The Effects of Media February 24, 2024 at 2:30PM Past Event Watch the video » What are the effects of media today? What exactly is “social” about social media? How do media shape reality? Are developments in AI changing media as we understand communications technologies? Sixty years ago, the Canadian Professor of English and Media, Marshall McLuhan published the unexpectedly popular volume Understanding Media (1964), which would go on to establish a vocabulary addressing these questions — a vocabulary and set of ideas that scholars continue to grapple with to this day. But the world of media has shifted radically since then, and with the advent of social media and artificial intelligence the idea that “the medium is the message” has taken on a kind of new urgency. This panel will address these questions, as well as those that deal with how we will define and experience media in the future. Participants: Daniel Czitrom Professor of History on the Ford Foundation, Mount Holyoke College Daniel Czitrom is Emeritus Professor of History on the Ford Foundation at Mount Holyoke College, where he taught for 41 years. He is the author most recently of New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era (Oxford, 2016; pb, 2018). Mike Wallace, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for… read more » Paula McDowell Professor of English, New York University Paula McDowell is Professor of English at New York University. She is the author of books and essays addressing “media effects” from the eighteenth century to today, including The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730 (Oxford) and The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century… read more » Erica Robles-Anderson Associate Professor of Media, Culture, & Communication, NYU Erica Robles-Anderson is an Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, a recipient of the 2023-24 Leonore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the editor-in-chief of Public Culture. Her research focuses on the role media technologies play in… read more » Anna Shechtman Klarman Fellow, Cornell University Anna Shechtman is a Klarman Fellow at Cornell University and will begin as an assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English in 2024. She is writing a two-volume history of the “media” and “data” concepts in the United States. The first book builds upon her dissertation, The Media Concept: A Genealogy, which demonstrates… read more » R. John WIlliams Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, at Yale University R. John Williams is an Associate Professor of English, Film and Media, at Yale University. His academic work has focused on international histories of Buddhism, technological innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. His book, The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (Yale University Press,… read more »
Daniel Czitrom Professor of History on the Ford Foundation, Mount Holyoke College Daniel Czitrom is Emeritus Professor of History on the Ford Foundation at Mount Holyoke College, where he taught for 41 years. He is the author most recently of New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched the Progressive Era (Oxford, 2016; pb, 2018). Mike Wallace, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for… read more »
Paula McDowell Professor of English, New York University Paula McDowell is Professor of English at New York University. She is the author of books and essays addressing “media effects” from the eighteenth century to today, including The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics, and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678-1730 (Oxford) and The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century… read more »
Erica Robles-Anderson Associate Professor of Media, Culture, & Communication, NYU Erica Robles-Anderson is an Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, a recipient of the 2023-24 Leonore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and the editor-in-chief of Public Culture. Her research focuses on the role media technologies play in… read more »
Anna Shechtman Klarman Fellow, Cornell University Anna Shechtman is a Klarman Fellow at Cornell University and will begin as an assistant professor in the Department of Literatures in English in 2024. She is writing a two-volume history of the “media” and “data” concepts in the United States. The first book builds upon her dissertation, The Media Concept: A Genealogy, which demonstrates… read more »
R. John WIlliams Associate Professor, English, Film and Media, at Yale University R. John Williams is an Associate Professor of English, Film and Media, at Yale University. His academic work has focused on international histories of Buddhism, technological innovation and the perceived difference of racial and cultural otherness. His book, The Buddha in the Machine: Art, Technology, and The Meeting of East and West (Yale University Press,… read more »