J Michael Straczynski: The Julius Schwartz Lecture MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2026-09-23 | J Michael Straczynski: The Julius Schwartz Lecture
Cherished Moments: Our lives in MITs Old Female Dorm by Nilofar Ghafory MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | "Little joyful moments here and there, chatting with friends and realizing all the joy our dorm brings to us."
A Day in the Life by Yohance Lewis MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | "I am taking a walk through my day. We cut between various scenes of me doing my regular day to day activities."
Dichotomy by Noura Tamim MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | This film consists of multiple shots that contrast life in Egypt and the USA through distinct color palettes and everyday sounds.
The Data Activism Program: Empowering High School Students to Challenge Systemic Racism MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | By Raechel Walker. "The Data Activism Program empowers students to use data science to tackle systemic inequities in their communities. Through real-world projects with community organizations, youth and community partners collaborate to address AI surveillance, environmental injustice, healthcare disparities, and more."
What is MIT? by Aleksandra Kaminska MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | "This video answers the question 'What is MIT?' from my own personal experiences over the past couple of years. It is a sneak peek into my life and some of the amazing opportunities I have had here. It is a love poem to the institute."
Robot Dog, So Cold, So Warm by Scott Schaeffer MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | In this experimental music video, an MIT List Center employee comes up with an idea for an invention that he believes will change everything at MIT. It gets rejected, but he still spreads a bunch of joy around campus and continues to dance in the galleries every day for over a year, formerly in secret.
MIT Arcturus by Servando Avalos MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | We are MIT's autonomous marine robotics team, Arcturus. This year, we are competing in the RoboBoat 2025 competition in Sarasota, FL with our new flagship boat Fish N' Ships.
Infinite Confusion by Dana Riechman MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | Stella, a new MIT grad student, tries to find her way around campus. A humorous take on the difficulty of navigating MIT’s building numbers.
MIT Kids by Tony Eng MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-04-18 | MIT is full of faculty, staff, and students, but there are kids too! This is MIT from the eyes of two elementary school-aged sisters.
MIT in 3 2025! Submission deadline extended to March 10 MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2025-03-05 | What is your MIT? And can you show it in 3 minutes?
MITERS: Dubious Electric Vehicles on Ice by Dane Kouttron MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | The MIT Electronic Research Society [MITERS] voyages north to a frozen pond to test out their various, somewhat dubious electric vehicles. Between diagnosing electrical faults, club members travel at high speeds in the fresh open tundra landscape. Gluten free waffles and good cheer were shared by all.
Cine-GuerrilleroZ by Albert Figurt MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | During IAP '24 I held a 2-day workshop on "Guerrilla Filmmaking." In between the two sessions - full of excitement and anticipation - I got creatively insomniac. Here's the result of that quick 'n' dirty nocturnal impromptu.
mocha.mov by Jessica Ding MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | Dance is a huge part of many MIT student experiences. This video showcases the hard work and friendship it takes for one dance team to train, compete, and perform on stages around New England.
Exploring MIT Through the Eyes of ODL’s Fellows by Ambar Reyes MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | Exploring MIT Through the Eyes of ODL’s Fellows by Ambar Reyes - 49237The MIT Open Documentary Lab brings together storytellers, technologists, and scholars to explore innovative documentary formats, emphasizing collective, interactive, and immersive storytelling. From all over the world, MIT Fellows gather for the first time on campus.
Circulation: A Day in the Life of Library Books by Rebekah Oden MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | Follow the journey of MIT library books as they're requested, taken off the shelves, shipped from place to place, and finally checked out to patrons.
WITNESS by Ronald Alvarez MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | A day in the life of my Parcero [Partner]. Filmed by Rōnin.
MIT Caving Club Investigating Rocks, Ice, and Caves by Katrina Jander MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | MIT Caving Club gets to the bottom of what's going on with all these rocks, ice, and caves in Vermont. We walk around in the woods and climb down into some icy winter caves!
Doug³ by Adric Giles MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | A facilities worker named Doug is tasked with clearing a storage space in the basement of an MIT building. In the basement, Doug encounters something very strange...
