Digital Culture + Media Initiative
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dcmiatpsu.bsky.social
Digital Culture + Media Initiative
@dcmiatpsu.bsky.social
Initiative of Penn State's Department of English, directed by Matt Tierney, supporting critical, speculative, and historical scholarship on cultures and media of computerized society. https://dcmi.la.psu.edu
Classroom report:

This week in a gen ed course about work, we're finishing this very good book by Erik Baker (@erikmbaker.bsky.social). It's good in the classroom, great on the history, and right on the politics. Read it, share it, teach it.
Make Your Own Job — Harvard University Press
A sweeping new history of the changing meaning of work in the United States, from Horatio Alger to Instagram influencers.How Americans think about work changed profoundly over the course of the twenti...
www.hup.harvard.edu
October 28, 2025 at 3:11 PM
Really great work by a friend of friends of the initiative.
October 23, 2025 at 6:04 PM
Our first in-person lecture of the year is Melissa Charenko, “Proxy Data: A History of the Scientific Stand-in.”

@melissacharenko.bsky.social is an Assistant Professor at U Penn, and will speak to us at 3pm on 11/19 in the Grucci Room.

Come one, come all. We couldn't be more excited!
October 9, 2025 at 12:53 PM
"That's unexpected." "It's completely unexpected."

... is an objectively funny way to begin a conversation about one of the most widely reported (if collectively disavowed) ongoing stories in the higher ed and tech industrieds.
Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow.
www.nytimes.com
September 29, 2025 at 1:11 PM
Ground beef entrepreneur predicts all-hamburger future.
OpenAI CEO tells Federal Reserve confab that entire job categories will disappear due to AI
Sam Altman also said AI could already diagnose better than doctors, as his company expands into Washington
www.theguardian.com
July 23, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Featuring excellent methodological foreword by DCMI fave Marc Steinberg.
Platforms and the Moving Image book now out! Edited by Philipp Keidl and Jana Zündel, featuring the work of many amazing scholars, and mostly junior scholars, including work on Netflix, IMDb, KaraGarga, smart homes, Disney+, ALTBalaji, and much more -
meson.press/books/platfo...
Platforms and the Moving Image › meson press
Platforms and the Moving Image offers a multifaceted look at how digital platforms shape and are shaped by economic, cultural, and political forces. The collection examines the effects of gaming, soci...
meson.press
June 20, 2025 at 3:10 PM
If you're in Durham for @sns2025.bsky.social at the end of the month, come by, say hi, bright and early.

Friday @ 8:30am, with Ben Mangrum and Justin Mitchell:
May 10, 2025 at 12:11 PM
𝗧𝗢𝗗𝗔𝗬
"Data Work as Care Work" — we couldn't be more excited for our upcoming visit from Kalindi Vora of Yale.

On April 10 at 3:30 in the Grucci Room, @kalindivora.bsky.social urges us to "challenge ongoing coloniality in tech design in the face of growing datafication."
April 10, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Our third and final talk of this year's series is next week! In “Finance by Other Means? The Ambiguous Moral Economies of the Subscription Business Model," Aaron Shapiro (@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social) asks how we might "reclaim subscriptionization for post-capitalist transformation."

Join us!
April 9, 2025 at 12:29 PM
"Data Work as Care Work" — we couldn't be more excited for our upcoming visit from Kalindi Vora of Yale.

On April 10 at 3:30 in the Grucci Room, @kalindivora.bsky.social urges us to "challenge ongoing coloniality in tech design in the face of growing datafication."
April 4, 2025 at 1:27 PM
TODAY!
Cannot wait: on 4.3, the year's first DCMI talk is Omedi Ochieng, brilliant author of INTELLECTUAL IMAGINATION and GROUNDWORK FOR THE PRACTICE OF THE GOOD LIFE!

(Up next: Kalindi Vora on 4.10 + Aaron Shapiro on 4.17!)

@omediochieng.bsky.social
@kalindivora.bsky.social
@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social
April 3, 2025 at 2:26 PM
Classroom report:

This article by @ursulahuws.bsky.social can still strike the hearts of students learning to be creative workers (and of at least some of the teachers who teach them). It's also a crystal-hard model of dialectical thinking.
Expression and expropriation: The dialectics of autonomy and control in creative labour | Ephemeral Journal
ephemerajournal.org
March 26, 2025 at 12:09 PM
Cannot wait: on 4.3, the year's first DCMI talk is Omedi Ochieng, brilliant author of INTELLECTUAL IMAGINATION and GROUNDWORK FOR THE PRACTICE OF THE GOOD LIFE!

(Up next: Kalindi Vora on 4.10 + Aaron Shapiro on 4.17!)

@omediochieng.bsky.social
@kalindivora.bsky.social
@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social
February 28, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Special session of #MLA25 #MLA2025, next Friday at 3:30:

"Sentimental Politics after Doomerism," with Zachary Loeb, Matt Tierney, Melanie Abeygunawardana, and Sheila Liming (@seeshespeak.bsky.social).

Come say hi.
January 1, 2025 at 9:34 PM
An outlier in our program of in-person talks, our series of spring 2022 was held remotely in a series of webinars. Videos still linked from our site, under "recent posts," include such friends and luminaries as Yuri Furuhata, Armond Towns, Marc Steinberg, Jim Hodge, Alenda Chang, and Michael Sawyer.
Digital Culture + Media Initiative | of the Department of English
dcmi.la.psu.edu
December 4, 2024 at 1:06 PM
So excited to announce our spring speakers!

April 3: Omedi Ochieng, Colorado (@omediochieng.bsky.social)
April 10: Kalindi Vora, Yale
(@kalindivora.bsky.social)
April 17: Aaron Shapiro, UNC
(@bricolageyumyum.bsky.social)

Talks are in-person in the Grucci Room, Burrowes 102, at 3:30pm. Join us!
December 2, 2024 at 5:58 PM
What we are (speaker series, course incubator) and do:
Digital Culture + Media Initiative | of the Department of English
dcmi.la.psu.edu
November 27, 2024 at 8:07 PM