Wendy is Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago – Lecture 1

Since 2003, the Critical Inquiry Distinguished Visiting Professorship has been held by some of the world’s most renowned scholars. The CI Professor is in residence at the University of Chicago for an academic quarter, where he or she teaches a graduate seminar and offers two public lectures.

In Spring 2021 we are proud to welcome Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (2016), and coauthor of Pattern Discrimination (2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor.

Spring Seminar: Critical Data Studies

(with guest Carina Albrecht)

4/28 to 5/31: Mon. and Wed., 10:30am–1:20pm

The massive collection of data, we are told, changes everything. It’s allegedly the new oil, the new resource to be exploited, as well as the new hidden, “real” layer behind all media. It transforms the creative practice, public sphere, scholarship, and intimate relationships by making them “data-driven.” It raises the specter of absolute surveillance and vacuum-sealed echo chambers, all in the name of giving users the commodities, friendships, and security they really want. To explore the possibilities and limitations of the “data turn”––this course asks: what difference does the mass capture, storage, correlation, and analysis of data make to society, culture, media, ethics and politics? How does it affect fundamental concepts, such as reality, agency, identity, verification, and temporality?  It will answer these questions by exploring four key terms, such as correlation, authenticity, recognition, and neighborhoods, from historical, critical theory, and technical perspectives. It will also encourage students to contribute to the burgeoning field of Critical Data Studies by exploring and experimenting with unusual interdisciplinary methodologies and collaborations.

Interested students must send a paragraph stating their interest to Critical Inquiry at cisubmissions@gmail.com.

Public Lectures

Public Lecture 1: Beyond Verification: Authenticity and Mis/Disinformation

That fake news has affected recent political events in the US and abroad has become a truism; the sense that combating fake news entails more than fact checking and verification similarly has become accepted wisdom. So how do we understand and respond to fake news? This talk will map out different approaches to fake news in diverse disciplines/sectors, and outline a response that focuses on understanding why and how users find information to be true regardless of its facticity. Framing fake news as an intermedial narrative, it will outline an approach based in dramatic/literary conceptions of authenticity.

Friday, 7 May, 6pm CST: Sign up for the virtual event here.