We Are Arcturus by Servando Avalos MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | We are MIT Arcturus, MIT's autonomous robotics team. This is a collection of the values we possess as an MIT build team.
Ceilings at MIT by Erin Hovendon MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2024-04-18 | Music video incorporating scenes from around MIT set to the song "Ceilings" by Lizzy McAlpine (somewhat a parody of the original). Created by the sophomores on MIT's Varsity Cross Country team to display the various ways we have fun and mess around at a difficult school.
Pomegranate reading and discussion, with the books author Helen Elaine Lee MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-10-04 | The acclaimed author of "The Serpent’s Gift", Helen Elaine Lee, returns with this poetic and powerful journey of healing and autonomy.About the BookAs she wraps up her four-year sentence for opiate possession at Oak Hills Correctional Center, Ranita Atwater is determined to stay clean and regain custody of her two children from the aunts who have been raising them. Leaving behind her lover Maxine, who has helped to awaken and inspire her, she must face a world of temptations, confront the wounds that refuse to stay buried, and honor the body that has seldom felt like it belongs to her.As novelist Jennifer Haigh has said, “Ranita’s journey out of addiction and incarceration and early trauma, her daily struggle to live a life as large as her spirit, is a remarkable feat of literary conjuration. This is what novels are for.”
MIT Field Report - by Iris Zeng MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-11 | Series of videos depicting the ongoing actions on lands and buildings of MIT. Gleaning on the leftover of the construction, the act of cleaning up, and visual experience of framing construction sites as compositions.Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
An Old Technique - by Jade Chongsathapornpong MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-11 | "A chat about what brought me to MIT's Technique, where the club currently stands, and my hopes for the future."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Train Connect Assemble Extract - by Max Frischknecht MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-11 | "Inspired by the lecture of Kate Crawford at MIT in February 2023, and her book 'The Atlas of AI', the video zooms out and tries to visualize the human realities that underpin the work we do at MIT. I asked Dall-E, the deep learning model of OpenAI, how it would imagine this labor that is so fundamental to its own existence. The images created by Dall-E let us see the invisible reality of human labor without which neither the artificial intelligence nor the underlying work would exist."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
At What Cost - by Kidist Adamu MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-11 | "Nicole, the current Political Action Co-chair of the MIT Black Student Union shares her advocacy efforts and the administration's lack of real support. Though her involvement can take a negative toll, she underscores the necessity of it. She serves as an example of the additional onerous labor students of color often perform to simply exist safely and equally as MIT students."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Stata Center 4th Floor R&D Pub - by Karyn Nakamura MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-10 | "Frankenstein video organism made of MIT ewaste takes over abandoned R&D Pub in Stata Center."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Lupe Fiasco and Carl Holt - The Coldest Cuts MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-10 | Two MIT officemates.Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
A Day in the Life, an MIT Dogumentary - by Paula Aguilera MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-10 | "A day in the life of an MIT dog."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Banana Lounge - by Sabrina Hu MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-10 | "The Banana Lounge is a place for students run by students. It's open 24/7 and people can grab a banana, grab a drink, take a nap, or get some work done. It's highly likely that you'll run into a friend there!"Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Welcome to Arcturus - by Audrey Chen MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2023-04-10 | Winner of the MIT in 3:00 Audience Award."This film takes you to the MIT Sea Grant, where MIT Arcturus works on our autonomous robots! From self-driving boats to submarines, we love marine robots and hope you will too."Submitted as part of MIT in 3:00, a competition to show "your MIT" in less than three minutes. You can watch all the submissions: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp0shVgbry7N8ogkhJ6KQRlDjMEdoO4sp
Lupe Fiasco presents “Rap Theory & Practice: an Introduction” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-12-06 | An exploration into the underlying fundamental functions, structures, and principles of rap via a one-night introduction to Lupe Fiasco's semester-long MIT class. We thank all the attendees who braved the evening's expected tropical storm!Wasalu Jaco, professionally known as Lupe Fiasco, is a Chicago-born, Grammy award-winning American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and community advocate. Rising to fame in 2006, following the success of his debut album Food & Liquor, Lupe has released eight acclaimed studio albums, his latest being Drill Music In Zion, released in June 2022. His efforts to propagate conscious material garnered recognition as a Henry Crown Fellow, and he is a recipient of an MLK Visiting Professorship at MIT for the 2022/2023 academic year.
