News/Research

BCNM Around the Web September 2021

25 Sep, 2021

BCNM Around the Web September 2021

Check out the amazing work of our faculty, students, and alumni around the web this September!

Edgar Fabían Frías

Edgar was featured in the art exhibit co-curated by Alan Luna and Julie Choo titled, AND WE WILL SING IN THE TALL GRASS AGAIN: postcolonial futurities at the end of gender.

From the event description:

‘AND WE WILL SING IN THE TALL GRASS AGAIN: postcolonial futurities at the end of gender,’ is an exhibition exploring how we can encounter new worlds which exist beyond the colonial mentalities that regulate us to this day. “AND WE WILL SING…’ proposes a queer counter-narrative that conjures portals towards decolonial futures, gender apocalypse, and first and foremost, a glimpse at the possibilities beyond borders / binaries.

Learn more about the event here!

Ra Malika Imhotep

Ra Malika joined a conversation with Tina Campt in celebration of Charis Books' A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See. In A Black Gaze, Tina Campt examines Black Contemporary artists who are shifting th very nature of our interactions with the visual through their creation and curation of a distinctly Black gaze. This event was co-hosted by the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.

From the event description:

From Deana Lawson's disarmingly intimate portraits to Arthur Jafa's videos of the everyday beauty and grit of the Black experience, from Khalil Joseph's films and Dawoud Bey's photographs to the embodied and multimedia artistic practice by Okwui Okpakwasili, Simone Leigh, and Luke Willis Thompson--their work requires viewers to do more than simply look; it solicits visceral responses to the visualization of Black precarity.

Campt shows that this new way of seeing shifts viewers from the passive optics of looking at to the active struggle of looking with, through, and alongside the suffering--and joy--of Black life in the present. The artists whose work Campt explores challenge the fundamental disparity that defines the dominant viewing practice: the notion that Blackness is the elsewhere (or nowhere) of whiteness. These artists create images that flow, that resuscitate and revalue the historical and contemporary archive of Black life in radical ways. Writing with rigor and passion, Campt describes the creativity, ingenuity, cunning, and courage that is the modus operandi of a Black gaze.

Learn more about the event here!

Jacob Gaboury

Jacob took part in a panel presentation titled, Making Computer Graphics History Public that featured his recently published work, Image Objects. The event included two other works, A Biography of the Pixel by Alvy Ray Smith and SIGGRAPH @50 History by Mary Whitton, Adele Newton, and Dave Kasik.

From the event description:

This panel concentrates on publications in diverse formats, mainly books and video documentaries that make public the research about the history of computer graphics and interactive techniques. Both of the books presented have been published recently, making this a unique opportunity to listen to the authors.

Description of Image Objects by Jacob Gaboury:

Abstract: This talk will introduce my new book on the early history of computer graphics titled Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021). The book explores the important role that computer graphics played in the development of computer science in the second half of the twentieth century, with a focus on the archives and historical collections of the research program at the University of Utah from roughly 1965-1980. Adopting an “object-oriented” approach, I explore five technologies produced by Utah faculty and alumni that fundamentally reshaped the field of computer science and helped to transform the computer from a calculating machine into an interactive medium.

Learn more about the event here!

Jacob was also featured on KPVI National News to discuss the history of computer graphics with first of its kind program.

Learn more about that here!

Hannah Zeavin

Hannah recently took part in an event titled The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy.Gray Area and City Lights Booksellers present author and scholar Hannah Zeavin in conversation with Professor Fred Turner, celebrating the laung of Hannah Zeavin's new book The Distance Cure: A History of Telepathy published by MIT Press.

From the event description:

The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy looks at psychotherapy across distance and time, from Freud's treatments by mail to crisis hotlines, radio call-ins, chatbots, and Zoom sessions.

Therapy has long understood itself as taking place in a room, with two (or more) people engaged in person-to-person conversation. And yet, starting with Freud's treatments by mail, psychotherapy has operated through multiple communication technologies and media. These have included advice columns, radio broadcasts, crisis hotlines, video, personal computers, and mobile phones; the therapists (broadly defined) can be professional or untrained, strangers or chatbots. In The Distance Cure, Hannah Zeavin proposes a reconfiguration of the traditional therapeutic dyad of therapist and patient as a triad: therapist, patient, and communication technology.

Learn more about the event here!

Hannah also joined conversation with Dr. Orna Guralnik in a virtual event to discuss her work and "psychotherapy across distance and time, from Freud's treatments by mail to crisis hotlines, radio call-ins, chatbots, and Zoom sessions".

From the event description:

Zeavin tracks the history of teletherapy (understood as a therapeutic interaction over distance) and its metamorphosis from a model of cure to one of contingent help. She describes its initial use in ongoing care, its role in crisis intervention and symptom management, and our pandemic-mandated reliance on regular Zoom sessions. Her account of the “distanced intimacy” of the therapeutic relationship offers a powerful rejoinder to the notion that contact across distance (or screens) is always less useful, or useless, to the person seeking therapeutic treatment or connection. At the same time, these modes of care can quickly become a backdoor for surveillance and disrupt ethical standards important to the therapeutic relationship. The history of the conventional therapeutic scenario cannot be told in isolation from its shadow form, teletherapy. Therapy, Zeavin tells us, was never just a “talking cure”; it has always been a communication cure.

Learn more about the event here!

Hannah was also featured on InsideHook's article The 10 New Books You Should Be Reading This August: From visions of the future to an inside look at a soccer giant.

From the article:

In the last year and a half, plenty of people have experienced the world of virtual therapy. But teletherapy has a long history that predates Zoom being ubiquitous, and Hannah Zeavin’s new book The Distance Cure offers a comprehensive look at that history. Technology and mental health have a long shared history, and this helps put that into perspective.

Read the entire article here!

Jane McGonigal

Jane's work titled Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World was featured in Techgenyz's article Books for Gamers You Must Add to the Reading List.

Summary of her book:

With 174 million gamers in the United States alone, we now live in a world where every generation will be a gamer generation. But why, Jane McGonigal asks, should games be used for escapist entertainment alone? In this groundbreaking book, she shows how we can leverage the power of games to fix what is wrong with the real world-from social problems like depression and obesity to global issues like poverty and climate change-and introduces us to cutting-edge games that are already changing the business, education, and nonprofit worlds. Written for gamers and non-gamers alike, Reality Is Broken shows that the future will belong to those who can understand, design, and play games.

Read the entire article here!

Jen Schradie

Jen participated in American Sociological Association's 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting that invites sessions to highlight scholarly books of interest to sociologists.

From the event description:

The Revolution That Wasn't: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives
(Session Organizer) Jennifer Carlson, University of Arizona; (Author) Jen Schradie, Sciences Po - Paris; (Moderator) Jennifer Carlson, University of Arizona; (Panelist) Brayden G. King, Northwestern University; (Panelist) Christopher A. Bail, Duke University; (Panelist) Alex Hanna, Google

Learn more about the Virtual Annual Meeting here!