Fall 2017 Course Offerings

(also COML 4614, STS 4616) 
Fall. 4 credits.
Limited to 15 students. 
R. Mukherjee
M: 12:20 – 2:15 p.m.

How are theories of viral media and microbial contagion related? What are the connections between capitalism, collaboration, corruption, and contamination, and why should such relationships be part of environmental mediations? What is the contribution of corruption to carbon footprints and the Anthropocene, and how can regulating corruption aid in controlling our quotidian precarity and averting the future apocalypse?

In this course, we will conceptualize media as environment (and the environment as media), and study the different ecologies (and geologies) of information and material flows, paying attention to proliferating scams, leaks, and copies. One might see the materialization of corruption in practices of nepotism and bribery fostered by vested interests, and corruption can also be discerned as a socio-material value related to ethical and physical decay and degradation. Here, corruption gets associated with contamination, and is seen to spread through the environment and body politic. Regarded in these ways, “Corrupting Environmental Media” becomes a course about the entangled epistemological and phenomenological dimensions of mediation and corruption.

The course begins with discussion of films and various other media (including artworks and literary texts) that deal with the adverse environmental effects of governmental and corporate corruption including the impact of mega-development projects on people’s livelihoods, water bodies, and the planet. We shall then move on to conceptualizing corruption as contagion understood at both biological (pandemics) and informational (computer viruses) levels. Reactions to corruption or contagion treat them as threatening diseases needing boundaries and borders, and yet corruption/contagion is a profoundly relational practice. Capitalism thrives not only on accumulation but also through collaboration, and such collaborations lead to contaminations. The final section of the course traces the circuits linking capital, corruption, and media.

Rahul Mukherjee is the Dick Wolf Assistant Professor of Television and New Media Studies in the Cinema and Media Studies program (Department of English) at University of Pennsylvania. His book project examines environmental controversies related to radiant infrastructures such as nuclear reactors and cell antennas, which irradiate promises of development and simultaneously generate intense fears of carcinogenic radiations. His writings have appeared in the journals Media, Culture & Society, BioScope, New Media & Society, and Science, Technology & Human Values and several other edited collections and online journals. Drawing on the conceptual lenses of infrastructure studies, media anthropology, and environmental humanities, he has been studying public cultures of uncertainty about disruptive technologies by attending to frameworks concerned with affect, media practices, and relational ontologies. Rahul has been part of a collaborative project exploring ICT usage in Zambia and more recently has embarked on another fieldwork researching the use of memory cards and memory sticks as part of mobile media assemblages affording circulation of vernacular music videos in India.

(also LATA 4617, VISST 4617) 
Fall. 4 credits.
Limited to 15 students. 
L. Pérez León 
R: 2:30 – 4:25 p.m.

The seminar seeks to examine the relationships among three topics: (i) social vision (a form of collective intentionality), (ii) institutional corruption in Mexico, and (iii) artistic visual representations of institutional corruption in Mexico. Two questions will guide the seminar discussions: Can we see institutional corruption? And, are visual representations of institutional corruption a form of collective intentionality? To tackle them, our case study will be series of photographs, films, and documentaries depicting corruption within three institutional settings in Mexico: the government, the university, and the family. The seminar will be divided into three parts.

Part I. Social vision (a form of collective intentionality): Some of our mental states are directed at human individuals. Here, we will examine the idea that some of our visual experiences are also directed at human individuals, as well as standard visual properties and social affordances, posited to examine the various ways in which a human individual visually appears. Additionally, we will reflect on the claim that some of our visual experiences directed at human individuals are the kind of mental states that contribute to the constitution of social institutions.

Part II. Institutional corruption in Mexico: Social institutions aim to fulfill certain ends by means of particular processes. A social institution is sometimes understood as consisting in a structure of differentiated roles occupied by human persons. Role occupants are related, partly, by their contribution to the ends and the processes of the social institution. Here, we will discuss ends as well as structures of roles and tasks within three institutional settings in Mexico: the government, the university, and the family. In addition to this, we will examine some instances of role occupants who are corrupt or who have been corrupted within the mentioned social settings.

Part III. Artistic visual representations of institutional corruption in Mexico: Groups of contemporary photographers (particularly photojournalists), filmmakers and documentary makers have been interested in depicting corrupt settings in Mexico: in particular, the ways in which role occupants’ actions preclude the fulfillment of the ends of the government, the ends of the university, and the ends of the family. Here, we will analyze these artists’ shared understanding of what is depicted and of how depiction works.

To conclude, we will focus on the institutional affordances created by the artistic work of those photographers, filmmakers, and documentarians examined in our previous sessions.

Laura Pérez León received her Ph.D. in philosophy with a focus on cognitive sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2013. Her current research focuses on the nature of social vision, and the role of social perception in the constitution of the social world. Before coming to Cornell she conducted research on the phenomenal character of social vision in the Philosophy Department at Harvard University (2014-2017), and before that for a project on the philosophy of perception at UAM-C in Mexico City, Mexico (2012-2014). In 2014 Laura founded MENTEINVESTIGACION, an organization of philosophers interested in topics in the philosophy of mind in Mexico. Laura’s research interests include Philosophy of mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Sciences, Social Philosophy, and Social Documentary Photography.

