Media, Technology, and the Liberal Arts
with Chris Gilliard, John Marx, and Shannon Mattern
Thursday, February 1, 4:30-6pm, SC 199, Cuniff Hall, Swarthmore College
How do the liberal arts prepare students to navigate today’s highly mediated and unequal world? How do media and technology shape the experience and perception of higher education? What alternative approaches to media and technology can the liberal arts offer?
Join Aydelotte Foundation Advisory Board members prominent in public conversations about media, technology, and higher education for a wide-ranging discussion, followed on Friday, February 2, at 9am in the Lang Center for Civic and Social Engagement by an open session with faculty and staff engaged with these questions.
Chris Gilliard is a writer, professor and speaker. His scholarship concentrates on digital privacy and the intersections of race, class, and technology. He is an advocate for critical and equity-focused approaches to tech in education. He is currently a Just Tech Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. His work has been featured in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, EDUCAUSE Review, Fast Company, Vice, Wired and The Atlantic.
John Marx is Professor of English and Vice Provost for Academic Planning at Aggie Square at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire and Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel and, with Mark Garrett Cooper, of Media U: How the Need to Win Audiences Has Shaped Higher Education.
Shannon Mattern is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Media Studies and the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching focus on media architectures, information infrastructures, and urban technologies. Her books include Deep Mapping the Media City, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: 5000 Years of Urban Media, and A City Is Not a Computer.
Swarthmore community members are invited to join a follow-up discussion with Gilliard and Mattern on media education and technology at 9am on Friday, February 2 at the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. For more information and to RSVP.
This panel launches Aydelotte’s Media, Art, and Technology series, which continues Spring 2024 with the following talks:
March 4 Yoel Roth ’11, ,“Decentralizing Online Safety: The Promises and Perils of Federated Social Media”
March 20 & 21 Anna Shechtman ’13, Reading from her new book The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle and leading a seminar on “The Media Concept: A Genealogy”
March 28 Mary Beltrán on Latino TV
April 18 micha cárdenas on queer and trans digital culture
