Video Conferencing: Infrastructures, Practices, Aesthetics

The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts

James Ensor, Paul Haesaerts and Cinéma Critique in 'Masques et Visages de James Ensor' (1952) and 'Moi, Ensor' (1972)

Late nineteenth-century artist James Ensor proved to be a beloved subject for Belgian filmmakers such as Charles Dekeukeleire, Henri Storck, André Cauvin, and Luc de Heusch, who contributed to a veritable boom of mid-century high-quality experimental art documentaries. Highly aware of the power of modern media himself, Ensor showed a great interest in film as well, and he often got involved in the production of documentaries on his artworks. Notwithstanding the significance of the cinematic explorations of his oeuvre, hitherto the interconnections between Ensor’s artistry and cinema have never been substantially investigated. Aiming to remedy this overlooked intersection of art and film, this article focuses on the representation of Ensor in the oeuvre of leading art historian-cum-filmmaker Paul Haesaerts. Following his concept of cinéma critique, Haesaerts’s exceptional 1952 film Masques et visages de James Ensor is a brilliant piece of art analysis. It self-consciously touches upon the ontological boundaries between Ensor’s visual arts and cinema as it wavers between stillness and movement, and between pictorial surface and cinematic space. Drawing on press articles, original archival research, and textual and film analysis, this article investigates how Haesaerts creates a specific cinematic syntax to analyze the formal elements of Ensor’s paintings. In addition, it takes Masques et visages de James Ensor as a starting point for discussions on broader themes concerning the Ensor scholarship, such as Ensor’s affinities with Belgian cinema; the convergence of Ensor’s pictorial strategies and cinematography; and the impact of experimental art documentaries on the reception of Ensor’s work by both filmmakers and art critics

The C-SPAN Archives: An Interdisciplinary Resource for Discovery, Learning, and Engagement

The C-SPAN Archives records, indexes, and preserves all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, and research uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, from all House and Senate sessions in the US Congress, to hearings, presidential speeches, conventions, and campaign events, totaling over 200,000 hours, is contained in the video library and is immediately and freely accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by staff. Whereas C-SPAN is best known as a resource for political processes and policy information, the Archives also offers rich educational research and teaching opportunities. This book provides guidance and inspiration to scholars who may be interested in using the Archives to illuminate concepts and processes in varied communication and political science subfields using a range of methodologies for discovery, learning, and engagement. Applications described range from teaching rhetoric to enhancing TV audience’s viewing experience. The book links to illustrative clips from the Archives to help readers appreciate the usability and richness of the source material and the pedagogical possibilities it offers. Many of the essays are authored by faculty connected with the Purdue University School of Communication, named after the founder of C-SPAN Brian Lamb. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1 consists of an overview of the C-SPAN Archives, the technology involved in establishing and updating its online presence, and the C-SPAN copyright and use policy. Featured are the ways in which the collection is indexed and tips on how individuals can find particular materials. This section provides an essential foundation for scholars’ and practitioners’ increased use of this valuable resource. Parts 2 and 3 contain case studies describing how scholars use the Archives in their research, teaching, and engagement activities. Some case studies were first presented during a preconference at the National Communication Association (NCA) convention in November 2013, while others have been invited or solicited through open calls. Part 4 explores future directions for C-SPAN Archive use as a window into American life and global politics

Generations: Creative Computation, Community, and the Rhetorical Canon

“Generations: Creative Computation, Community, and the Rhetorical Canon” investigates how computational poets and artists use the intrinsic rhetoricity of generative computational processes for social critique and community-building, through a renewal of the classical rhetorical canon. Computer-generated poetry and art is often created using the same technological mechanisms (full-stack development, procurement and manipulations of ‘big data’) as the algorithms and social norms it sets out to critique. These conditions of production provide a unique rhetorical perspective for revisiting the classical rhetorical canons—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. From this vantage point that views classical rhetorical theory in contemporary digital context, I detail ways that computer-generated texts relate to concerns of social critique and enable digital communities. “Generations” demonstrates the rhetorical possibilities and limitations of computer-generated creative texts as artistic correctives in response to specific harms (like neoliberal individualism and data colonialism) of contemporary digital life. It also demonstrates the ways that these texts are created in community with others, a salient feature of the genre that amplifies its capacity for social engagement.Doctor of Philosoph

