On Thursday, 1/25, from 5-7pm in the Terrace Room, MTL alumna Celine Shimizu (’01) will be returning to Stanford to give a presentation, “Crafting Oneself in Community: Theory, Practice, and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D.” Prof. Shimizu’s presentation will be followed by a conversation with Prof. Shane Denson, as well as a Q&A. Light food and refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend so that we have a rough headcount.
Prof. Shimizu is a film scholar and filmmaker, as well as Dean of the Division of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She wrote The Proximity of Other Skins (2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (2007) and co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (2018). Her new book The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian / America, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.
Her numerous peer-reviewed articles appear in top journals in the fields of cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies, and transnational popular culture in Asia and Asian America. She is formerly Associate Editor of Gay and Lesbian Quarterly (GLQ), founding USA editor of Asian Diasporas and Visual Cultures of the Americas and Associate Editor of Women Studies International Forum. Her latest film 80 Years Later (2022) screened in over 50 film festivals and won 15 awards including for best historical documentary and excellence in directing. Her previous film The Celine Archive (2020) won several festival awards and both are distributed by Women Make Movies and available on demand via wmm.com.
Recently, I announced an upcoming event featuring the Game Changer Lab Chicago, founded by Melissa Gilliam and Patrick Jagoda, as part of the new Critical Making Collaborative at Stanford. I am pleased now to announce another event featuring Patrick Jagoda, the following day, as part of my other new initiative this year at Stanford: the Intermediations series, which is dedicated to exploring the intersections of intermediality and interdisciplinarity.
On January 27, at 12pm in the Terrace Room of Margaret Jacks Hall, Professor Jagoda of the University of Chicago will be presenting on “Metagames and Media Aesthetics.” Please see below for an abstract and bio, and hope to see some of you there!
“Metagames and Media Aesthetics”
Broadly circulating humanistic terms such as “metafiction” (William H. Gass), “metapictures” (WJT Mitchell), and “metacomics” (M. Thomas Inge) point to heightened self-reflexivity within a medium or form. Particularly since the 2010s, we have seen an increased volume of “metagames” or games about games that include prominent independent game examples such as The Stanley Parable (2013),Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017), and There is No Game (2020). This presentation explores different theories and categories of metagames en route to the question of why metagames are so important to understanding our contemporary media ecology in 2023. Video games in general, and metagames in particular, call for an expanded sense of media aesthetics that exceed Roland Barthes’s earlier triumvirate of image, music, and text. This talk theorizes the videogame sensorium and its broader implications for media studies.
Bio:
Patrick Jagoda is the William Rainey Harper Professor of Cinema & Media Studies, English, and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Chicago. He is Executive Editor of Critical Inquiry and director of the Weston Game Lab, as well as co-founder of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab and Transmedia Story Lab. Patrick’s books include Network Aesthetics (2016), The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer (2016 with Michael Maizels), Experimental Games: Critique, Play, and Design in the Age of Gamification (2020), and Transmedia Stories: Narrative Methods for Public Health and Social Justice (2022 with Ireashia Bennett and Ashlyn Sparrow). He has also co-edited five special issues or edited volumes, and published over fifty essays and interviews. Patrick designs transmedia, digital and analog games, including the climate change alternate reality game Terrarium (2019), which received the 2020 IndieCade award for the best Location Based and Live Play Design. He is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship.
As the inaugural event of INTERMEDIATIONS, a new workshop and lecture series foregrounding issues of intermediality and interdisciplinarity, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen will be giving a talk titled “Adjusting to the Age of Automated Writing” on November 16, 2022 (4pm in the Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall room 426).
Abstract:
Writing was for at least six to seven thousand years a humanly hand-crafted product. Now we encounter several kinds of technologies that change the production of text profoundly. Chatbots, automated translation, grammar assistants, and large language models are examples of how text generation permeates writing from many angles. In this presentation, Professor Mads Thomsen will sketch out key issues of the rapid developments in text generation and the interdisciplinary collaboration needed to understand these, before turning to how GPT-3 “reads” William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.”
Bio:
Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published in the fields of literary historiography, modernist literature, world literature, digital humanities, and posthumanism. His most recently submitted publication is a short book on the concept and history of text.
He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures (2008),The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900 (2013), a co-author with Stefan Helgesson ofLiterature and the World (2019), and the editor of fourteen books, includingWorld Literature: A Reader (2012), The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges (2012),Danish Literature as World Literature (2017), Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis (2017), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism (2020).
Thomsen has been director of the Digital Arts Initiative (2017-21) and the research program Human Futures (2016-22), both at Aarhus University. Thomsen was co-director of the research project Posthuman Aesthetics (2014-18), and he is the PI of the VELUX FONDEN-funded project Fabula-NET which investigates literary preferences and quality using digital methods (2021-25).
He is a co-editor of Orbis Litterarum, an advisory board member of the book series Literatures as World Literature(Bloomsbury Academic), and a member of the editorial board of Journal of World Literature. Thomsen is a member of the Academia Europaea (2010-), the advisory board of The Institute for World Literature (2010-13, 2018-22), and the general assembly of DARIAH (2022-).
