Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/group/2935/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. DISCO Network DISCO Summit 2024 (March 28, 2024 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/117761 117761-21845449@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 28, 2024 3:00pm
Location:
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

DISCO Network | DISCO Summit

Dates: Friday, June 14 – Saturday, June 15, 2024
Location: Weiser Hall, 10th Floor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Modality: Hybrid (all events will be held in-person with an option for individuals to attend virtually via Zoom webinar)

Registration is required to attend the DISCO Summit.

The deadline for in-person registration is Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Due to limited space in the venue, in-person registration will close once we reach our maximum capacity. Register to attend in-person: https://myumi.ch/Pkrgg

The deadline for Zoom webinar registration is Wednesday, June 13, 2024. Register to attend via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/N61QZ

Event Description:

The DISCO Summit is a two-day interdisciplinary summer symposium about digital social inequalities in celebration of the third year of the DISCO Network. The DISCO Summit will include nine panel conversations about the past, present, and future of the intersection between digital technology, culture, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.

The DISCO Network is a collaborative, intergenerational group of scholars dedicated to envisioning a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future. The DISCO Network comprises six labs across five universities: the Michigan Hub at the University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute (PI: Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan), HAT Lab (PI: Rayvon Fouché; Northwestern University), DAF Lab (PI: M. Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan), Future Histories Studio (PI: Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University), PREACH Lab (André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology), and BCaT Lab (Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park). The DISCO Network is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. The DISCO Summit provides a platform for scholars, students, artists, practitioners, activists, and community members to convene and engage in dialogue about racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics within the academy, the technology industry, and beyond. We especially welcome individuals whose interests lie in the intersection of the digital and identity and have found difficulties pursuing their endeavors at their home institutions.

Event Schedule:

Day 1: Friday, June 14, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Digital Optimism with Lisa Nakamura, Rayvon Fouché, Stephanie Dinkins, André Brock, Remi Yergeau, and Catherine Knight Steele
Optimism is the belief that the interval between the now and liberation is where we can act. Digital optimism is the recognition that there are elements of life that vivify and energize in the here and the now, despite and amidst the digital purgatories that we endure. Sometimes that energy is found in stillness; sometimes in refusal; and sometimes in moments of catharsis or joy. This panel will explore the concept of digital optimism as it appears in DISCO’s collaborative writing and work together.

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Frictions with Remi Yergeau, David Adelman, Jeff Nagy, Aimi Hamraie, Jaipreet Virdi, and Mara Mills
In their manifesto on crip technoscience, Kelly Fritsch and Aimi Hamraie (2019) impress upon us that access production is a “frictional process,” one that requires “acknowledging that science and technology can be used to both produce and dismantle injustice.” This roundtable explores the frictional intimacies, practices, and material conditions of what it means to do the digital. In particular, panelists will consider myriad ways in which accessibility holds the potential to burn, grate, spark, and tug at new imaginings of crip futures.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Digital Black Feminist Pleasure and Pain Online with Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott, Francesca Sobande, and Kishonna Gray
The experiences of Black women online serve as a harbinger of what digital culture affords and what is to come. This panel thinks through the relationship between pleasure and pain in the online lives of Black women and how Black feminist methods, epistemologies, and strategies may point us toward a better digital future for us all.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Little Memes: Storying Race, Gender, and Disability in the Digital Studies Classroom with Remi Yergeau, Huan He, and Toni Bushner
How do students’ stories about themselves or others—their anecdotal relations—inform their burgeoning understandings of digital inequality and related concepts? In this session, we reflect on student interviews and instructor experiences drawn from a study of five U-M Digital Studies classes focused on race and disability.

4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
Black Digital Optimism in an Age of Despair with André Brock, Kevin Winstead, Brandy Pettijohn, Apryl Williams, and Ngozi Harrison
This panel will discuss what social media activity looks like for Black folk at a time when economic disparity, geopolitical extremism, and the ongoing pandemic loom behind every post, tweet, video, and podcast.

Day 2: Saturday, June 15, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Black Innovation with Rayvon Fouché, Aaron Dial, Ron Eglash, Michael Bennett, Aria Halliday, and Tonia Sutherland
Black folks have a tradition of being innovative in ways not understood and expected by traditional markets, dominant cultural formations, or information platforms. As the world is enamored, fascinated, enraptured, troubled, or simply confused by the potentiality of generative AI, is there a place and a role for Blackness to participate, contribute, or intervene in this next technoscientific atmospheric river? What will Black innovation and creativity look like in a world propelled by a network of AI trained on past utterances that did not see Blackness as meaningful? How can Blackness and Black innovation and creativity disrupt expected technoscientific futures?

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Possibilities with Stephanie Dinkins, Hagar Masoud, Ria Rajan, Cezanne Charles, and Audrey Bennet
"Digital Possibilities" presents an intergenerational panel of arts practitioners who explore the critical role deliberate exploration and practical research play in understanding and shaping digital technologies and culture. The panel showcases the transformative power deeply engaging digital technologies can have on molding practical, aspirational, and equitable understandings of self and society. Panelists discuss how practice can leverage discovery, curiosity, out-of-the-box thinking, and leadership to mine and challenge opportunities, or the lack thereof, for beauty, potentiality, subjugation, and liberation that digital technologies often carry. The panel also engages thought about how future, present, and past technologies combined with narratives centering on underutilized, underrecognized communities can be coaxed or developed to produce technological ecosystems that produce nuanced, open, and equitably informed digital tools, platforms, and collaborators.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Majority World Digital Infrastructures with Lisa Nakamura, Marisa Duarte, Ivan Chaar Lopez, Meryem Kamil, Huan He, and Jasmine Banks
Digital infrastructure shapes access, representation, and cultural politics. Indigenous, Asian and Southeast Asian, Palestinian, U.S. Mexico border, and women of color uses of digital networks are often represented as niche or marginal, sequestered in area studies, ethnic studies, and women studies, yet the U.S. and Western Europe are the numerical minority.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Legibility and Community in Digital Studies with Huan He, Kevin Winstead, David Adelman, Aaron Dial, Jeff Nagy, Rianna Walcott, and Brandy Pettijohn
As junior scholars, the Digital Inquiry Speculation Collaboration Optimism (DISCO) Network postdoctoral fellows faced unique challenges negotiating the tensions of being legible for academic employment and serving digital studies projects that foster collaboration and community. This panel discusses best practices for being young career scholars in critical identity and digital studies.

We would like to thank the following co-sponsors:
- Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
- Department of American Culture
- Department of Communication and Media
- Department of English Literature and Language
- Department of Film, Television, and Media
- Department of History
- Department of History of Art
- Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
- Science, Technology, and Society Program
- University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies
- Center for Racial Justice
- Science, Technology, and Public Policy
- Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs
- Spectrum Center
- Marsal Family School of Education Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity
- Computer Science and Engineering
- School of Information Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing
- Institute for Research on Women & Gender

Accessibility statement: We strive to make our events accessible to all participants.
- All attendees are requested to wear well-fitting masks. Masks will be provided at the event space.
- Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) services will be provided.
- The event space is ADA-compliant.
- Gender-neutral and accessible restrooms are available in the event space.
- A quiet space will be available.
- The event planning team has worked to mitigate potential sensory triggers, such as loud buzzing sounds or flickering lights, in the event space. Individuals with sensory sensitivities should be aware that there is a possibility of unpredictable sound or lighting changes during the event.
- All attendees are requested to refrain from using scented products, such as perfume or cologne. Unscented products (e.g., soap, hand sanitizer) will be provided at the event space.
- A digital copy of the event program will be made available at least a week prior to the event.
- For those who are unable to attend the event in-person, a livestream viewing option is available.
- More detailed information about the event space (including how to access it and how the space will be arranged) will be made available on our website.
- If there are additional ways that we can meet your access needs, please indicate this in the registration form. Please register as soon as possible as some accommodations may require advance coordination.

