day’s graduate program information session, we hosted five alums of our master's degree program in Comparative Media Studies. Th...
Graduate Program Information Session, Fall 2015
17 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Our information sessions bring prospective master's students to campus to meet our faculty and students, who discuss the program, its research, what i...
Women in Politics - Representation and Reality
11 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Women are chronically underrepresented in U.S. politics. Yet TV shows, fictions, and films have leapt ahead of the electoral curve to give us our firs...
Tom Levenson: "Einstein, Mercury, And The Hunt For Vulcan"
05 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
MIT professor of science writing Tom Levenson discusses his new book, The Hunt for Vulcan…And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Rel...
Stuart Brotman: "Global Internet Development Viewed Through The Net Vitality Lens"
03 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Net Vitality is a new analytic approach to examine ways to sustain long-term Internet vibrancy, both in the United States and around the world, and he...
Heather Hendershot; "From Firing Line To The O'Reilly Factor"
23 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
William F. Buckley’s public affairs program Firing Line (PBS, 1966–1999) offered a space for no-holds-barred, honest intellectual combat at its fi...
Sarah Zaidan, "The Adventures Of Ms. Meta: Celebrating The Female Superhero Through Digital Gaming"
18 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The importance of female superheroes in Western culture cannot be ignored. From Wonder Woman in the 1940s to Captain Marvel in the 2010s, the inspirat...
From The Neolithic Era To The Apocalypse: How To Prepare For The Future By Studying The Past
08 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For thousands of years, humans have experienced cycles of empire building and retreat, from the neolithic settlers of Levant and the Indus Valley to t...
Jim Crow and the Legacy of Segregation Outside of the South
07 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Police shootings and the Black Lives Matter campaign have shone a spotlight on how different the everyday experiences are of white Americans and Ameri...
Hiromu Nagahara: "Hierarchy And Democracy In Modern Japan's Mass Media Revolution"
30 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Modern Japan experienced what could be described as its first wave of “mass media revolution” in the period stretching from the mid-1920s into the...
Jane McGonigal discusses "SuperBetter" with MIT's Scot Osterweil
15 Sep 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jane McGonigal is the internationally acclaimed game designer and author, most recently of "SuperBetter: A Revolutionary Approach to Getting Stronger,...
Danielle Keats Citron and Brianna Wu: "Hate Crimes In Cyberspace"
05 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Keats Citron is Lois K. Macht Research Professor of Law at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. Brianna Wu is Head o...
Ryan Cordell: “Melville in the First Age of Viral Media”
02 May 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Ryan Cordell, co-director of the Viral Texts project, speaks about his work uncovering pieces that “went viral” in nineteenth-century newspapers a...
Thomas DeFrantz: "Queer Social Dance, Political Leadership, and Black Popular Culture"
23 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Co-sponsored with both MIT Global Studies and Languages and Women’s and Gender Studies.) 21st century popular culture, circulated by media, enable...
The Spooky Science of the Southern Reach: An Evening with Jeff VanderMeer
19 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff VanderMeer, author of the New York Times bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), joins G. Eric Schaller, Pr...
Kevin Driscoll, "Re-Calling The Modem World: The Dial-Up History Of Social Media"
08 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
For fifteen years before the graphical Web, thousands of personal computer owners encountered the pleasures, promises, and challenges of online commun...
George Yúdice: "Cultural Studies and the Expediency of Culture, Rethought"
02 Apr 2015
Contributed by Lukas
George Yúdice‘s The Expediency of Culture (2003) repositioned culture in connection with governmentality and biopower. The full force of social med...
Kristin Cashore and Kenneth Kidd, "Coming of Age in Dystopia: The Darkness of Young Adult Fiction"
22 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Why are brutal dystopias, devastating apocalyptic visions, and tales of personal trauma such a staple of young adult literature? Kristin Cashore, auth...
Coco Fusco, "Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba"
12 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Coco Fusco‘s Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba is a study of the role of corporeal expressivity in development of social criticism i...
Catherine E. Clark: "Media And Memory At The Vidéothèque De Paris"
06 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The Vidéothèque de Paris, a moving image archive of the French capital, opened in 1988, during a period when French technological advances led the w...
Women in Science
01 Mar 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Computational geneticist Pardis Sabeti and energy studies expert Jessika Trancik will discuss their careers and the outlook for women in science in th...
Bobbie Chase and Marjorie Liu: "The State Of The Comic Book Medium"
09 Feb 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Bobbie Chase, Editorial Director of DC Comics, and comic book writer Marjorie Liu (Monstress, Astonishing X-Men, Black Widow) discuss the current and ...
Making Computing Strange: Cultural Analytics And Phantasmal Media
04 Dec 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Lev Manovich, the author of the seminal The Language of New Media, MIT’s Fox Harrell, who recently published Phantasmal Media: An Approach to Imagin...
Paul Levitz, in Conversation With Junot Diaz
12 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Levitz is a comic fan (The Comic Reader), editor (Batman, among many titles), writer (Legion of Super-Heroes, including two NY Times Best Sellers...
Book release for "Out of the Shadows, Into the Streets"
05 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
A presentation by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Assistant Professor of Civic Media in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing Department at MIT, on his new book...
