Modern Media Podcast Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media at DePauw University

In this episode, JNP talks with Jason Mittell, Professor of Film and Medias Culture at Middlebury College in Vermont. Author of several key manuscripts on television culture, Prof. Mittell is also a key figure in the development of videographic criticism in film and media studies. He and his colleague, Prof. Christian Keathly, have since 2015 offered several two-week intensive workshops on videographic criticism for scholars. Our discussion focused on the history of videographic criticism, its roots in avant garde film and video work, its connection to the digital humanities, as well as current practices and pedagogies.

For more on videographic criticism, you can visit the website The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy (http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/index). You can also see examples of published videographic criticism at [in]Transition (http://mediacommons.org/intransition/). And check out Jason’s own videographic work on his Vimeo channel. (https://vimeo.com/jmittell) As a special treat, you can watch Jen Proctor’s remake of “A Movie” by Bruce Connors right here. (https://vimeo.com/11531028)

And have a listen to The Video Essay Podcast (https://thevideoessay.com/work), hosted by Will DiGravio.

Counternarratives: A Conversation with Alexandra Bell

One of the most important questions you can ask about media is how it represents – ideas, things, people. But it’s not just a question of what the mechanisms for representation are. Instead, questions about representation are questions about meaning and about power: how they are produced and maintained. And representations are a site of struggle over meanings and power. The news media are one particularly potent site for engaging with the politics of representation. How are stories told in the news? What cultural frameworks guide the construction of news stories and, in turn, our engagement with the news? How do these frameworks help perpetuate harmful ideological positions?

On this episode of Modern Media, we speak with multimedia artist Alexandra Bell about her work that engages with precisely these questions of representation. In particular, we talk with her about two series of prints that she has produced over the last several years. The earlier series - “Counternarratives” - reimagines New York Times articles (through revision, redaction, annotation, and magnification) in order to reveal and confront the news media’s complicity in perpetuating racial prejudice. Her later series, “No Humans Involved: After Sylvia Wynter,” (which was part of the 2019 Whitney Biennial) engages the coverage surrounding what came to be called the “Central Park Five” or the “Central Park Jogger” case from 1989. Across both series, Alexandra Bell’s work reveals the explicit and implicit biases that underwrite news narratives involving communities of color, and how those biases circulate nearly invisibly under the guise of journalistic objectivity.

Read more about Alexandra Bell’s work:
From The New Yorker magazine, April 17, 2019
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/an-artist-revises-the-racist-news-coverage-of-the-central-park-five

From The New Yorker magazine, May 29, 2018
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-alexandra-bell-is-disrupting-racism-in-journalism

The New York Times, December 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/arts/design/artist-alexandra-bell-dissects-the-new-york-times.html

Episode Music Credits: Blue Dot Sessions
“An Oddly Formal Dance” (www.sessions.blue)
“Careless Morning” (www.sessions.blue)
“Our Digital Compass” (www.sessions.blue)
“Our Own Melody” (www.sessions.blue)

Antisocial Media: A Conversation with Siva Vaidhyanathan

In this installment, JNP sits down with Prof. Siva Vaidhyanathan to talk about his latest book, Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. The conversation delves into questions of how Facebook positions itself as a social good while its very structure provides a platform – unprecedented in its size and scope - for the manipulation of political discourse and the widespread circulation of misinformation. Prof. Vaidhyanathan is Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship. He is the author of several other books, including The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry), and he also serves as a columnist for The Guardian.

We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: A Conversation with Amanda D. Lotz

In this installment of Modern Media, JNP talks to Dr. Amanda D. Lotz about her latest book, We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (MIT Press, 2018). The story of the transformation of television at the turn of the 21st century is a story of emerging technologies, regulations, business models, and aesthetic practices that came to establish the era of internet distributed television that we now inhabit. Connecting these new structures to older ways of understanding television, Dr. Lotz makes a compelling case for understanding the persistence of television amidst the news of its demise. You can follow her on Twitter at @DrTVLotz.

Journalism as Activism: A Conversation with Adrienne Russell

In this installment, JNP sits down with Dr. Adrienne Russell to talk about the changing worlds of both journalists and activists as they engage the intersection of emerging technologies and pressing social problems. Adrienne Russell is the Mary Laird Wood Professor of Journalism and the Environment at the University of Washington, and the author of two books: Networked: Contemporary History of News in Transition, and Journalism as Activism: Recoding Media Power.

In this installment, JNP sits down with Anne Helen Petersen - senior culture writer for Buzzfeed and the author of the recent book, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman – to talk about balancing academic and journalistic writing, managing the role of the public intellectual in the age of social media, and why cultural criticism matters. You can access Anne Helen Petersen’s work for Buzzfeed here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen.

To find out more about her books here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/228194/anne-helen-petersen