For all inquiries related to the DISCO Summit, please contact Cherice Chan, DISCO Network Program Coordinator, at chericec@umich.edu.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:43:03 -0400 2024-03-28T15:00:00-04:00 2024-03-28T16:00:00-04:00 Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium Orange event flier with the DISCO Summit logo (a disco ball with the quantum computing symbol) surrounded by digital icons (e.g., wifi symbol, cursor, laptop). The flier includes the event date, location, a brief description, and cosponsors.
Science Studies After Historical Epistemology (March 28, 2024 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/118591 118591-21841251@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 28, 2024 4:00pm
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

Science matters. Over the last half-century, a field—called science studies—has emerged to explain why. Science studies accounts for science’s remarkable authority in many ways, calling attention to techniques of persuasion, regimes of labor, and forms of materiality that underwrite science’s power and practice. Uniting this diverse range of scholarly approaches is a focus on “knowledge.” Since the 1980s, scholars of science studies have focused almost exclusively on the production, circulation, and contestation of knowledge. Knowledge has retained this priority even as its basic categories—objectivity and proof, trust and truth—have come in for historical and social analysis. Science’s importance, in other words, is rooted in its ways of knowing.

This workshop looks beyond “knowledge” for alternative categories and concepts at the edges of science studies. Leading scholars will present a range of critical terms as possible futures for science studies, questioning the identification of “science” and “knowledge” that was cemented with the rise of “historical epistemology” over the last few decades. Drawing on theoretical turns in fields near and far, we will consider the possibility of a science studies centered on roots and vibrations, habits and beliefs, the sacred and the type. The workshop remains committed to the idea that science matters; what participants are after is a new account (or accounts) of why, new frameworks within which old binaries fade from view and new political possibilities emerge.

Join us on March 28 at 4:00 pm in 1014 Tisch Hall for the public event.

]]>
Workshop / Seminar Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:24:29 -0500 2024-03-28T16:00:00-04:00 2024-03-28T17:30:00-04:00 Tisch Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Workshop / Seminar Conference artwork
EIHS Lecture: Promissory Talk and the Limits of Historical Imagination (April 4, 2024 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/108410 108410-21819552@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 4, 2024 4:00pm
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

This lecture uses the concept of promissory talk to critically analyze one way of thinking “against history.” Promissory talk is a future-oriented version of counterfactual speculation. Rather than asking “what if…?” questions of historical events when the outcomes are already known, promissory speech says “if only… then…” as a way of linking present policy actions to anticipated future results. Drawing on examples from Japan and the United States, Professor Thomas will show how recent efforts to reframe children’s historical consciousness reflect a dubious promissory premise: “If only the kids had more national pride, then all of our problems would be solved."

Jolyon Baraka Thomas is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Faking Liberties: Religious Freedom in American-Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2012). Thomas’s current research projects include the monograph Difficult Subjects: Religion and the Politics of Public Education under the US-Japan Security Alliance, a co-authored book called Animating Action, and the co-edited New Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Tue, 09 Jan 2024 15:59:14 -0500 2024-04-04T16:00:00-04:00 2024-04-04T18:00:00-04:00 Tisch Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Lecture / Discussion Jolyon Baraka Thomas
EIHS Workshop: The Media of History (April 5, 2024 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/108420 108420-21819562@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 5, 2024 12:00pm
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

This workshop explores the intricate ways in which history is mediated to us, and how different mediums shape our understanding of the past and its connection to the present. With perspectives from anthropology, history, and sociology, this panel investigates the forms of media that contextualize the histories we write and that societies consume. From radio to TikTok, this workshop moves beyond the content to critically examine the frameworks and possibilities these forms offer for scholarly engagement.

Tori Herzig-Deribin (Graduate Student, History, University of Michigan)
John Mirsky (Graduate Student, Sociology, University of Michigan)
Kristi Rhead (Graduate Student, Anthropology and History, University of Michigan)
Helmut Puff (moderator, Elizabeth L. Eisenstein Collegiate Professor of History and Germanic Languages, University of Michigan)

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

]]>
Workshop / Seminar Wed, 20 Mar 2024 14:16:49 -0400 2024-04-05T12:00:00-04:00 2024-04-05T14:00:00-04:00 Tisch Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Workshop / Seminar Tisch Hall
EIHS Public Lecture: “Species Insurance”: Harriet Tubman, Environmental Storytelling, and Historical Modes of Survival (April 11, 2024 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/119386 119386-21842656@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 11, 2024 6:00pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

Format: Lecture followed by book signing with light refreshments. Literati Bookstore will sell copies of Professor Miles's book.

