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DTSTAMP:20260810T152323
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20260923T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20260923T173000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:DISCO Network Presents - Feeling the Future: Asian/Americanist Takes on Techno-Empire\, Chinamaxxing\, & the “American Century of Humiliation”
DESCRIPTION:\"You've met me at a very Chinese time in my life.\" American social media users and influencers like Hasan Piker\, I Show Speed\, and Kris Jenner have become newly interested in China as a source of cultural and technological inspiration. This panel of experts in technology policy\, Chinese techno-culture\, and the interplay between the U.S. and Asia will discuss the roots of \"Chinamaxxing\" in U.S. China relations. The panelists are members of the A\,I.eeeee Collective and co-authors of a new book project called \"Feeling the Future: Asian American Takes on Techno-Empire\" which discusses Asian semiconductors\, A.I.\, robots\, and electric vehicles as sources of both envy and of resentment.\n\nThis event is open to the public\, and we encourage all interested faculty\, graduate students\, and undergraduate students to attend.\n\nRefreshments will be provided to the first 100 attendees.\n\nA corresponding opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to enjoy a free networking lunch with the panelists will be available. Interested students may register for this session using the same form as the main event.\n\nAdvance registration is recommended:\n\nRegister to attend in-person: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/22866\n\nRegister to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DDCtopKmSYalc0nf9BadMg\n\nMeet the Panelists:\n\nBrian J. Chen is Data & Society’s policy director\, leading the organization’s work to shape tech policy. With a background in movement lawyering and legislative and regulatory advocacy\, he has worked extensively on issues of economic justice\, political economy\, and tech governance. Previously\, Brian was a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project\, where he led campaigns to strengthen the labor and employment rights of digital platform workers and others in precarious industries. His writing has appeared in The Baffler\, Phenomenal World\, Boston Review\, and other magazines. He holds a JD from New York University School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan.\n\nJulie Y. Chu is a sociocultural anthropologist with interests in mobility and migration\, economy and value\, ritual life\, material culture\, media and technology\, and state regulatory regimes. Her book\, Cosmologies of Credit: Transnational Mobility and the Politics of Destination in China (Duke University Press\, 2010)\, received the 2011 Sharon Stephens Prize from the American Ethnological Society and the 2012 Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. It was also shortlisted for the 2011 Gregory Bateson Prize from the Society of Cultural Anthropology.  Her current writing project is entitled The Hinge of Time: Infrastructure and Chronopolitics at China's Global Edge. Based on three years of fieldwork largely among Chinese customs inspectors and transnational migrant couriers\, this work will analyze the various infrastructures in place (legal-rational\, financial\, cosmic\, piratical) for managing the temporal intensities and rhythms of people and things on the move between Southern China and the United States. \n\nJasmine Ehrhardt is a PhD Candidate in American Culture and Digital Studies at the University of Michigan. Their research engages in critical prison studies\, digital media studies\, and Asian American studies. Their dissertation \"Making the High-Tech Prison: Media\, Infrastructure\, and Counter-Narratives of the Digital\,” explores the knowledge production\, analysis\, and media practices of imprisoned radicals and abolitionists\, and their relationships to digital technology. Analyzing the archives of abolitionist intellectual and political work from the 1970s to the 2010s—in print and digital forms such as zines\, essays\, personal correspondence\, podcasts\, TikToks\, and other social media ephemera—this work shows how surveillance\, security\, and digital communications technologies have structured political organizing and repression inside US prisons. Jasmine's writing has appeared in AfterImage\, Journal of Visual Culture\, and Amerasia Journal. \n\nPaul Kim is a PhD candidate in the Film and Media Studies department at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB). His work lies at the intersection of critical AI studies\, critical race studies\, and visual studies. His dissertation titled “Recommending Race” investigates racial subjectivity within the contemporary recommender system. His work has been supported by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center at UCSB (IHC) and the Asian/Pacific American Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)\, among others. He has co-organized the 9th iteration of the Media Fields conference\, “Witnessing\,” and is on the editing team for the ensuant special issue of Media Fields. His work has been published in AI & Society. In his free time\, Paul ravenously watches cinema of the 2020s (TikTok and\, recently and excitingly\, Instagram Reels).\n\nMeet the Moderator:\n\nLisa Nakamura is the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan\, Ann Arbor. She is the lead Principal Investigator of the DISCO (Digital Inquiry\, Speculation\, Collaboration\, and Optimism) Network along with Rayvon Fouché\, Catherine Knight Steele\, and M. Remi Yergeau. Nakamura is also the founding Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan and has been writing about digital media\, race\, and gender since 1994. She has written books and articles on digital bodies\, race\, and gender in online environments\, on toxicity in video game culture\, and the many reasons that Internet research needs ethnic and gender studies. She is the author of The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet (University of Minnesota\, 2026)\, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (University of Minnesota\, 2007) and Cybertypes: Race\, Ethnicity\, and Identity on the Internet (Routledge\, 2002). \n\nWe want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate\, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
UID:149356-21906269@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/149356
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Artificial Intelligence,Asian American Studies,Big Tech,Culture,Digital Culture,Digital Media,Digital Studies,Digital Studies Institute,Diversity Equity and Inclusion,Information and Technology
LOCATION:Weiser Hall - 10th Floor
CONTACT:
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260806T161417
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20261009T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20261009T153000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:DISCO Network Presents - Refuse\, Resist\, Repair: Making Critical Moves in the Times of AI
DESCRIPTION:A.I. is inevitable-- at least that is what we would be led to believe from the nonstop media coverage\, podcast interviews with tech billionaires\, and the advertisements interspersed in our TikTok and Reels doomscrolling sessions. But what does it mean to bring a critical eye to Generative A.I.? Why should the average person care about how their data is used to fuel these systems? Who does the labor that makes them work? And what impact will this push to incorporate A.I. in the classroom\, healthcare\, politics\, and pop culture have on us as a society and on our environment? This panel considers three possibilities: refusal\, resistance\, and repair as responses to A.I.'s creep into our daily lives.\n\nThis event is open to the public\, and we encourage all interested faculty\, graduate students\, and undergraduate students to attend.\n\nAdvance registration is recommended. \n\nRegister to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LrO1U6J_SrG1h5lh_l0Nxw\n\nMeet the Panelists:\n\nJenny L. Davis is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University with a secondary appointment in Vanderbilt's College of Connected Computing (CCC). She is an Honorary Professor of Sociology at The Australian National University\, an alumni affiliate at the Center for Democracy and Technology\, and Co-Director of Vanderbilt's Computing + Society program. She works at the intersection of social psychology and technology studies\, focusing on the ways social forces embed within and are affected by\, technological systems. Her first book\, How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things (MIT Press 2020) presents an operational framework for the analysis and design of technologies in society. Her second book\, The Injustice of Fairness: Algorithmic Reparation and the Case for Redress shifts the foundation of algorithmic ethics\, challenging 'fairness' as the default value-standard (co-authored with Apryl Williams) (UC Press\, 2026).\n\nJulián Posada is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and co-director of the certificate in Computing\, Culture\, and Society at Yale University. His research examines the social and cultural dimensions of information\, especially the role of labor and infrastructure in the development of artificial intelligence. He is the author of Platform Extractivism: Data Work and The People Powering Artificial Intelligence (University of California Press\, 2026). This book argues that the development of datasets for artificial intelligence depends on labor organized through “platform extractivism\,” a system that exploits economic instability to capture value from precaritized workers. By reframing AI data work as a continuation of historical extractive relations\, the monograph intervenes in debates on the future of work and the hidden costs of AI and digital platforms. Posada’s interests include platform studies\, labor studies\, digital ethics and policy\, social computing\, and science and technology studies. \n\nApryl Williams is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University\, a former Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla\, as well as an affiliated researcher at NYU's Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies. She is the author of Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating\, published with Stanford University Press. As a multidisciplinary scholar\, Williams studies experiences of gender and race at the intersection of digital spaces and algorithmic technocultures. \n\nRua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University and a former Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council. As Principal Investigator of the CoLiberation Lab\, Dr. Williams’s work explores how disabled people imagine and build their own sociotechnical worlds. Projects in the CoLiberation Lab investigate how technology policy and research practice interact to disrupt disabled people’s bodily autonomy and access to meaningful public life. Dr. Williams's book\, Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong about AI is forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan.\n\nMeet the Moderator:\n\nCatherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry\, Speculation\, Collaboration\, & Optimism (DISCO) Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow. Her research focuses on race\, gender\, and media\, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community. \n\nWe want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate\, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
