Media@McGill - Critical Communication Matters

On the one year anniversary of Cablegate, Media@McGill hosted a roundtable panel consisting of contributors to the upcoming book, Beyond WikiLeaks, to highlight the broader implications of the WikiLeaks' publication of U.S. cables and the challenges it poses for networked journalism, media activism, risk society and freedom of expression.

Filmmaker, writer and artist, Miranda July, gave a presentation and launched her new book, It Chooses You, at the Ukrainian Federation in Montreal on Monday, November 14th.

The McGill Daily, which once billed itself as "the oldest student daily newspaper in the Commonwealth" celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Among the many events commemorating the occasion, Media@McGill and the department of Development and Alumni Relations will hold a blue-ribbon panel discussion on the role of the media in society - past, present and future. A distinguished panel of experts will look back at the defining role of media in some of the key moments of the past century - and forward to suggest what we might expect from the media in the next.

The post-election growth of the 'Green Movement' in Iran seemed a total surprise to many commentators. But serious analysis of the interactions between face-to-face politics and the emergence of new communications technologies in Iran reveals a long history of the up-take of new media and the difficulties of enacting traditional politics. Steering between the extreme positions of both cyber-utopians and cyber-depressives, this talk seeks to explore and illustrate the polymedia environment of young Iranians and the dynamics of Green Movement communication.

This paper is an attempt to return to the human "after the cyborg." It is driven by a desire to find a way out of the posthumanist impasse of some strands of contemporary cultural theory, whereby the widespread acceptance of the notions of transhuman relationality, interspecies kinship, and machinic becoming seems to have diminished the need for a more rigorous interrogation of the singularity of trans-species and intra-species difference.

How can criticism justify itself in modern society? What have been its traditional functions, are these still feasible, and can they be adapted to our own conditions? Terry Eagleton is Adjunct Professor of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway and Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University (UK). He is a noted literary critic and author of more than forty books on culture, literary theory and religion.

The history of transnational social movements is a long one, and includes international labour solidarity, the abolitionist movement, the anti-colonial movement, the anti-apartheid movement - but also fascism. In recent times, global social justice activism, feminism, environmentalism, peace activism, First Nations' rights have added to the list - but so has India's Hindutva movement activism, Falun Gong, and a scatter of others. The presentation will initially focus upon discussing what is meant by 'transnational', 'social movement' and 'social movement media.'

Jodi Dean was Media@McGill Beaverbrook visiting scholar this winter. She visited us in February to give a public talk on 11 February. The talk is a collaboration between Media@McGill and the AHCS speaker series. It was entitled 'Whatever Blogging'. Giorgio Agamben has introduced the idea of whatever being as a tag for a contemporary mode of belonging unbound by the inscriptions of disciplinary identity. Some agree that this mode could herald a better coming community. Linking whatever being to appearances of whatever in networked communications and positioning it within a brief history of the interconnections between media and identity, I argue that whatever being is the wrong model for a subject capable of left political practice and opposition.

The Department of Art History and Communication Studies (AHCS) was pleased to host Dr. Andrew Feenberg, Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Technology at Simon Fraser University, on 29 March 2007, as part of the departmental speaker series. Dr. Feenberg delivered a lecture entitled From critical theory of technology to the rational critique of rationality and also directed a graduate student seminar.

A recorded visit to Darin Barney's Philosophy of Technology graduate seminar.

This conversation event is a collaboration of Media@McGill with the SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster, "Situating Science: Humanist and Social Studies of Science." It took place November 12, 2009, from 5:30-7:00 pm, at the McGill Faculty Club ballroom. Themes that Darin Barney and Preston Manning discussed include: Recent controversies surrounding conservatives and science in Canada; moral and ethical issues arising from scientific inquiry and technological development; the role of government, politicians, and the public in science and technological innovation in Canada; and science, technology, industry and the economy in Canada.

Angela Davis is an American political activist and university professor who was associated with the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Today, Davis continues to work for racial and gender equality, gay rights, and prison abolition and is a popular public speaker, nationally and internationally.

James Love is the Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). Mr. Love is also the U.S. co-chair of the ?Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Working Group on Intellectual Property, chair of Essential Inventions, an advisor to the X-Prize Foundation on a prize for TB diagnostics, and a member of the UNITAID Expert Group on Patent Pools, the MSF Working Group on Intellectual Property, the Stop-TB Partnership working group on new drug development and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards. He advises a number of UN agencies, national governments, international and regional intergovernmental organizations and public health NGOs, and is the author of a number of articles and monographs on innovation and intellectual property rights. In 2006, Knowledge Ecology International received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

In the wake of both the Canadian and the US elections, Media@McGill is pleased to present a special event which aims to provide a space for public exchange concerning the role of media in both elections. Each speaker will center her or his presentation on the role of media during the U.S. and Canadian election campaigns and in the post-election period. Ndimyake Mwakalyelye, a television reporter for Voice of America TV will be discussing the U.S. elections; Manon Cornellier, political reporter for Le Devoir, will talk about both the Francophone and Anglophone Canadian press; John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail Columnist, will deal with both the U.S. and the Canadian elections. Each panelist will develop her or his own angle of analysis.