Spring 2019 Shulman Lectures will focus on elemental media
“Elemental Media” is the theme of the spring 2019 Shulman Lectures in Science and the Humanities, sponsored by the Whitney Humanities Center (WHC).
The opening lecture, titled “The Saturation of Media,” will be given by Paul Frosh on Monday, Feb. 4. Other speakers in the series will include Paul Edwards, Feb. 25; Weihong Bao, March 4; and Lisa Parks, April 15.
All lectures take place at 5 p.m. in Rm. 208, WHC, 53 Wall St., and are free and open to the public.
Paul Frosh, ‘The Saturation of Media’
Frosh is a professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research spans visual culture, media aesthetics, consumer culture, media witnessing, and cultural memory. His books include “The Poetics of Digital Media,” “Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication” (edited with Amit Pinchevski), “Meeting the Enemy in the Living Room: Terrorism and Communication in the Contemporary Era” (edited with Tamar Liebes), and “The Image Factory: Consumer Culture, Photography, and the Visual Content Industry.”
Paul Edwards, ‘Truth Under Siege: Making Climate Knowledge in an Age of Transparency, Skepticism, and Science Denial’
Edwards is the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at Stanford University and professor of information and history (emeritus) at the University of Michigan. He writes and teaches about the history, politics, and culture of information infrastructures. Edwards is the author of “A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming” and “The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America,” and coeditor of “Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance,” as well as numerous articles.
Weihong Bao, ‘The Cloud of Doubt: Making Sense of the Sensible in Postwar Chinese Cinema’
Bao is associate professor of film and media and of East Asian languages and cultures at University of California-Berkeley. She has published widely on comparative media history and theory, early cinema, war and modernity, affect theory, propaganda theory and practice, and Chinese language cinema. Her book “Fiery Films: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in China, 1915-1945” received honorable mention for the Modernist Studies Association Best Book Prize. She is working on a new book, “Background Stories: The Discovery of Environment in Chinese Film and Theater,” which examines set design theory and practice in relation to the rise of environmental thinking from early to mid- 20th-century China.
Lisa Parks, title TBD
Parks is director of MIT’s Global Media Technologies and Cultures Lab. Her research focuses on satellite technologies and media cultures; critical studies of media infrastructures; and media, militarization, and surveillance. She is the author of “Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual,” “Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror,” and “Mixed Signals: Media Infrastructures and Cultural Geographies” (in progress), and coeditor of “Life in the Age of Drone Warfare,” and “Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructures,” among others. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, she is committed to exploring the global reach of information technology infrastructures and the cultural, political, and humanitarian implications of the flow of information.
The Shulman Lecture Series is organized in conjunction with a Yale College seminar taught by John Durham Peters, the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and professor of film and media studies.
The Shulman Lectures are presented under the auspices of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities, which is made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke. The series is named after Robert Shulman, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and senior research scientist in diagnostic radiology, in recognition of his roles as a founding fellow of the Whitney and as an unwavering supporter of the integration of science and the humanities.
For more information contact the Whitney Humanities Center at 203-432-0670 or email whitneyhumanitiescenter@yale.edu.
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Whitney Humanities Center: whitneyhumanitiescenter@yale.edu, 203-432-0670