Abstract: Borrowing the words of Octavia E. Butler for theoretical inspiration, this talk engages in a thought experiment. What if we were to take Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous historical figures in the US, and center her in an environmental story? What would we learn about Tubman herself? What would we notice about Black women in the nineteenth century and the role of place and ecology in their survival? And what connections might we draw between Black women’s environmental thinking in the multi-temporal past and the greatest challenges facing our species in the murky present and future?

Biography: Tiya Miles is the author of seven books, including four prize-winning studies on the history of American slavery. Her works include the National Book Award winner, All That She Carried, The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake; Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation; The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, and Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, among others. She has written prize-winning historical fiction: The Cherokee Rose: A Novel of Gardens and Ghosts, shared her travels to "haunted" historic sites of slavery in a published lecture series, and written various articles and op-eds (in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, CNN.com, and more) on women’s history, history and memory, Black public culture, and Black and Indigenous interrelated experience. Miles’s forthcoming book, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, will be published by Penguin Press in June. Miles taught on the faculty of the University of Michigan for sixteen years and is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University. Her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg. Additional support from the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.

]]>
Lecture / Discussion Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:20:45 -0500 2024-04-11T18:00:00-04:00 2024-04-11T20:00:00-04:00 Michigan League Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Lecture / Discussion Tiya Miles, Harvard University
IHP-EIHS Symposium: Approaches to Oral History and the Work of Inclusive History (April 19, 2024 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/108414 108414-21819556@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 19, 2024 12:00pm
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

In-person registration: https://myumi.ch/yp2p4

Zoom webinar: https://myumi.ch/Jwpw2

CART and sign language interpretation will be provided during the in-person event, and CART will be available for virtual participants. Presenters will use microphones. A recording will be available after the event. Additional event details and accessibility information can be found at the registration links above.

The rubric of “inclusive history” has achieved a common currency. Today, you can find books, articles, websites, and university policies dedicated to its practice, including a large and ambitious Inclusive History Project (IHP) right here at U-M. Less clear is what this rubric has come to signify and enable over time. What values, methods, and practices bind the groundswell together?

This symposium will explore such questions through the lens of oral history. Drawing on the perspectives of three scholars in different fields, we will explore the potential uses of oral history work for projects that are public facing, DEI-centered, and explicitly reparative. How does the practice of oral history change the ways we think about our audiences, our work with community partners, our research, and the potential impacts of our scholarship?

Camron Amin (Professor of Middle East and Iranian Diaspora Studies; Director of Research, Inclusive History Project; University of Michigan-Dearborn)
Alexis A. Antracoli (Director, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor)
Lorena Chambers (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Inclusive History Project, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor)
Jay Cook (moderator; Professor of History and American Studies; Director of Research, Inclusive History Project; University of Michigan-Ann Arbor)

This event presented by the Inclusive History Project and the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 21 Mar 2024 12:49:10 -0400 2024-04-19T12:00:00-04:00 2024-04-19T14:00:00-04:00 Tisch Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium IHP-EIHS Symposium: Approaches to Oral History and the Work of Inclusive History
Concerned Asian Scholars, 55 Years Later: A Symposium (May 10, 2024 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/120338 120338-21844589@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, May 10, 2024 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 in the wake of the US aggression in Vietnam. Fifty-five years later, what lessons might be drawn from CCAS' efforts to practice anti-imperialist research? Join us for a full day of intergenerational conversations among the founding and early members of CCAS, editors of critical Asian studies journals, and younger scholars working on Asia. We will discuss the place of politically committed scholarship in the academy and the role of the public intellectual in our society, all in order to ask: What does it mean to be a scholar concerned about Asia in the US today?

]]>
Conference / Symposium Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:59:27 -0400 2024-05-10T09:00:00-04:00 2024-05-10T18:20:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium CCAS Poster
DISCO Network DISCO Summit 2024 (June 14, 2024 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/117761 117761-21839983@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, June 14, 2024 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

DISCO Network | DISCO Summit

Dates: Friday, June 14 – Saturday, June 15, 2024
Location: Weiser Hall, 10th Floor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Modality: Hybrid (all events will be held in-person with an option for individuals to attend virtually via Zoom webinar)

Registration is required to attend the DISCO Summit.