(also ARKEO 4618, CLASS 4632, COML 4615, MEDVL 4718, STS 4618) 
Fall. 4 credits.
Limited to 15 students. 
C. Roby
T: 2:30 – 4:25 p.m.

How can studying the deep past of information storage and transmission help us understand our current engagements with information and contemplate its future? This course is designed to encourage students to think critically about the material substrates and mechanisms of information storage and transmission, which are often taken for granted until they break down. We will consider mechanisms of storage and loss from ancient media like clay cuneiform tablets to digital media (whose veneer of immateriality and exact reproduction disguises the complexities of the material mechanisms of storage and translation). Crucial to this process will be a strong focus on the material media involved: the ecologies of papyrus, parchment, and paper; the production of linen paper from a bubbling fermentation driven by the microorganisms on the clothing rags used to make it; the nuts and bolts of electronic data storage and transmission, from the micro-scale of a solid-state hard drive to the macro-scale of the server farm. Compilations and remixes, selective archival storage, piracies and hacks, inscribed objects and their digital “surrogates”: the transformation and re-use of information is a force potentially constructive, potentially destructive, so we will think critically about valuing originals and copies, and what “original” and “surrogate” imply not just right now but over past centuries.

Courtney Roby is an Assistant Professor of Classics at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the literary aspects of scientific and technical texts from the ancient world. Her first book (Technical Ekphrasis in Ancient Science: The Written Machine between Alexandria and Rome, Cambridge University Press 2016) traced the literary techniques used in the textual representation of technological artifacts from Hellenistic Greece to late-ancient Rome. Her current interests include the construction of scientific models in antiquity, ancient approaches to what we now call “distributed cognition,” and the troubled textual tradition of Hero of Alexandria.

Fall.  4 credits.  
Limited to fellowship recipients.  
E. Akcan & I. Dadi
T: 2:30 – 4:25 p.m.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS
The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and the Society for the Humanities announce an innovative graduate traveling seminar for students in the humanities and design disciplines. The Fall 2017 seminar is, “Migration and Discrimination” (ARCH 6308, SHUM 6308, ARTH 6308). Expanded Practice Seminars are offered under the auspices of Cornell University’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities grant. Selected students receive a $1,500 stipend and a funded, week-long travel program to Berlin in Fall 2017.

Expanded Practice Seminars bring students and faculty in the humanities and the design disciplines together around a common and pressing urban issue such as the cultural and material practices induced by national or ethnic divisions; the increasingly leaky taxonomy of the terra firma in areas where land/water boundaries are rapidly changing; and the inadequacy of static zoning models that fail to capture dynamic, urban economics and performance. The intent of the Expanded Practice Seminar is to study complex urban conditions using theoretical and analytic tools derived in equal part from the design disciplines and humanist studies. The Expanded Practice Seminar includes a site visit to experience the conditions under study and meet with local experts, designers, and authorities. This on-site component is a vital and novel aspect of these seminars. The seminar is open to selected students in a range of humanities and design disciplines. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the Expanded Practice Seminar, a wide range of skills and backgrounds are welcome. Advanced undergraduate students may apply, but preference will be given to students in their first three years of graduate study.

Materials to be submitted:
1. C.V. 
2. 500–700 word statement of interest describing your background interest in the seminar topic

No letters of recommendation are required.

Applications must be submitted via http://urbanismseminars.cornell.edu/apply/ by May 30, 2017. 
 

COURSE DESCRIPTION 
This seminar proposes to triangulate three cities from three different countries to understand the connections between migration and discrimination. Istanbul, Lahore, and Berlin, in the context of Turkey, Pakistan, and Germany, will be the foci of analysis through the perspective of urban humanities fields such as architecture, visual arts, urbanism, and literature.

This triangulation will allow for the de-essentialization of “Muslim countries” as homogenous and fixed places by observing the differences between Turkey and Pakistan. It will also enable critical examination of established perceptions of these places as being fundamentally different from the “West,” by identifying diasporas in Germany, and hybrid formations and translations taking place in between the three sites. Discrimination will be discussed both as a cause and a result of migration: internal problems that compel citizens to emigrate out of their countries will be analyzed in conjunction with ideological constructs that subject them to persistent discrimination in their countries of arrival. Immigration from and through these three cities will be discussed as emblematic of the wider problem of increased contemporary displacement from South and West Asia, and North Africa.

Students will travel to Berlin to pursue on-site research on the historical and current migrant and refugee settlements (such as Kreuzberg and the Tempelhof airport), unaffordable rents and recent gentrification of immigrant areas. This seminar will be held in conjunction with the Architecture option studio about Berlin taught by Werner Goehner (enrollment in the studio is not a requirement for the seminar). The seminar will also bring together scholars working in related fields to offer open lectures, as part of the AAP Critically Now series.

Course Instructors: Esra Akcan (Associate Professor of Architecture, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning) and Iftikhar Dadi (Associate Professor of History of Art, College of Arts & Sciences)