UID:149368-21906279@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/149368
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Artificial Intelligence,Data Science,Digital Culture,Digital Cultures,Digital Media,Digital Studies,Digital Studies Institute,Information and Technology,Infrastructure,Technology
LOCATION:Off Campus Location
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260806T161457
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20261105T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20261105T173000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:DISCO Network Presents - Hypecels\, Technoskepticists\, and Artificial Intelligence
DESCRIPTION:Event description coming soon.\n\nThis event is open to the public\, and we encourage all interested faculty\, graduate students\, and undergraduate students to attend.\n\nRefreshments will be provided to the first 100 attendees.\n\nA corresponding opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to enjoy a free networking lunch with the panelists will be available. Interested students may register for this session using the same form as the main event.\n\nAdvance registration is recommended:\n\nRegister to attend in-person: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/22871\n\nRegister to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_V1IsoIFFQ5K6fdVIS00FyA\n\nMeet the Panelists:\n\nNina-Simone Edwards is the Technology and Research Librarian at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Her research examines privacy\, technology governance\, and information justice\, with particular attention to how race\, vulnerability\, and digital access shape experiences of surveillance and cybersecurity harms. She recently completed both a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgetown Law's Institute for Technology Law & Policy\, where she worked on the Redesigning the Governance Stack Project\, and a Master's in Library and Information Science from The Catholic University of America. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.\n\nNgozi Harrison is a Ph.D. Student at the University of California\, Los Angeles\, in Information Studies\, whose research primarily investigates the relationship between machine learning\, quantitative and computational methods\, and society. His work critiques algorithmic culture and computational reason and sits at the intersection of Black Studies\, Critical Quantitative and Computational Methods\, and Critical Information Studies. He is currently working on his dissertation proposal\, which critically examines the underlying values\, norms\, and assumptions of machine learning practice to develop new frameworks for liberatory technical practice and justice-oriented technologies.\n\nDJ is an interdisciplinary scholar of race\, technology\, and learning and an Assistant Professor of Computing at Chicago State University. She particularly examines how and if researchers\, educators\, and technologists might use and create technologies toward liberatory learning and living. DJ (Stephanie T. Jones) earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Learning Sciences and an M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University. She holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Villanova University. \n\nMeet the Moderator:\n\nRayvon Fouché holds a joint appointment as Professor of Communication Studies\, School of Communication\, and Professor of Journalism\, Medill School of Journalism\, Media\, and Integrative Marketing Communications\, and is currently Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the School of Communication. His major publications include Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation (Johns Hopkins University Press\, 2003)\, Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Social Power (University of Minnesota Press\, 2004)\, Technology Studies (Sage Publications\, 2008)\, the 4th Edition of the Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (MIT Press\, 2016)\, Game Changer: The Technoscientific Revolution in Sports (Johns Hopkins University Press\, 2017)\, and Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal (Stanford University Press\, 2025). He is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Science\, Technology\, and Society.\n\nWe want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate\, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
UID:149370-21906283@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/149370
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Artificial Intelligence,Big Tech,Computational Science,Digital Culture,Digital Cultures,Digital Media,Digital Studies,Digital Studies Institute,Information and Technology,Social Justice,Technology
LOCATION:Weiser Hall - 10th Floor
CONTACT:
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260806T161401
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20270226T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20270226T153000
SUMMARY:Lecture / Discussion:DISCO Network Presents - From Community Center to Content Farm: New Modes of Digitality for Black Women and Girls