The deadline for in-person registration is Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Due to limited space in the venue, in-person registration will close once we reach our maximum capacity. Register to attend in-person: https://myumi.ch/Pkrgg

The deadline for Zoom webinar registration is Wednesday, June 13, 2024. Register to attend via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/N61QZ

Event Description:

The DISCO Summit is a two-day interdisciplinary summer symposium about digital social inequalities in celebration of the third year of the DISCO Network. The DISCO Summit will include nine panel conversations about the past, present, and future of the intersection between digital technology, culture, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.

The DISCO Network is a collaborative, intergenerational group of scholars dedicated to envisioning a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future. The DISCO Network comprises six labs across five universities: the Michigan Hub at the University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute (PI: Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan), HAT Lab (PI: Rayvon Fouché; Northwestern University), DAF Lab (PI: M. Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan), Future Histories Studio (PI: Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University), PREACH Lab (André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology), and BCaT Lab (Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park). The DISCO Network is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. The DISCO Summit provides a platform for scholars, students, artists, practitioners, activists, and community members to convene and engage in dialogue about racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics within the academy, the technology industry, and beyond. We especially welcome individuals whose interests lie in the intersection of the digital and identity and have found difficulties pursuing their endeavors at their home institutions.

Event Schedule:

Day 1: Friday, June 14, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Digital Optimism with Lisa Nakamura, Rayvon Fouché, Stephanie Dinkins, André Brock, Remi Yergeau, and Catherine Knight Steele
Optimism is the belief that the interval between the now and liberation is where we can act. Digital optimism is the recognition that there are elements of life that vivify and energize in the here and the now, despite and amidst the digital purgatories that we endure. Sometimes that energy is found in stillness; sometimes in refusal; and sometimes in moments of catharsis or joy. This panel will explore the concept of digital optimism as it appears in DISCO’s collaborative writing and work together.

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Frictions with Remi Yergeau, David Adelman, Jeff Nagy, Aimi Hamraie, Jaipreet Virdi, and Mara Mills
In their manifesto on crip technoscience, Kelly Fritsch and Aimi Hamraie (2019) impress upon us that access production is a “frictional process,” one that requires “acknowledging that science and technology can be used to both produce and dismantle injustice.” This roundtable explores the frictional intimacies, practices, and material conditions of what it means to do the digital. In particular, panelists will consider myriad ways in which accessibility holds the potential to burn, grate, spark, and tug at new imaginings of crip futures.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Digital Black Feminist Pleasure and Pain Online with Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott, Francesca Sobande, and Kishonna Gray
The experiences of Black women online serve as a harbinger of what digital culture affords and what is to come. This panel thinks through the relationship between pleasure and pain in the online lives of Black women and how Black feminist methods, epistemologies, and strategies may point us toward a better digital future for us all.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Little Memes: Storying Race, Gender, and Disability in the Digital Studies Classroom with Remi Yergeau, Huan He, and Toni Bushner
How do students’ stories about themselves or others—their anecdotal relations—inform their burgeoning understandings of digital inequality and related concepts? In this session, we reflect on student interviews and instructor experiences drawn from a study of five U-M Digital Studies classes focused on race and disability.

4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
Black Digital Optimism in an Age of Despair with André Brock, Kevin Winstead, Brandy Pettijohn, Apryl Williams, and Ngozi Harrison
This panel will discuss what social media activity looks like for Black folk at a time when economic disparity, geopolitical extremism, and the ongoing pandemic loom behind every post, tweet, video, and podcast.

Day 2: Saturday, June 15, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Black Innovation with Rayvon Fouché, Aaron Dial, Ron Eglash, Michael Bennett, Aria Halliday, and Tonia Sutherland
Black folks have a tradition of being innovative in ways not understood and expected by traditional markets, dominant cultural formations, or information platforms. As the world is enamored, fascinated, enraptured, troubled, or simply confused by the potentiality of generative AI, is there a place and a role for Blackness to participate, contribute, or intervene in this next technoscientific atmospheric river? What will Black innovation and creativity look like in a world propelled by a network of AI trained on past utterances that did not see Blackness as meaningful? How can Blackness and Black innovation and creativity disrupt expected technoscientific futures?