Thomsen was a visiting scholar at Stanford University four times between 2001-2015.
Abstract for Christina Meyer’s talk at the symposium “Imagining Media Change” (June 13, 2013, Leibniz Universität Hannover):
Technology – Economy – Mediality: Nineteenth Century American Newspaper Comics
Christina Meyer
In my talk I will focus on one of the first serialized, colored comic figures of the late nineteenth century, which appeared in two competing New York newspapers (The World and the New York Journal): Mickey Dugan, better remembered as the Yellow Kid. This kid was one of the first successfully marketed, iconic comic figures to which the public was introduced, and whose adventures it encountered over a 5-year period (1893-1898). The Yellow Kid had not only a place, and served diverse functions, within the Sunday comic supplements – as a protagonist in the comic pages, as a want-ads promotional device, and as a front-page filler – but also ‘outside’ of them, in the form of all kinds of merchandise products, advertising, poster and billboard ‘sign,’ and as a name-giver for, or rather protagonist in, songs and theater plays (among other things). The Yellow Kid was a commodified ware to be purchased and collected in all kinds of forms. There were, among other things, Yellow Kid candy, chewing gum pets, Yellow Kid pin-back buttons (often giveaways distributed by tobacco companies that used the Yellow Kid to introduce and sell a new cigarette brand), wooden cigar boxes, numerous tins (in different sizes, and designed for all kinds of purposes), puzzles, dolls, and many more things. What interests me about the Yellow Kid, and what makes this comic figure a relevant research topic for this symposium, are precisely these ‘border-crossings’ or transitions, from one (carrier) medium to another and the effects these changes generate. One line of argumentation I wish to pursue in my talk is that the merchandising of the Yellow Kid is a narrative moment in itself, which is also, self-reflexively, commented upon in the Yellow Kid newspaper comic pages.
Several weeks ago, my family and I were able to catch a performance of the touring stadium show Batman Live (English site here, German here) in Hamburg. All in all, it was lots of fun. And it also happens to tie in with my current research on plurimedial serial figures. I had planned, therefore, to write a sort of review of the show, but as I can’t foresee finding the time to do so anytime soon, here are a few scattered thoughts.
As the title Batman Live indicates, the show is all about “liveness,” but the cultivation of the latter, which might be said to constitute the show’s main conceit, involves the performance in all sorts of paradoxes. One might, of course, say (with reference to Derrida, perhaps) that all performance, insofar as it involves the iteration of a script, renders “liveness” problematic, as the present is bound up in the pastness of the patterns and discourses that it repeats. But the paradoxes of Batman Live are much more concrete than all that…
By what means does Batman Live contrive to make Batman live? Naturally, by employing a live actor to embody the figure on a physical stage. “Live” is here contrasted with “recorded,” and it would seem that film, which also employs live actors (at least sometimes) but preserves their actions for later playback, is the particular medium of reference here. (Incidentally, film serves a double role here, as the show undoubtedly seeks to profit from the popularity of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, while defining itself against them with the implicit claim that “more live” = “more real” or more spectacular.) But, at least, in the German-language version I saw, this claim to liveness is undermined with the very first words uttered on stage, as the actors quite clearly lip sync a pre-recorded soundtrack.
Furthermore, the stage/screen dichotomy as a basis for the claim to liveness is unsettled by the presence of a gigantic digital display behind the stage. We’re used to this, of course, from big-budget musicals and, increasingly, even smaller-budget theater productions, but the backdrop in this case is used to make constant reference to other media (especially to comics and video games), the pre-existence of which must be seen to complicate the purported “liveness” of the performance.
For example, when Batman and Robin race away in the Batmobile, exiting the stage through one of the many discreet passageways that open up when necessary to allow traffic onto or off of the stage, their high-speed journey to Arkham Asylum is continued onscreen, framed quite obviously in the visual forms typical of digital racing games. (The layout of Arkham Island and the interior of the asylum, as depicted on the screen, in fact seemed to be pulled directly from the console game Batman: Arkham Asylum; an uncanny sense of recognition, an identification of the digital backdrop with my own TV screen hooked up to a PS3, transported me momentarily out of the arena and into my own living room.) The backdrop is also used for the purpose of narrative ellipsis, as a means of summarizing the events that occur between on-stage scenes; significantly, this takes place in the idiom of graphic narrative: we see digitally animated comic book pages flipping, the virtual camera zooming from panel to panel, revealing what happens “in the meantime.” Indeed, one might claim that the “meanwhile” is the temporal register that superhero comics in particular have perfected more than any other medium; such direct recourse to it, though, radically unsettles the here and now of the “live.”
On the other hand, though, we might say that these intermedial references are not so much at odds with, but in fact an integral part of the performance’s cultivation of “liveness,” which consists not only in the present-ness of the actors and their actions in a physical space shared by us, but precisely in the act of “bringing to life” the places and events depicted in film, video games, and comics — effectively imbuing these media with life by expanding them onto the stage, where Batman, Robin, the Joker, and others relate to the (intermedially determined) screen as part of their (diegetic) world.
