Graduate Media Studies Colloquia

Graduate Media Studies at Queens College convenes regular colloquia to engage colleagues and outside practitioners in conversations about their work, research and scholarship.

Unless noted, all colloquia take place on Wednesdays from 5:30-6:20pm in G Building, Room 200 and are open to the entire CUNY community.

Spring 2017

Skateboards, Data, Design (February 1)

Headshot of Danne Woo Danne Woo is an interactive designer, entrepreneur, educator, skateboard enthusiast and composer. His work in technology and design focuses on data driven projects, musical innovation, alternative energy and large crowd interactions. His projects have been featured on a number of blogs and magazines including Fast Company, The Guardian, Engadget, Gizmodo, The Verge, CNet and Make Magazine.

Lethal Robotics and Human Rights (February 8)

Headshot of Peter Asaro Peter Asaro is a philosopher of science, technology and media. His work examines artificial intelligence and robotics as a form of digital media, and the ways in which technology mediates social relations and shapes our experience of the world. His research focuses on the social, cultural, political, legal and ethical dimensions of military robotics and UAV drones.

NSK State and Virtual Citizenship (February 22)

Headshot of Charles Lewis Charles Lewis is the NY Diplomat for the NSK, a utopian state and activist art project asking, what is the experience of a state that is not based on territory but on time? In 1992, under different historical circumstances but with political resonance to the contemporary moment, the Slovenian art collective NSK transformed into a national apparatus called the State in Time. Although it does not hold any permanent territory, the State in Time is the virtual home to over 15,000 citizens worldwide, many of them artists. The State issues passports and offers citizens rights of participation, provoking open-ended actions of the citizens as they work out self-constitution, currency, education systems, founding myths, military, production of folk culture, and other state functions.

Using Storytelling to Advance Justice (March 1)

Headshot of Alnoor Ladha Alnoor Ladha’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking, storytelling, technology and the decentralization of power. He is a founding member and the Executive Director of The Rules (/TR), a global network dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality, climate change and poverty around the world. He sits on the boards of both Greenpeace and the P2P Foundation.

The History and Theory of Tech Development (March 8)

Headshot of Caroline Jack Caroline Jack is a media historian and media theorist working at the intersection of business history, history of technology, and digital media studies. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Data + Society Research Institute, a non-profit research institute in NYC that focuses on the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric technological development.

Cyber Racism (March 15)

Headshot of Jessie Daniels Jessie Daniels is a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center. She is the author of two books: Cyber Racism (2009) and White Lies (1997), and the forthcoming books, Going Public (with Arlene Stein), and Being a Scholar in the Digital Era (with Polly Thisthlethwaite). Her work operates at the intersection of scholarship and activism.

The Technological Languages of Control (March 22)

Headshot of Marty Lucas Marty Lucas is an artist and media activist whose work explores the links of the technological with languages of control and forms of resistance. As a member of the Paper Tiger Television Collective, Martin was one of the producers of The Gulf Crisis Television Project in 1991. Recently, Martin has worked with Story Workshop in Malawi, Southern Africa, helping to develop productions around gender violence, food security, and AIDS.

Labor and Media (March 29)

A black and white drawing of a building. Paula Finn has worked for over two decades with the labor movement, and currently serves as editor of the journal New Labor Forum, published by CUNY’s Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. She directs the Institute’s Center for Labor, Community, and Policy Studies. In addition to her work in the labor movement, Finn is also a poet, who’s book-length collection of poems, The Weight of Water, was a semi-finalist for the 2015 Philip Levine Poetry Prize.

Aesthetics and Social Change (April 19)

Headshot of Brooke Belisle Brooke Belisle researches and teaches the history and theory of photography, cinema, and digital media. Her work focuses on the recurrent disruptions and possibilities of “new media,” exploring emergent formats and experimental practices that echo across different historical periods of technological and social transformation. She directs the Stony Brook working group in Media, Art, Culture, and Technology and is an editor of the Journal of Visual Culture.