Ultimate Truths: Comparing Science and The Humanities
04 Nov 2014
Contributed by Lukas
This Communications Forum special event will explore the differences and similarities in the kinds of knowledge available through inquiry in the scien...
CMS Alumni Panel
21 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Three Comparative Media Studies alums -- Sam Ford, Rekha Murthy, and Parmesh Shahani -- return to discuss their post-graduate lives. Sam Ford is Dire...
Doris Sommer: "Welcome Back, To The Humanities As Civic Engagement"
14 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Doris Sommer’s new book, The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities, revives the collaboration between aesthetic philosophy an...
Documentaries, Journalism, And The Future Of Reality-Based Storytelling
12 Oct 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Documentary and journalism have a complicated relationship. They share commitments to reality-based storytelling, yet have distinctive legacies and in...
Caetlin Benson-Allott: "What Remote Controls Can Teach Us About The Nature Of Control"
24 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
How does an object set the limits for human experiences of will and subjecthood? How does an interface temper our desires for interactivity or interve...
Philip Napoli, "Media Impact Assessment and Beyond"
17 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, a variety of funders have begun to invest substantially in efforts to assess the impact of media initiatives such as documentary film...
Sinan Aral, "Social Influence And The Dynamics Of Online Reputation"
11 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Identity and reputation drive some of the most important decisions we make online: Who to follow or link to, whose information to trust, whose opinion...
Eduardo Marisca on Peru and the Creative Industries Prototyping Lab
26 Jun 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Transcript: http://cmsw.mit.edu/eduardo-marisca-peru-creative-industries-prototyping-lab/
Philip Jones: "Gaming In Color"
08 May 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Discussion of "Gaming in Color", a full length documentary of the story of the queer gaming community, gaymer culture and events, and the rise of LGBT...
Tarleton Gillespie: “Algorithms, and the Production of Calculated Publics”
30 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Algorithms may now be our most important knowledge technologies, “the scientific instruments of a society at large,” (Gitelman) and they are incre...
Online Annotation and the Future of Reading
29 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Using the tools of online textual annotation -- the platform Rap Genius, its spinoff site Poetry Genius, or MIT's own Annotation Studio -- readers can...
Susan Murray, "Defining and Managing Electronic Color in the Post-War Era"
14 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
The standardization of color television in the US during the postwar era was, in large part, discussed and determined in relation to historical develo...
Science In Fiction
06 Apr 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Hanya Yanagihara’s first book, the widely celebrated The People In The Trees, is loosely based on the life and work of Nobel Prize-winner physician ...
Barry Werth, "The Antidote: Reporting From Inside The World Of Big Pharma"
19 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist and author Barry Werth has been writing about the business and practice of the pharmaceutical industry for more than two decades. The Billi...
Helen Nissenbaum: "Resisting Data's Tyranny With Obfuscation"
08 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Against inexorable machinations of data surveillance, analysis, and profiling, data obfuscation holds promise of relief. Whether it can withstand coun...
Henry Jenkins Returns
08 Mar 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Legendary former MIT professor and housemaster Henry Jenkins, now the Provost’s Professor of Communications, Journalism, Cinematic Arts and Educatio...
Miguel Sicart: “Playing in the Age of Computing Machinery"
12 Feb 2014
Contributed by Lukas
We live in the era of computation and play. Everywhere we look, there is a computer, translating the world around us into patterns for production of l...
Toni Morrison and Junot Díaz at the New York Public Library
13 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Courtesy of The New York Public Library. www.nypl.org Re-use is subject to the New York Public Library's non-commercial use permissions: http://ww...
Long-Form Journalism: Inside The Atlantic
06 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Some have called long-form journalism an endangered species. But ground-breaking articles requiring months of research and writing continue to appear....
MIT Alumni In The Game Industry
03 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
MIT Students: Are you curious about how to get a job in the game industry as an MIT graduate? What kind of jobs can MIT prepare you for? What should y...
Mary Flanagan, "The Unanticipated Processes And Consequences Underlying Games"
20 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Mary Flanagan pushes the boundaries of medium and genre across writing, visual arts, and design to innovate in these fields with a critical play cente...
Sonia Livingstone, "The Class: Living And Learning In The Digital Age"
11 Nov 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Sonia Livingstone is a full professor in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is seconded...
Todd Harper, "Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: The Culture Of Fighting Games"
29 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The culture of fighting games — digital games of competitive martial arts-style combat—is one of the most interesting and contentious of gamer sub...
Coco Fusco, "A Performance Approach To Primate Politics"
23 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco will consider the critical responses to the original Planet of the Apes films, focusing ...
Zeynep Tufekci, "The Boom-Bust Cycle Of Social Media-Fueled Protests"
17 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Social media-fueled protests in many countries have surprised observers with their seemingly spontaneous, combustible power. Yet, many have fizzled ou...
John Palfrey, "Born Digital"
10 Oct 2013
Contributed by Lukas
How is the generation born in the digital age different from its analog ancestors? Are those born digital likely to have different notions of privacy,...
Ethan Zuckerman, "Digital Cosmopolitanism And Cognitive Diversity"
27 Sep 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Liveblog text: http://cmsw.mit.edu/liveblog-ethan-zuckerman-digital-cosmopolitanism-cognitive-diversity/ New media technologies have sharply increa...