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Possibilities with Stephanie Dinkins, Hagar Masoud, Ria Rajan, Cezanne Charles, and Audrey Bennet
"Digital Possibilities" presents an intergenerational panel of arts practitioners who explore the critical role deliberate exploration and practical research play in understanding and shaping digital technologies and culture. The panel showcases the transformative power deeply engaging digital technologies can have on molding practical, aspirational, and equitable understandings of self and society. Panelists discuss how practice can leverage discovery, curiosity, out-of-the-box thinking, and leadership to mine and challenge opportunities, or the lack thereof, for beauty, potentiality, subjugation, and liberation that digital technologies often carry. The panel also engages thought about how future, present, and past technologies combined with narratives centering on underutilized, underrecognized communities can be coaxed or developed to produce technological ecosystems that produce nuanced, open, and equitably informed digital tools, platforms, and collaborators.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Majority World Digital Infrastructures with Lisa Nakamura, Marisa Duarte, Ivan Chaar Lopez, Meryem Kamil, Huan He, and Jasmine Banks
Digital infrastructure shapes access, representation, and cultural politics. Indigenous, Asian and Southeast Asian, Palestinian, U.S. Mexico border, and women of color uses of digital networks are often represented as niche or marginal, sequestered in area studies, ethnic studies, and women studies, yet the U.S. and Western Europe are the numerical minority.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Legibility and Community in Digital Studies with Huan He, Kevin Winstead, David Adelman, Aaron Dial, Jeff Nagy, Rianna Walcott, and Brandy Pettijohn
As junior scholars, the Digital Inquiry Speculation Collaboration Optimism (DISCO) Network postdoctoral fellows faced unique challenges negotiating the tensions of being legible for academic employment and serving digital studies projects that foster collaboration and community. This panel discusses best practices for being young career scholars in critical identity and digital studies.

We would like to thank the following co-sponsors:
- Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
- Department of American Culture
- Department of Communication and Media
- Department of English Literature and Language
- Department of Film, Television, and Media
- Department of History
- Department of History of Art
- Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
- Science, Technology, and Society Program
- University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies
- Center for Racial Justice
- Science, Technology, and Public Policy
- Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs
- Spectrum Center
- Marsal Family School of Education Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity
- Computer Science and Engineering
- School of Information Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing
- Institute for Research on Women & Gender

Accessibility statement: We strive to make our events accessible to all participants.
- All attendees are requested to wear well-fitting masks. Masks will be provided at the event space.
- Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) services will be provided.
- The event space is ADA-compliant.
- Gender-neutral and accessible restrooms are available in the event space.
- A quiet space will be available.
- The event planning team has worked to mitigate potential sensory triggers, such as loud buzzing sounds or flickering lights, in the event space. Individuals with sensory sensitivities should be aware that there is a possibility of unpredictable sound or lighting changes during the event.
- All attendees are requested to refrain from using scented products, such as perfume or cologne. Unscented products (e.g., soap, hand sanitizer) will be provided at the event space.
- A digital copy of the event program will be made available at least a week prior to the event.
- For those who are unable to attend the event in-person, a livestream viewing option is available.
- More detailed information about the event space (including how to access it and how the space will be arranged) will be made available on our website.
- If there are additional ways that we can meet your access needs, please indicate this in the registration form. Please register as soon as possible as some accommodations may require advance coordination.

For all inquiries related to the DISCO Summit, please contact Cherice Chan, DISCO Network Program Coordinator, at chericec@umich.edu.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:43:03 -0400 2024-06-14T09:00:00-04:00 2024-06-14T17:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium Orange event flier with the DISCO Summit logo (a disco ball with the quantum computing symbol) surrounded by digital icons (e.g., wifi symbol, cursor, laptop). The flier includes the event date, location, a brief description, and cosponsors.
DISCO Network DISCO Summit 2024 (June 15, 2024 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/117761 117761-21839984@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, June 15, 2024 9:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

DISCO Network | DISCO Summit

Dates: Friday, June 14 – Saturday, June 15, 2024
Location: Weiser Hall, 10th Floor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Modality: Hybrid (all events will be held in-person with an option for individuals to attend virtually via Zoom webinar)

Registration is required to attend the DISCO Summit.

