Obermann
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This interdisciplinary research seminar will address issues of digital culture by examining histories of the social integration of previous new technologies and linking them to present conditions. Precedents for our own digital concerns might be found in technologies as recent as 30 or 100 years ago or as distant as the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, the invention of movable type and the Renaissance, or the invention of paper and Classical Antiquity. A distinctive focus on four inter-related fields of knowledge will provide important touchstones:
- audio-visual cultures' challenges or resistance to print
- cultures and politics of new information technologies
- perception and human experience
- the metaphysics of appearances and artifice
By focusing on historical models, each seminar participant will be able to contribute reflections on technology, ideology, and culture — past and present.
Participants
Lauren
Rabinovitz,
Seminar Director (Cinema and Comparative Literature, The
University of Iowa) Judith Babbitts
(Humanities and Behavioral and Social Sciences,
University of Maryland University College) Kenneth
Cmiel
(History, The University of Iowa) Scott Curtis (Radio/TV/Film,
Northwestern University) Ronald
E. Day (Library and Information Studies,
University of Oklahoma) David Depew
(Communication Studies/
Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry,
The University of Iowa) Sharon
Ghamari-Tabrizi (Independent Scholar) Lisa Gitelman
(English,
The Catholic University of America) Bernadette Longo (English, Clemson University) Laura
Rigal (English/American Studies,
The University of Iowa) Thomas
Swiss (English,
Drake University)
Funded by the C. Esco and Avalon L. Obermann Fund and by the Office of the Vice President for Research.