The forensic citizen: Learning from the past, preparing for the future MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-10-21 | William Uricchio is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, which brings together storytellers, technologists, and scholars to experiment with new documentary.
Moving images in absentia: Courtroom looking in the age of hyper-mediation MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-10-21 | Kelli Moore is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University who examines how media and technology produce legal and political knowledge to inform public debates on visual literacy, race, and other issues.
The long & ambiguous (pre)history of audiovisual in the Black experience MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-10-21 | Full title: “Between freedom & oppression: The long & ambiguous (pre)history of audiovisual in the Black experience”Featuring Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Ekene Mekwunye, Jepchumba, and Russel Hlongwane.Chakanetsa Mavhunga is Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mavhunga explores international history, theory, and practice of science, technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, with a focus on Africa.Ekene Mekwunye is adjunct faculty at the School of Media and Communication, Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos, Nigeria, and an award-winning filmmaker, television producer-director, and photographer.Jepchumba is Founder and Creative Director of African Digital Art, a collective and creative space where digital artists seek inspiration, showcase their work, and connect with emerging artists.Russel Hlongwane is a cultural producer, curator of the arts, and creative industries consultant based in Durban, South Africa. His work bridges themes of heritage, modernity, culture, and tradition across artistic disciplines.
Resilient witnessing in the face of human rights abuses, distrust, and deepfakes MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-10-21 | Sam Gregory is Director of Programs, Strategy & Innovation at WITNESS, which helps people use video and technology to protect human rights; studies relationship between emergent technologies, disinformation, media manipulation, & authoritarianism.
The whole world is watching: How 1968 helps us frame the present MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-10-21 | Professor Heather Hendershot's opening plenary from the "Bearing Witness, Seeking Justice" conference, with initial remarks by Dean Agustín Rayo and Tracie Jones, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.Hendershot is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT. She studies television news, conservative media, political movements, and American film and television history. Her 2022 book is "When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America", available from the University of Chicago Press: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo183630531.html
Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner, “Seeing Silicon Valley” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-05-06 | Acclaimed photographer Mary Beth Meehan and Silicon Valley historian and media scholar Fred Turner discuss their recently published and award-winning book Seeing Silicon Valley: Life inside a Fraying America, a collaborative exploration of the culture of Silicon Valley — not the culture of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg that we see in the press, but the lives of the men and women who inhabit the Valley and make it work. If Silicon Valley is building the world’s future, Meehan and Turner argue, then we must learn to see through the tech industry’s marketing campaigns. We need to see the kind of society the tech industry is actually creating, in its own back yard.Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, he taught Communication at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He also worked for ten years as a journalist. He has written for newspapers and magazines ranging from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine to Harper’s.Mary Beth Meehan is an independent photographer, writer, and educator, who has spent more than twenty years embedding herself in communities across the United States. Beginning in her native New England, and continuing in the Midwest, the American South and in Silicon Valley, her work, which combines image, text, and large-scale public installation, stems from her belief in a collaborative process that should function in and for the communities it reflects. Co-opting the scale of celebrity and advertising, Meehan’s portrait banners activate public spaces and spark conversations among and about the people who inhabit them.
Tomás Guarna, Trust Machines: Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains, and Humans In Cultures of Mistrust MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-27 | ...
Video: Charles North, The William Corbett Poetry Series MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-21 | Charles North has published twelve books of poems, three books of critical prose, and collaborations with artists and other poets. With James Schuyler, he edited the poet/painter anthologies Broadway and Broadway 2. His New and Selected Poems What It Is Like (2011) headed NPR’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, and he has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, four Fund for Poetry Awards, and a Poets Foundation Award. He lives with his wife, the painter Paula North, in New York City.
