[-empyre-] Engineering the University, Week Two : Wellmon and Prutzer

[Hamilton, Kevin]

March on empyre : Engineering the University

WEEK TWO : 
Information & Enlightenment: The Roots of the Modern University


GUESTS: 

Ned Prutzer
Doctoral candidate, Institute for Communications Research
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Chad Wellmon
Associate Professor of German Studies
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
University of Virginia

A TURN TO HISTORY

Today we're starting our second of four weeks of conversations about the
changing shape of academic labor in research settings. Each week, one of
the grad students in our Seeing Systems
(http://seeingsystems.illinois.edu/) cohort here at Illinois will lead a
conversation with a scholar whose work and path lends some possible
examples, models or theories to reflective engagement or critique of
existing academic structures.

This week we'll be led by Ned Prutzer, a second-year student in the
Communications and Media doctoral program here at the Institute for
Communications Research at Illinois. Ned arrived here via Georgetown
University and University of Maryland, and currently works on locative art
and media, with attention to ideological critique and cultural semiotics.
Among our cohort Ned is the scholar most focussed on New Media Art (a
mainstay of empyre), and so I'm especially glad to see him introduced to
this list. For a taste of his work, you can see his essay "Google
Infrastructure and Geolocative Representation" in last Spring's issue of
Media-N, the Journal of the New Media Caucus.
http://median.newmediacaucus.org/art-infrastructures-hardware/google-infras
tructure-and-geolocative-representation/

Ned invited Chad Wellmon to the conversation this week, whose work our
group first encountered last year, when the first Seeing Systems seminar
read work from his new book, "Organizing Enlightenment: Information
Overload and the Invention of the Modern University" (Johns Hopkins,
2015). Chad's work, about which you'll learn more shortly, brings a
uniquely historical perspective to critical analyses of contemporary
media, with an emphasis on sensation, mediation, and subjectivity. Since
learning about his work I've particularly appreciated his leadership as
editor of The Infernal Machine, a very active and engaged blog component
of The Hedgehog Review.
(http://iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/)

In light of our month's topic, I'll also note for those outside the news
loops of higher education in America that University of Virginia, Chad's
home institution, has been at the center of a few high-profile
controversies within American higher education. Whole new campus regimes
and techniques have recently emerged in response to both the 2012 ouster
of President Teresa Sullivan and 2014's Rolling Stone (later partially
retracted) article on UVa fraternities and rape culture. Certainly many of
us who are following developing transformations in everything from shared
governance to "self-care" and safety are paying attention to UVa's next
steps. Of course that institution is leading in many other ways as well -
not least in the area of interdisciplinary work, through the efforts of
Chad and his colleagues at the IASC but also through great projects like
Beth Nowviskie's Scholars Lab (http://scholarslab.org) or Hepler and
Sherman's Open Grounds (http://opengrounds.virginia.edu/) - but I thought
a little context might serve be worth noting in the interest of
"situatedness."

THE HANDOFF TO NED:

Ned, I'll ask you to lead us off as I did elizaBeth last week. Could you
start us off by telling us what made you think of Chad's work in relation
to our month's theme, and our group's efforts?

Thank you all, and I hope others will feel free to join in, as they did
last week. 

Kevin Hamilton