BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//UM//UM*Events//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Detroit
TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/America/Detroit
X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Detroit
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0400
TZNAME:EDT
DTSTART:20070311T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0400
TZOFFSETTO:-0500
TZNAME:EST
DTSTART:20071104T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261026T134319
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20261102T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20261102T180000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:Depressed Mothers and Rebellious Sons: Relationships in the History of American Mood Disorders
DESCRIPTION:The formal diagnosis of adult major depressive disorder emerged in the 1970s in the context of research with medication\, though disagreement about whether children could experience depression was not resolved until the 1980s and 1990s. Many critics and scholars have interrogated the construction of psychiatric diagnosis in the United States. This talk will attend to the relationships that formed the backdrop in depression research\, especially between depressed mothers and their rebellious sons. In the process of creating purportedly objective categories of illness\, relationship dynamics were redefined as genetic propensity\, while the brain was located as a value-neutral site\, away from social context.\n\nLaura Hirshbein\, MD\, PhD is the George E Wantz MD Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. She is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of the Program of the History of Medicine and Public Health within the Center for History\, Humanities\, the Arts\, Social Sciences\, and Ethics of Medicine (CHHASSEM).\n\nShe has published two books (American Melancholy in 2009 and Smoking Privileges in 2013)\, and her third book is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (Troubled). She is editor-in-chief of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.
UID:152530-21913887@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152530
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Science,Society,Technology
LOCATION:Tisch Hall - 1014
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260921T122514
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20270201T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20270201T180000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:Becoming Sensitive: The Pedagogy of Smelling and the Environmental Politics of Sensitivity
DESCRIPTION:This talk examines how different social and technological bodies—including e-waste workers\, environmental scientists\, and E-noses—perceive and engage with the pervasive toxic smell in Guiyu\, an e-waste recycling hub in China severely affected by the chemical pollution produced through e-waste processing. The residual smell of crude e-waste recycling practices functions as a sensory modality that traces the environmental violence of the global e-waste economy. It exemplifies what I call \"\"secondhand extraction\"\": a form of extraction within the recycling economy that not only generates but also mediates an alternative\, secondary\, yet equally powerful set of material\, environmental\, and political relations.\n\nI argue that the concept of environmental sensitivity is key to understanding both the lived experience of chemical saturation and China’s model of environmental governance as it takes on distinct meanings across contexts. On the one hand\, it refers to a subjective\, bodily quality—the degree of sensitivity of one’s olfactory faculties. On the other\, it operates as a scientific metric for measuring a community’s vulnerability to environmental hazards\, which in turn shapes the state distribution of land use and ownership. To grasp the complexities of local environmental politics in China\, we must understand how these two layers of sensitivity\, bodily and bureaucratic\, intertwine paradoxically.\n\nTinghao Zhou is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Society of Fellows and Assistant Professor of Film\, Television\, and Media at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in Film and Media Studies from the University of California\, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the intersections of media theory\, environmental humanities and justice\, science and technology studies\, critical infrastructure studies\, and digital cultures in China and beyond. His current book project\, _At the Ends of Media_\, explores the material and political impacts of the global media economy on local communities\, labor conditions\, and ecologies. He currently serves as Associate and Review Editor of _Media+Environment_.
UID:152532-21913888@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152532
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Science,Society,Technology
LOCATION:Tisch Hall - 1014
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260921T122847
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20270315T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20270315T180000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:A Brief History of Pretending to Use the Computer
DESCRIPTION:The post-pandemic explosion of work-from-home arrangements is often credited with the rise of \"mouse jigglers\,\" devices or programs that simulate user input\, allowing workers to evade surveillance by their managers. But the history of pretending to use computers is nearly as long as the history of actually using them. This talk traces the genealogy of techniques for simulating computer use\, ranging from coffee mugs set on keyboards to AI agents granted root-level privileges. These techniques have evolved in parallel with new methods and motives for detecting computer use—most conspicuously\, efforts to assess whether users are paying attention by conflating their attention with the activity of the machines they use. The ubiquity of simulated computer use raises questions about the units in which the attention economy is denominated.\n\nNick Seaver is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University\, where he also directs the program in Science\, Technology & Society. His research examines the relationship between cultural concepts and technological practices\, particularly in computational settings. He is co-editor of Towards an Anthropology of Data (2021) and the author of Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation (2022)\, an ethnographic study of music recommender system developers. He is currently writing a book on the meaning and measurement of attention and developing a project on the anthropology of contraptions.
UID:152534-21913889@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152534
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Science,Society,Technology
LOCATION:Tisch Hall - 1014
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260921T123957
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20270405T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20270405T180000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:Japanese Medical Aid\, Iranian Blood\, and the Diplomacy of Genetic Racialism
DESCRIPTION:In 1966\, Japan’s Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency (OTCA) established an office for “medical cooperation\,” which recruited Japanese medical schools to participate in international aid projects to strengthen scientific\, as well as political\, ties with countries across Asia and Africa. Gifu University Medical School was selected to work in Iran\, launching a flow of Japanese personnel and scientific equipment to the laboratories of Tehran University. While Iranian scientists were primarily interested in receiving technical aid\, Japanese scientists were eager to conduct joint fieldwork projects. The organization of a joint expedition to northern Iran in 1972 exposed a series of tensions in the Japanese-Iranian collaboration. The team eventually collected blood samples from thousands of Iranian villagers to screen them for pathologies. Then\, most of these blood samples were shipped to Japan\, where they had a surprising afterlife. Circulating through laboratories in Tokyo\, Nagasaki\, and Osaka\, the Iranian blood was incorporated into a research project to analyze genetic variation within Japan’s own population\, and data from the samples featured in Japanese publications hypothesizing about the origins of the Japanese race. Meanwhile\, in publications with Iranian co-authors\, the meaning of the genetic data had to be re-negotiated according to Iranian understandings of racial identity.\n\nElise K. Burton is an associate professor for the Institute of the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press\, 2021). She is currently working on multiple projects examining the history of 20th-century scientific collaborations across Asia and the Middle East\, including the history of Japanese archaeological and genetic expeditions in West Asia\, the linked histories of physical anthropology in India and Iran\, and the history of ancient DNA studies in Egypt. She is also one of the co-editors of Isis\, the flagship journal of the History of Science Society.
UID:152558-21913914@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152558
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Science,Society,Technology
LOCATION:Tisch Hall - 1014
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260921T124336
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20270412T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20270412T180000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:People of the Machine: Computers and Human Reason in the Cold War
DESCRIPTION:Additional details forthcoming.
UID:152560-21913915@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152560
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Science,Society,Technology
LOCATION:Tisch Hall - 1014
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR