Things are busy in the infamous little coach house. Our working groups are in full swing and our Monday Night Seminar series is starting up again. We are happy to announce a new McLuhan Centre reading group for graduate students across campus. While some of our working groups are in the midst of planning their very first events, other groups are taking their new research to new heights. I am thrilled to announce that theCentre's working group on Digital Labour is editing a special issue of Notes from Below with essays from the speakers of last year's Log Out! Worker Resistance Within and Against the Platform Economy conference. The special issue is scheduled to be published in March. Members of our research team are also busy at work assisting me with the further commemorating of Marshall McLuhan’s Library UNESCO designation through an edited collection of select pieces from last year’s Many McLuhans Symposium.
We hope to see you soon at one of our many McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology events coming up in the next few months.
— Sarah Sharma
THE MONDAY NIGHT SEMINAR WINTER LINEUP
The “Monday Night Seminar” carries on the tradition of Marshall McLuhan's public seminars at the University of Toronto. All seminars take place within the same intimate Coach House setting where McLuhan once held court. In this up-close and personal environment, a range of thinkers – academics, activists, scientists, artists, designers and planners – will explore digital culture from a feminist perspective.
Registration opens 2 weeks before each MNS:
January 28: Of Other Internets
Join us for a night of nets - the Soviet Net, the Queer Net and ARPA-Net. How do specific network structures determine different political possibilities? We'll take a deep web dive into this question with guests Nick Dyer-Witheford, Cait McKinney, and Benjamin Peters.
Clarity, openness, transparency! For whom we wonder? Join us for a night on designing digital strategies and technological tactics beyond respectability, hygiene, publicness and respectability. On Feb 11 come to the coach house and lose ctrl, think alt, and get into the DIRT with Zach Blas, T.L. Cowan and Jasmine Rault.
Sunday, March 3: From Data to Water: Palaces of Infrastructure
Join our 6Place Toronto Working Group for a day-long pedestrian research programme. Sunday's proceedings will include walking, talking, guided tours and discussions at both the R.C. Harris Water Treatment Plant and the Sidewalk Labs / 307 Corporate Office. This event is taking place in conjunction with our March 4Monday Night Seminar, "A Pedestrian View of Sidewalk Toronto," with Beth Coleman, Shannon Mattern, and Bianca Wylie.
The Walkshop is a public event with limited attendance. Interested parties should contact Farah Michel to register and for more information.
Thursday, March 7: #BlackGirlMagic: On Disability and Possibility in the Digital Age
Presented by our Working Group, Black Technoscience "Here". Dr.Moya Bailey's work focuses on marginalized groups’ use of digital media to promote social justice as acts of self-affirmation and health promotion. She is interested in how race, gender, and sexuality are represented in media and medicine. She currently curates the #transformDH Tumblr initiative in Digital Humanities. She is also the digital alchemist for the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network. She is an assistant professor in the department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies and the program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern University.
Friday, March 8: Symposium - Transnational Feminism in the Age of Digital Islamophobia
In the decade following the events of 9/11, Western mainstream media has become obsessed with Islam, often sensationalizing Muslims as inherently violent, barbaric, and as the undesirable other. In this day-long interdisciplinary symposium, we aim to make a conceptual bridge between transnational feminist politics and digital Islamophobia through presentations and open dialogue.
Confirmed Speakers: Banu Gokariksel, Kumi Silva, Jasmin Jiwani, Faiza Hirji, Jasmin Zine, Barbara Perry,Hazel Halavut, Zeinab Farokhi.
VISIT OUR SITE to learn more about all the Working Groups supported by the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology.
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OTHER EVENTS
Thursday, March 14: Marshall McLuhan's Eighteenth Century Paula McDowell specializes in eighteenth-century British studies, media history and theory, and the History of the Book. Her most recent book, The Invention of the Oral: Print Commerce and Fugitive Voices in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 2017), examines the oral/literate binary as a heuristic — a tool for understanding that itself has a history — and argues that the concept of "oral culture" was in fact a back formation of the explosion of print commerce. She is currently working on another archivally-based book, on the life, career, and reading and writing practices of the Canadian professor, scholar, and media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980).
Presented by the Book History and Print Culture program in association with the Friends of the Victoria University Library, the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology, and the
Toronto Eighteenth Century Group. More information on this event can be found here.
MCLUHAN CENTRE GRADUATE READING GROUP
Now announcing the McLuhan Centre Graduate Reading Group! This will be an interdisciplinary monthly group for graduate students at the University of Toronto to read and discuss a broad set of issues and ideas related to media studies. Each month will feature a short reading and seminar discussion at the McLuhan Centre. Snacks will be provided! The reading group is organized by Alexander Ross, a current PhD Student in the Faculty of Information and recipient of a 2018/19 McLuhan Centre Fellowship. Contact alex.ross@mail.utoronto.ca for more details regarding dates, times, and readings.