Rethinking Film Festivals in the Pandemic Era and After

This is an open access book. This edited collection aims to document the effects of Covid-19 on film festivals and to theorize film festivals in the age of social distancing. To some extent, this crisis begs us to consider what happens when festivals can’t happen; while films have found new (temporary) channels of distribution (most often in the forms of digital releases), the festival format appears particularly vulnerable in pandemic times. Imperfect measures, such as the move to a digital format, cannot recapture the communal experience at the very core of festivals. Given the global nature of the pandemic and the diversity of the festival phenomenon, this book features a wide range of case studies and analytical frameworks. With contributors including established scholars and frontline festival workers, the book is conceived as both a theoretical endeavour and a practical exploration of festival organizing in pandemic times

Towards an interactive mobile lecturing model a higher-level engagement for enhancing learning

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The use of mobile devices has grown in recent years and has overtaken the proliferation of desktop computers with their dual affordances of small size and easy connectivity in diverse fields. The usage of these devices has not been widespread in higher education. Mobile technology is a new and promising area of research in higher education. The affordance of mobile technologies has prompted their adoption as a means of enhancing face-to-face (f2f) learning. In this thesis, mobile lecturing is presented as a means of achieving mobile learning. The availability of mobile devices has positively enabled the mobile lecturing process. F2f lectures are recorded and distributed as lecture vodcasts using mobile devices. The vodcasts are generated through Opencast Matterhorn and YouTube. Currently, there are few descriptive models of mobile lecturing that can be used to enhance learning in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This thesis has several contributions: first I propose a “MOBLEC” theoretical model of mobile lecturing; mobile lecturing represents a new paradigm in mobile learning which enhances students’ engagement with lecture vodcasts to foster deep learning. The second contribution of this thesis is a mobile lecturing tool, MOBILect. MOBILect is developed in HTML5 for cross-platform solution across most mobile devices. This tool enables students to use mobile devices to actively interact with lecture vodcasts and with peers using the vodcast. Finally, I use different case studies to evaluate the MOBLEC model to explore the effectiveness of mobile lecturing in enhancing learning in HEIs. The MOBLEC model is proposed to define mobile lecturing: it describes mobile lecturing as a process resulting from the convergence of mobile technologies, learning engagements and learning interactions. The case studies are evaluative, relying on a group of students to evaluate the MOBLEC by accessing MOBILect. Empirical data was acquired through triangulation method involving focus group discussions, open-ended questions and interviews. All the questions were based on the MOBLEC model. The result of the studies provided positive indicators as to the usefulness and effectiveness of mobile lecturing in engaging students to enhance and foster deep learning. Mobile lecturing, through augmenting and accessing lecture vodcasts on students’ mobile devices anywhere and at any time, with an affordance to comment and respond to comments, has potential for empowering students who might be struggling to understand f2f sessions and the aggregated comments become a valuable educational resource. The thesis also outlines areas for future research work

The mad manifesto

The “mad manifesto” project is a multidisciplinary mediated investigation into the circumstances by which mad (mentally ill, neurodivergent) or disabled (disclosed, undisclosed) students faced far more precarious circumstances with inadequate support models while attending North American universities during the pandemic teaching era (2020-2023). Using a combination of “emergency remote teaching” archival materials such as national student datasets, universal design for learning (UDL) training models, digital classroom teaching experiments, university budgetary releases, educational technology coursewares, and lived experience expertise, this dissertation carefully retells the story of “accessibility” as it transpired in disabling classroom containers trapped within intentionally underprepared crisis superstructures. Using rhetorical models derived from critical disability studies, mad studies, social work practice, and health humanities, it then suggests radically collaborative UDL teaching practices that may better pre-empt the dynamic needs of dis/abled students whose needs remain direly underserviced. The manifesto leaves the reader with discrete calls to action that foster more critical performances of intersectionally inclusive UDL classrooms for North American mad students, which it calls “mad-positive” facilitation techniques: 1. Seek to untie the bond that regards the digital divide and access as synonyms. 2. UDL practice requires an environment shift that prioritizes change potential. 3. Advocate against the usage of UDL as a for-all keystone of accessibility. 4. Refuse or reduce the use of technologies whose primary mandate is dataveillance. 5. Remind students and allies that university space is a non-neutral affective container. 6. Operationalize the tracking of student suicides on your home campus. 7. Seek out physical & affectual ways that your campus is harming social capital potential. 8. Revise policies and practices that are ability-adjacent imaginings of access. 9. Eliminate sanist and neuroscientific languaging from how you speak about students. 10. Vigilantly interrogate how “normal” and “belong” are socially constructed. 11. Treat lived experience expertise as a gift, not a resource to mine and to spend. 12. Create non-psychiatric routes of receiving accommodation requests in your classroom. 13. Seek out uncomfortable stories of mad exclusion and consider carceral logic’s role in it. 14. Center madness in inclusive methodologies designed to explicitly resist carceral logics. 15. