Media Studies Interruptions of STS - I

Abstract

How can media studies interrupt and regenerate the pursuits of science and technology studies? Media scholars working on the peripheries of STS have long expanded the focus of the former to include material infrastructures and medical technologies. Likewise, for STS scholars studying medical forms of imaging or biomaterial technologies, the question of media already matters implicitly. How might an explicit media studies angle on these investigations interrupt existing assumptions and conclusions?

There is, for instance, the emergent concern with bioprocesses in mediation and with theories of media attuned to the processual flow of life. Media objects such as climate change games and psychiatric films address issues central to STS; scholars thinking through these objects’ textual and technical features can regenerate the interdisciplinary discussions on such issues. Media studies remains invested in and cautious of the politics of representation, whether in virtual climate models or animal forms of perception. Environmental media studies press us to think of our research “archives” as extending to the natural world. The potential for scholarly inquiry at the intersection of both fields are numerous and ripe for innovative interventions.

Chair

• Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, University of Texas at Dallas

Individual Presentations

• Examining Ecologies in STS and Media Studies - Ned Prutzer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Epistemology of the Black Box: On Opacity and Visual Knowledge - Théo Lepage-Richer, Brown University

• Speculative Media and Epistemic Change - Katherine Buse, Dept of English / STS at UC Davis; Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, University of California Davis

• Orphic Media: Listening, Attention, and Non-Informatic Mediation - Mack Hagood, Miami University

Session Organizer

• Juan Llamas-Rodriguez, University of Texas at Dallas