JJ Otto-Hawke, Artifacts of Worldbuilding in Experiential Legacy Games MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-17 | Full title: "Creation Through Destruction: Artifacts of Worldbuilding in Experiential Legacy Games"Email: jjotto@mit.eduLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/j-j-otto/
Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-15 | In her 2021 book Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve Freedom of Speech, our guest Martha Minow “outlines an array of reforms, including a new fairness doctrine, regulating digital platforms as public utilities, using antitrust authority to regulate the media, policing fraud, and more robust funding of public media. As she stresses, such reforms are not merely plausible ideas; they are the kinds of initiatives needed if the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press continues to hold meaning in the twenty-first century.”Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School, where she also served as Dean, since 1981. In addition to Saving the News, she is author of When Should Law Forgive? (2019), In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (2010), among many other books and articles. She is an expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about digital communications, democracy, privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.Heather Hendershot is Professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT and studies TV news, conservative media, political movements, and American film and television history. She is author of the forthcoming book When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America, which follows her 2016 title Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line. She has held fellowships at Vassar College, New York University, Princeton, Harvard, Radcliffe, and Stanford, and she has also been a Guggenheim fellow. Her courses emphasize the interplay between creative, political, and regulatory concerns and how those concerns affect what we see on the screen.
Marvez, Controversial Science Argumentation Skills for Teachers MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-14 | Full title: "Controversial Science Argumentation Skills for Teachers in the Digital Clinical Simulation Discussion Leader"
Emily Grandjean, Networked Foraging and Infrastructural Media in the United States MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-14 | Full title: "Bodies, Land, & Instagram: Networked Foraging and Infrastructural Media in the United States"
Oscar Winberg, “Archie Bunker Goes to Washington” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-11 | Full title: “Archie Bunker Goes to Washington: How Television in the 1970s Remade Politics into Entertainment”This talk reconsiders the role of television entertainment in American political life in the 1970s and beyond. Focusing on the situation comedy All in the Family (CBS, 1971-1979), the talk looks at a turn to politics in entertainment and a turn to entertainment in politics. In the 1970s, fictive characters, including Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Connor) and Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) of All in the Family but also Hawkeye Pierce (played by Alan Alda) of MAS*H and Mary Richards (played by Mary Tyler Moore) of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, became political icons. Produced by Norman Lear, All in the Family is recognized as a watershed moment in television history. And yet, Oscar Winberg argues, the show did not just change television, it transformed American politics. Recognizing the popularity of television, politicians learned how to use (and abuse) television entertainment to win votes, to fundraise, to promote their agenda, and to push for legislation. Television entertainment in the 1970s thereby remade political life in its image, paving the way for our current moment of mediated showbiz politics.Oscar Winberg holds a Ph.D. in History from Åbo Akademi University. He is working on a political history of television entertainment in the 1970s United States. His work focuses on mass media in modern political history and has appeared in PS: Political Science & Politics, European Journal of American Studies, and Finsk Tidskrift. He is a columnist for Hufvudstadsbladet and has written for venues such as Made by History at the Washington Post, Vasabladet, and the public broadcasting corporation in Finland.
Jens Pohlmann, “Platform Regulation and the Digital Public Sphere: Germany and the United States” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-04-01 | In this talk, Jens Pohlmann compares the discourse about the regulation of social media platforms and its effect on freedom of expression in Germany and the United States. Drawing on computational methods, he analyzes the discussion about a German anti-hate speech law called the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) and the debate about a reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in the United States in different media environments (IT-blogs, newspapers, social media).Ultimately, he considers the extent to which cultural, historical, and political differences between these two liberal democracies inform the present transatlantic debate about the restriction of content online and the regulation of social media platforms, as well as potential impacts on the evolving digital public sphere.Jens Pohlmann is a Research Associate at the Centre for Media, Communication & Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2017 and focuses his research on the internet policy discourse in Germany and the United States. His first book, The Creation of an Avant-Garde Brand: Heiner Müller’s Self-Presentation in the German Public Sphere is to be published this fall.
