David ParisiAssociate Professor of Emerging Media, College of Charleston Based on popular press accounts, 2018 has been the year when haptics technology finally hit it big: by featuring haptics tech prominently in its depiction of a fully embodied virtual reality, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One—an adaption of Ernst Cline’s 2011 novel of the same title—sparked … More 2018: The Year of Haptics? (Part I of II)
BY PATRICIA TICINETO CLOUGHProfessor of sociology and women’s studies at the Graduate Center and Queens College, City University of New York Following the publication of The User Unconscious, I had the occasion to revisit Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and found myself challenged to articulate the relevant differences between what is proposed in The User Unconscious … More Patricia Ticineto Clough: Why the cyborg can no longer be a figure of either politics or ontology.
In May 2018, students in Prof. Lorena Muñoz’s University of Minnesota graduate seminar “GWSS 8620: Geographies of Sexualities and Race: Economies, (Im)Migrations, and Borders” read and discussed David K. Seitz’s book, A House of Prayer for All People: Contesting Citizenship in a Queer Church. Prof. Muñoz’s seminar taught first monographs to help demystify the transition from … More On constitutive contradictions, LGBT citizenship, and the church.
BY JOHN HULTGRENBennington College Academics are typically tasked with giving complex accounts of complex situations. We specialize in stories of nuance, where power operates with such subtlety that its movement through the social body requires explaining and unmasking. Simple explanations are to be suspect, as are prescriptions for immediate action. There are moments, however, when … More Children. Before. Borders.
BY LISA DIEDRICHProfessor of women’s and gender studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook Next week, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will launch a major exhibition of the work of David Wojnarowicz, “History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” It notes that Wojnarowicz was “queer and HIV-positive” and an “impassioned … More On David Wojnarowicz, politics, and gestures.
BY KATE VIEIRAUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison I am not an expert on the effects of the forcible separation of children from their parents. I believe the experts. I believe the American Association of Pediatrics president who says that the policy, in that it affects children’s brain chemistry, causes irreparable harm. I believe the scholars of … More ¿Cómo Ubico Mis Hijos? (How do I locate my children?)
BY THOMAS BIOLSIUniversity of California, Berkeley How should we make sense of “red states” and “blue states,” and in a way that does not fall victim to the political polarization that seems to have reached a crescendo in the present? My new book, Power and Progress on the Prairie, seeks to uncover the history of … More Governing the countryside: On modernity and progress in rural South Dakota.
“Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.” —Aldous Huxley, Brave New World *** BY MICHAEL HAWORTH In 2016 Amazon introduced a new range of products called Dash Buttons. These are pocket-sized internet-enabled interfaces consisting simply of one button mapped to … More From Amazon’s Dash Button to Google Glass: Is there no limit to the capabilities of today’s radical neurotechnologies?
BY MICHAEL TYMKIWLecturer in art history at the University of Essex For many people, events such as the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, with its torchlight parade, eagle-emblazoned shields and Nazi flags, bring with them uncomfortable reminders of fascist visual culture from the 1920s to 1945. While individuals and organisations associated with the … More What Nazi exhibitions tell us about how the far right engages audiences today
BY NAOMI MORGENSTERNAssociate professor of English at the University of Toronto From a podium in Central Park West, a student activist from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School declared: “The adults failed us and now seventeen people are dead.” During a day of nationwide actions, a coalition of youth would point to the “failure” of adults … More The Child at the Social Limit