DESCRIPTION:Event description coming soon.\n\nThis event is open to the public\, and we encourage all interested faculty\, graduate students\, and undergraduate students to attend.\n\nRefreshments will be provided to the first 100 attendees.\n\nA corresponding networking opportunity with the panelists will be available for undergraduate and graduate students. Interested students may register for this session using the same form as the main event. More information coming soon. \n\nAdvance registration is recommended:\n\nRegister to attend in-person: https://sessions.studentlife.umich.edu/track/event/session/111880\n\nRegister to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jmr7uP-iSuyjO0RgeRTl1Q\n\nMeet the Panelists:\n\nDr. Aria S. Halliday is an award-winning author who specializes in the study of cultural constructions of black girlhood and womanhood in material\, visual\, and digital culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Her research is published in venues such as The Black Scholar\, Cultural Studies\, Feminist Theory\, Girlhood Studies\, and Women\, Gender\, and Families of Color.  She is the author of Black Girls and How We Fail Them (UNC Press\, 2025) and Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press\, 2022). She edited and introduced The Black Girlhood Studies Collection (Women’s Press\, 2019). She was an Institute for Citizens and Scholars Career Enhancement Fellow (2020-2021)\, a Donald D. Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023)\, and the 2021 Stuart Hall Foundation x Cultural Studies Award winner for her article “Twerk Sumn!: Theorizing Black Girl Epistemology in the Body.” Currently\, she is the Marie Rich Endowed Professor in Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and program in African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She’s working on two books\, A Black Feminist Guide to Automobility\, and In a 90s Kind of World: Black Girls and Women in Popular Culture. She is also the owner and founder of Plume & Prosper\, a wellness retreat experience.\n\nNessa Keddo is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Media\, Diversity and Technology at King’s College London. She is Programme Director for MA Global Media Industries and the Department’s EDI Lead. Nessa’s research explores the intersection of diversity practices and technological deployment in the media industries. More recently with the onset of automated praxis through generative AI\, her work explores the affordances and challenges of digitised and platform labour\, particularly for marginalised practitioners and independent creators. Nessa’s research is grounded in critical approaches to the embedding of diversity practices in the media industries. She is co-author of the upcoming book Race\, Racism and Diversity in the Cultural and Creative Industries (2025)\, which focuses on the business case for diversity\, specifically since the commercialisation of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.\n\nAshleigh Greene Wade is Associate Professor of Digital Studies\, jointly appointed in Media Studies and African American Studies. Broadly speaking\, her work traverses the fields of Black girlhood studies\, digital and visual media studies\, Black Feminist theory\, and digital humanities. Wade has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and is an alumna of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies Fellowship Program. Her work on digital Blackness appears in The Black Scholar\, National Political Science Review\, Women\, Gender\, and Families of Color\, Visual Arts Research\, and Camera Obscura: Feminism\, Culture\, and Media Studies. Wade’s forthcoming monograph\, Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency and Possibility in Everyday Digital Practice (Duke University Press)\, explores the role of Black girls’ digital practices in documenting and preserving everyday Black life.\n\nDr. Rianna Walcott is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland\, and Associate Director of the Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab as part of the DISCO Network. An alumna of the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP)\, Dr. Walcott earned her PhD in Digital Humanities at King's College London for her research on Black (and specifically Black British) communication practices and digital media\, locating the evolution of a hybrid ‘Black British’ identity within the wider Black diaspora. She combines digital research\, Black feminist praxis\, decolonial studies\, arts and culture\, and mental health advocacy in her work. In the time left over\, she moonlights as a jazz singer.\n\nMeet the Moderator\n\nCatherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry\, Speculation\, Collaboration\, & Optimism (DISCO) Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow. Her research focuses on race\, gender\, and media\, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community. \n\nWe want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate\, please email Cherice Chan at chericec@umich.edu.
UID:149740-21907047@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/149740
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:African American,african and african american studies,african and afroamerican studies,Digital Culture,Digital Cultures,digital humanities,Digital Media,Digital Scholarship,Digital Studies,Digital Studies Institute,digital technology,Diversity,Diversity Equity and Inclusion,Feminism,Gender
LOCATION:Weiser Hall - 10th Floor
CONTACT:
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