William Corbett Poetry Series: “Our Ancestors Did Not Breathe This Air”, Six Muslim Women in STEM MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-03-31 | These six poets met as undergrads at MIT, brought together by the many things they shared: the challenges of being women in STEM, their lifelong pursuits of becoming better Muslims, and the exhaustion of drinking from the academic firehose. Through sharing their poetry, they want to foster empathy and mutual reciprocity for those who don’t often see someone like them within literary spaces. The poems they share at this reading focus on family, identity, and homeland—where they come from and how that shaped who they are now.The evening’s readers were introduced by Indran Amirthanayagam, who produced a “world record” in 2020 publishing three poetry collections written in three different languages. He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty two poetry books, including Isleño (R.I.L. Editores), Blue Window (translated by Jennifer Rathbun) (Diálogos Books), Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks.com), The Migrant States, Coconuts on Mars, The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. He edits the Beltway Poetry Quarterly (www.beltwaypoetry.com).** Readers:* Afeefah Khazi-Syed was born and raised in the DFW metroplex but has always called two places home: the suburbs of Texas and her grandparents’ homes in Southern India. After studying biological engineering with a minor in urban studies at MIT, Afeefah finds herself on a new journey as a first-year medical student at UT Southwestern.* Aleena Shabbir was born in Queens, New York and has lived in New York ever since. As a Pakistani-US-American, she cherishes connecting with a multitude of cultures, in addition to her own roots. Many years after the minor poetry lessons she had taken in elementary school, Aleena found a community with these fellow poets who have taught her how to express herself creatively and comfortably; she is forever grateful for them and their care.* Ayse Angela Guvenilir was born in Austin into a family with a Turkish father, a Venezuelan mother, and three older brothers. Growing up in Texas, France, and various parts of upstate New York, Ayse has always used reading and writing for connection, reflection, and relaxation as she moved from place to place. She sees poetry in particular as a form of writing that can surpass the bounds of what words are expected to be, in turn connecting her with others. Ayse got her bachelor’s degree in biological engineering with a minor in creative writing from MIT and is currently a master’s student in the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab. Through her work, Ayse aims to empathize, educate, and inspire, the way that the works of others have always done for her.* Maisha M. Prome was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and has moved back and forth between Bangladesh and the United States throughout her life. Maisha used to write poetry as a child growing up in New York City, but rediscovered it in college while taking classes for her writing minor. Aside from poetry, Maisha enjoys all things creative, from baking to crocheting to writing fiction. She has won awards for her short stories and hopes to continue writing alongside working in research and education. Maisha graduated from MIT with a degree in biological engineering. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in biological sciences at Yale University.* Mariam Eman Dogar was born in Singapore and has lived in Dubai and Massachusetts. Moving every few years, Mariam describes the closest thing to “home” as the intangible bridge she and her siblings occupy between the very different countries, cultures, and families of her US-American mother and Pakistani father. Mariam has loved writing since she was in elementary school, creating fictional worlds and characters in the back of her notebooks. However, she started writing poetry during her time as a biology major and urban planning minor at MIT. Poetry is now deeply connected to self-care and spirituality for Mariam while she is training to be a physician at Harvard Medical School.* Marwa Abdulhai was born in Chennai, India and has called many places home across the US and in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. She completed her bachelors and master’s studies in computer science at MIT, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in robotics and artificial intelligence at University of California, Berkeley. She is drawn to poetry for its oral tradition, and grew up hearing her Dada Saab recite the works of Muhammad Iqbal and Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi in their home in South India. Performing, writing, and listening to poetry allows her to connect with God and understand existence. It is her form of dawah to herself and the world.
Katherine Jewell, “Party City: WMBR, Institutional Change, and Democratic Media” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-03-11 | College radio has long been known as the weird, wacky signals on the left of the FM dial offering music that would never be mainstream. But this wasn’t always the case—and moreover, even at stations exemplifying musical adventurousness and the community potential of college signals, institutional constraints loomed. In this talk, Katherine Jewell delves into the history of WMBR at MIT from the 1960s to the 1980s to explore how this station, with a license held by an independent non-profit corporation, built a meaningful community institution despite transformations within the university, its student body and organizations, as well as regulatory changes regarding noncommercial radio and the music industry’s shifting business model. DJs debated and embraced the democratic obligations of their signal, particularly their commitment to diversity of sound. But achieving these lofty goals often proved complicated given the need to construct a program that appealed to and served many audiences in a fluctuating radio market. Despite these limits, college radio’s history can offer much to consider in considering how to pursue democratic media and community connection in the twenty-first century.Katherine Rye Jewell, Ph.D., is a historian writing about the history of college radio, including her forthcoming book, tentatively titled Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio from University of North Carolina Press. Her research on college radio is at the center of two additional book projects currently in progress. She is the author of Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century, published by Cambridge University Press (New York) in 2017. Her work has appeared in The American Historian, the Washington Post, among other scholarly publications. A graduate of Vanderbilt University (BA, 2001) and Boston University (MA, 2005; Ph.D., 2010), she studies the business and politics of culture. She is currently Associate Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, where she received the Fitchburg State University Faculty Research Award in 2018, and a year-long visiting fellowship from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.