The deadline for in-person registration is Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Due to limited space in the venue, in-person registration will close once we reach our maximum capacity. Register to attend in-person: https://myumi.ch/Pkrgg

The deadline for Zoom webinar registration is Wednesday, June 13, 2024. Register to attend via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/N61QZ

Event Description:

The DISCO Summit is a two-day interdisciplinary summer symposium about digital social inequalities in celebration of the third year of the DISCO Network. The DISCO Summit will include nine panel conversations about the past, present, and future of the intersection between digital technology, culture, race, disability, gender, sexuality, and liberation.

The DISCO Network is a collaborative, intergenerational group of scholars dedicated to envisioning a new anti-racist and anti-ableist digital future. The DISCO Network comprises six labs across five universities: the Michigan Hub at the University of Michigan Digital Studies Institute (PI: Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan), HAT Lab (PI: Rayvon Fouché; Northwestern University), DAF Lab (PI: M. Remi Yergeau, University of Michigan), Future Histories Studio (PI: Stephanie Dinkins, Stony Brook University), PREACH Lab (André Brock, Georgia Institute of Technology), and BCaT Lab (Catherine Knight Steele, University of Maryland-College Park). The DISCO Network is supported by the Mellon Foundation.

This event is free and open to the public. The DISCO Summit provides a platform for scholars, students, artists, practitioners, activists, and community members to convene and engage in dialogue about racial inequality, histories of exclusion, disability justice, techno-ableism, and digital racial politics within the academy, the technology industry, and beyond. We especially welcome individuals whose interests lie in the intersection of the digital and identity and have found difficulties pursuing their endeavors at their home institutions.

Event Schedule:

Day 1: Friday, June 14, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Digital Optimism with Lisa Nakamura, Rayvon Fouché, Stephanie Dinkins, André Brock, Remi Yergeau, and Catherine Knight Steele
Optimism is the belief that the interval between the now and liberation is where we can act. Digital optimism is the recognition that there are elements of life that vivify and energize in the here and the now, despite and amidst the digital purgatories that we endure. Sometimes that energy is found in stillness; sometimes in refusal; and sometimes in moments of catharsis or joy. This panel will explore the concept of digital optimism as it appears in DISCO’s collaborative writing and work together.

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Frictions with Remi Yergeau, David Adelman, Jeff Nagy, Aimi Hamraie, Jaipreet Virdi, and Mara Mills
In their manifesto on crip technoscience, Kelly Fritsch and Aimi Hamraie (2019) impress upon us that access production is a “frictional process,” one that requires “acknowledging that science and technology can be used to both produce and dismantle injustice.” This roundtable explores the frictional intimacies, practices, and material conditions of what it means to do the digital. In particular, panelists will consider myriad ways in which accessibility holds the potential to burn, grate, spark, and tug at new imaginings of crip futures.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Digital Black Feminist Pleasure and Pain Online with Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott, Francesca Sobande, and Kishonna Gray
The experiences of Black women online serve as a harbinger of what digital culture affords and what is to come. This panel thinks through the relationship between pleasure and pain in the online lives of Black women and how Black feminist methods, epistemologies, and strategies may point us toward a better digital future for us all.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Little Memes: Storying Race, Gender, and Disability in the Digital Studies Classroom with Remi Yergeau, Huan He, and Toni Bushner
How do students’ stories about themselves or others—their anecdotal relations—inform their burgeoning understandings of digital inequality and related concepts? In this session, we reflect on student interviews and instructor experiences drawn from a study of five U-M Digital Studies classes focused on race and disability.

4:00 pm - 5:15 pm
Black Digital Optimism in an Age of Despair with André Brock, Kevin Winstead, Brandy Pettijohn, Apryl Williams, and Ngozi Harrison
This panel will discuss what social media activity looks like for Black folk at a time when economic disparity, geopolitical extremism, and the ongoing pandemic loom behind every post, tweet, video, and podcast.

Day 2: Saturday, June 15, 2024

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Black Innovation with Rayvon Fouché, Aaron Dial, Ron Eglash, Michael Bennett, Aria Halliday, and Tonia Sutherland
Black folks have a tradition of being innovative in ways not understood and expected by traditional markets, dominant cultural formations, or information platforms. As the world is enamored, fascinated, enraptured, troubled, or simply confused by the potentiality of generative AI, is there a place and a role for Blackness to participate, contribute, or intervene in this next technoscientific atmospheric river? What will Black innovation and creativity look like in a world propelled by a network of AI trained on past utterances that did not see Blackness as meaningful? How can Blackness and Black innovation and creativity disrupt expected technoscientific futures?

10:30 am - 11:45 am
Digital Possibilities with Stephanie Dinkins, Hagar Masoud, Ria Rajan, Cezanne Charles, and Audrey Bennet
"Digital Possibilities" presents an intergenerational panel of arts practitioners who explore the critical role deliberate exploration and practical research play in understanding and shaping digital technologies and culture. The panel showcases the transformative power deeply engaging digital technologies can have on molding practical, aspirational, and equitable understandings of self and society. Panelists discuss how practice can leverage discovery, curiosity, out-of-the-box thinking, and leadership to mine and challenge opportunities, or the lack thereof, for beauty, potentiality, subjugation, and liberation that digital technologies often carry. The panel also engages thought about how future, present, and past technologies combined with narratives centering on underutilized, underrecognized communities can be coaxed or developed to produce technological ecosystems that produce nuanced, open, and equitably informed digital tools, platforms, and collaborators.

1:00 pm - 2:15 pm
Majority World Digital Infrastructures with Lisa Nakamura, Marisa Duarte, Ivan Chaar Lopez, Meryem Kamil, Huan He, and Jasmine Banks
Digital infrastructure shapes access, representation, and cultural politics. Indigenous, Asian and Southeast Asian, Palestinian, U.S. Mexico border, and women of color uses of digital networks are often represented as niche or marginal, sequestered in area studies, ethnic studies, and women studies, yet the U.S. and Western Europe are the numerical minority.

2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Legibility and Community in Digital Studies with Huan He, Kevin Winstead, David Adelman, Aaron Dial, Jeff Nagy, Rianna Walcott, and Brandy Pettijohn
As junior scholars, the Digital Inquiry Speculation Collaboration Optimism (DISCO) Network postdoctoral fellows faced unique challenges negotiating the tensions of being legible for academic employment and serving digital studies projects that foster collaboration and community. This panel discusses best practices for being young career scholars in critical identity and digital studies.

We would like to thank the following co-sponsors:
- Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
- Department of American Culture
- Department of Communication and Media
- Department of English Literature and Language
- Department of Film, Television, and Media
- Department of History
- Department of History of Art
- Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
- Science, Technology, and Society Program
- University of Michigan Initiative on Disability Studies
- Center for Racial Justice
- Science, Technology, and Public Policy
- Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs
- Spectrum Center
- Marsal Family School of Education Office of Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Equity
- Computer Science and Engineering
- School of Information Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing
- Institute for Research on Women & Gender

Accessibility statement: We strive to make our events accessible to all participants.
- All attendees are requested to wear well-fitting masks. Masks will be provided at the event space.
- Communication Access Real-time Translation (CART) services will be provided.
- The event space is ADA-compliant.
- Gender-neutral and accessible restrooms are available in the event space.
- A quiet space will be available.
- The event planning team has worked to mitigate potential sensory triggers, such as loud buzzing sounds or flickering lights, in the event space. Individuals with sensory sensitivities should be aware that there is a possibility of unpredictable sound or lighting changes during the event.
- All attendees are requested to refrain from using scented products, such as perfume or cologne. Unscented products (e.g., soap, hand sanitizer) will be provided at the event space.
- A digital copy of the event program will be made available at least a week prior to the event.
- For those who are unable to attend the event in-person, a livestream viewing option is available.
- More detailed information about the event space (including how to access it and how the space will be arranged) will be made available on our website.
- If there are additional ways that we can meet your access needs, please indicate this in the registration form. Please register as soon as possible as some accommodations may require advance coordination.

For all inquiries related to the DISCO Summit, please contact Cherice Chan, DISCO Network Program Coordinator, at chericec@umich.edu.

]]>
Conference / Symposium Thu, 28 Mar 2024 15:43:03 -0400 2024-06-15T09:00:00-04:00 2024-06-15T17:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium Orange event flier with the DISCO Summit logo (a disco ball with the quantum computing symbol) surrounded by digital icons (e.g., wifi symbol, cursor, laptop). The flier includes the event date, location, a brief description, and cosponsors.