Furthermore, this permeability of the screen, which alternates between embodying an expansion of diegetic space and an extra-diegetic, specifically narrative function (with concrete references to the narrative/representational techniques of other media) is caught up in paradoxes much like those informing the deployment of 3D techniques and technologies: they, too, oscillate between a) claims of establishing an intensified immersive experience that would bring represented characters and events to life for us in an unprecedented manner, and b) an emphasis on the unprecedented nature of the whole affair, a celebration of the technological infrastructure that enables such spectacles, and hence a foregrounding of the event itself in a manner that is radically at odds with the notion of “immersion.”
Indeed, the discourse of “immersive experience” is referenced in the video clip embedded here, where the “physicality of the stage” plus the awe-inspiring technology are foregrounded, but purportedly “wrapped up” in an immersive “package.” I am inclined to believe that this kind of equation never adds up — and that it’s never in fact meant to: from the “sensational melodrama” of nineteenth century stages and early-twentieth century screens (as explored by Ben Singer) to 3D techniques and “immersive” video games today, the attraction of all such spectacles consists in the maintenance of tensions between realism and a feeling of awe at the sight or spectacle of realism (itself no longer beholden to the impression of realistic-ness), for example, or between immersion and amazement at the power of a medium to involve us (recognition of which takes place outside the space of immersion). Batman Live is above all a spectacle of this sort, and the paradox of its “liveness” is — for those who take pleasure in such paradox, at least — not so much a shortcoming as a productive element of the attraction, which itself is inextricably bound up with the fragmented dispersal and plurimedial lack of coherence that characterizes Batman qua serial figure.
The next meeting of the Film & TV Reading Group will take place at 6:00 pm (s.t.) on January 18, 2012 (in room 609 of the Conti-Hochhaus). Thomas Habedank will be moderating the session, for which he has chosen a very interesting article by Livia Monnet entitled “A-Life and the Uncanny in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” (from Science Fiction Studies 31.1 (2004), 97-121).
While focusing on the 2001 film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (see imdb for more info), in certain respects the paper’s topic picks up on a facet of our discussion of Romero’s zombie films–the question of the uncanny. The paper links this question to a certain historical moment and the media transition from analog to digital forms, to questions of adaptations between film and videogames, and to broader questions of “animation” as both a specific form of film and a basic impulse of film in general.
No prior familiarity with the Final Fantasy franchise or the film is required in order to participate. We will watch some relevant clips to facilitate discussion, and the topic should be conducive to discussion along the lines of a wide variety of interests in moving-picture media.
As always, new participants are more than welcome to join us. For more information about the Film & TV Reading Group, feel free to contact me by e-mail (see the “Contact” page above for the address).
“Comics – Intermedial & Interdisziplinär”
9.-10.12.2011 in den Räumlichkeiten von Situation Kunst /
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Ein interdisziplinäres Symposium zur Förderung und Vernetzung der
Comicforschung.
Seit seinen Anfängen ist der Comic intermediale Verbindungen mit anderen Medien/medialen Formen eingegangen. Dabei haben sich nicht nur Medien, wie z.B. Film oder Fernsehen regelmäßig vom Comic inspirieren lassen. Auch der Comic selbst ist im Laufe seiner Entwicklung sowohl auf inhaltlicher als auch auf formal-ästhetischer Ebene immer wieder von anderen Medien beeinflusst worden. Im Rahmen des zweitägigen Symposiums wird der Forschungsgegenstand Comic aus unterschiedlichen
wissenschaftlichen Perspektiven (Medienwissenschaft, Gender- und Queer
Studies, Literaturwissenschaft, Kulturwissenschaft, Kunstgeschichte
etc.) heraus betrachtet und im Hinblick auf seinen intermedialen Kontext – also mit Blick auf die Frage nach dem Comic in den Medien und den Medien im Comic – beleuchtet. Aufgrund der Integration von Text und Bild stellt der Comic bereits in seiner grundlegenden Beschaffenheit ein intermediales Phänomen dar, daher wird nicht nur das intermediale
Potential des Comics im Verbund mit anderen Medien, sondern auch der
intermediale Charakter des Comics selbst Gegenstand des Symposiums sein.
Bei dem zweitägigen Symposium handelt es sich um eine Kooperation des
Instituts für Medienwissenschaft, dem Lehrstuhl für American Studies und dem Lehrstuhl für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaften der
Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Weitere Informationen zum Comic Symposium sind online unter www.comic-symposium.de verfügbar.
Anmeldungen zum Symposium sind bis zum 20.11.2011 möglich.
Bei Interesse schicken Sie bitte eine kurze E-Mail an folgende Adresse: veronique.sina@rub.de
Regina Schober, who completed her PhD in American Studies in Hannover, has just published her book Unexpected Chords: Musico-Poetic Intermediality in Amy Lowell’s Poetry and Poetics. Among other things, the book contains important theoretical reflections on intermediality that are relevant quite beyond the scope of her own study.