David Thorburn: The William Corbett Poetry Series MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-03-03 | David Thorburn has been a teacher of literature for 57 years, 46 of them at MIT where he is Professor of Literature and Comparative Media and Director Emeritus of the MIT Communications Forum. Generations of MIT undergraduates have taken his lecture course, “The Film Experience,” which now reaches an international audience on YouTube. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in an old farmhouse in Randolph, New Jersey. He’s written a book on Joseph Conrad and many essays and reviews on literature and media. Knots is his first book of poetry.
Jorge Caraballo, “How to Use Audio Storytelling to Cultivate a Community and Keep it Engaged” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-02-18 | Podcasts are in a golden age and are being used to effectively communicate new ideas, tell compelling stories, and build highly participative communities. This presentation will explore the power of audio storytelling to connect individuals in engaged networks of collaboration. Jorge Caraballo (’22 Harvard Nieman Fellow) will draw from experience as the former Growth Editor at Radio Ambulante –Latin America’s most popular documentary podcast– and will highlight different ways in which storytelling can be the starting point of new collective identities.Jorge Caraballo is a journalist and a 2022 Harvard Nieman fellow. Before that, he worked for four years as the Growth Editor at Radio Ambulante –the most popular documentary podcast in Spanish, and the only one in that language distributed by NPR. There he led online and offline engagement initiatives to grow the community around the podcast. He holds a master’s degree in Media Innovation at Northeastern University. He’s a Fulbright Scholar and a Google News Initiative Fellow.
Eric Freedman, “Non-Binary Binaries and Unreal MetaHumans” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing 2022-02-11 | Video game engines have promoted a new cultural economy for software production and have provided a common architecture for digital content creation across what were once distinct media verticals—film, television, video games and other immersive and interactive media forms that can leverage real-time 3D visualization. Game engines are the building blocks for efficient real-time visualization, and they signal quite forcefully the colonizing influence of programming. Video game engines are powering our visual futures, and engine developers that include Unity Technologies and Epic Games are rapidly iterating their products to tackle new markets, where data and visuality continue to converge. This analysis, which draws from software studies and studies of visual culture, examines a tool that is fairly new to the Epic Games arsenal—the in-development MetaHuman Creator that is part of Epic’s proprietary Unreal Engine. The MetaHuman Creator is a cloud-streamed application that draws from a library of real scans of people and allows 3D content developers to quickly create unique photorealistic fully-rigged digital humans. MetaHuman creation is a fluid of process, and the speedy transformation of character rigs and other non-binary attributes highlights the potential queerness or openness of data. Yet the ongoing push toward (hyper)realism in commercial media has birthed a visual economy which is supported by an industrial apparatus that privileges mastery over the tools of production, and where bodies and politics are often cleaved in the design process. Epic’s multiethnic, multiracial, transgender MetaHuman Creator is a design tool and not a narrative engine. Its transitions are simple and seamless, and the traces of non-binary and non-white identities are simply part of a larger color palette. These tools represent a way of seeing and knowing the world, and the representations they produce are part of hermetically-sealed and privately-held encoding processes that include a company’s original data, its application programming, its proprietary build environment and its interface. This analysis poses two interrelated questions. Are the MetaHuman Creator and similar simplified building tools democratizing the field of digital content creation? Are they fostering more diverse representations and narratives, and supporting the free play of identity in playable media?Eric Freedman is Professor and Dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago. He is the author most recently of The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture (2020), as well as Transient Images: Personal Media in Public Frameworks (2011). He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Creative Media Research and the advisory board of the Communication and Media Studies Research Network.
