New York University 2013 Neil Postman Conference
Keynote Manuel Castells
http://postmanconference.org/ 

**Please note there will be talks the night before on February 21st starting at 6 PM**

Para|Sites aims to examine media practices that transform what is regulated and controlled, actions that reveal and exploit gaps in existing social, cultural, political and educational frameworks. “Para” indicates that which is to one side of, beyond, or alongside. This conference addresses the ways that media practices can subvert, recode, co-opt, and reroute networks, systems, and traditional media structures to achieve social and cultural agendas. At times these practices can occur at the expense of particular hosts: they exhibit “parasitical” behaviors in order to move into—or through—spaces in ways they cannot on their own. They can also generate alternative structures and divergent networks (“para-sites”) that facilitate undisciplined and innovative practices.

As a field, media studies can be considered para-sited, hosting conflicts and confluences, challenging the very idea of disciplines, borders and identity. This conference aims to also look at possibilities in the field of media studies within disjunctures, dislocations, disruption, and crises, producing potentialities and alternatives.

Thursday | February 21, 2013
Pless Hall Lounge, 82 Washington Square East, New York University

6:00 PM  Introduction and Welcome

6:15 PM The premiere screening of Type-Writer Opera, a ten-minute audiovisual piece (featuring music composed by Martin Scherzinger and video composed by Carlin Wing) 

6:30 PM  Media, Culture, and Communication Faculty Panel #1
"Of Platonic Objects and their Mesmers (Type-Writer Opera)" —Martin Scherzinger 
“The Cybernetic Hypothesis” —Alex Galloway 
"Faceless Speciation: of Gnats, Roaches and Sovereigns” —Allen Feldman

7:30 PM  Break

7:45 PM  Media, Culture, and Communication Faculty Panel #2
"The Circuitous Routes of Undersea Cables" —Nicole Starosielski
"Gaza: Geo-Political Containment and Technological Firewalls" —Helga Tawil-Souri
"Occupy and the Art of Protest" —Stephen Duncombe

9:00 PM  Reception

Friday | February 22, 2013
Hemmerdinger Hall, 100 Washington Square East, New York University

8:30 AM    Coffee

9:00 AM   Opening Remarks

9:15–9:35 AM  “Open Platforms, Para-Academic Practices, and Possible Futures for the University”  —Paul Boshears 

9:45-11:00 AM   Mediating the Body | Moderated by Paige MacGregor
"Disciplining Language: The Response to Anatomical Language in Social and Political Settings"
— Saniya L. Ghanoui
“Domestic Violence services as Sites of Contested Media Framing and Engagement: Two case studies from Ontario” — Janan Dean
“Tumblr feminism – Third-wave Subjectivities in Practice” — Fredrika Thelandersson
"Too Close for Comfort: Intimacy, Proximity and Transgression in Location-Based Technology" 
— Maxwell Foxman

11:15 AM – 12:30 PM  History and the Archive | Moderated by Susan Murray
“Insufficient Evidence: The Historical Question of Snuff” — Abby Hinsman
“Co-opting History, Delivering Culture: Korean Fusion Sageuks as Dramatic Vehicles of Hybridization”
— Sabrina Weiss
“History, Memory and the Pirate Archive of Cinema” — Kuhu Tanvir
"The Parasitic Behavior of Radio in the American Sector (RIAS)" — Heather Contant

12:30 PM   Lunch

1:30–3:00 PM  Geo-Politics | Moderated by Charlton McIlwain
"Media practice as a form of spatial conversation and political fortification: Occupying the Buffer Zone” — Petros Siammas
“Narcocinema: On Liminal Tastes, Audiences, and Circulation” — Juan Llamas-Rodriguez
“We should be software: Recoding cultural action through networked formations and open technologies in Latin America” — Mauricio Delfin
“Iceberg Economies and the New Media of Natural Resources” — Rafico Ruiz
"Distributed Denial of Statute: How the Internet Killed SOPA/PIPA” —Michelle Forelle

3:15 PM   The Materiality of Mediation | Moderated by Laura Portwood-Stacer
“Displaced or Relocated Digital Labor? Studies on Chinese Game Play-Workers and Transnational Labor Mobility in the Virtual World” — Yujie Julie Chen
“DIYbiology, Mediation, Institution” — Sarah Choukah
“On the Materiality of Simulated Objects” — Jacob Gaboury 
“Unprofessional: The Abject Bodies of Social Media” — Brian Droitcour

4:30 PM   Coffee

5:00 PM   Manuel Castells Keynote
“Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age”

6:00 PM   Concluding Remarks 

6:15 PM   Reception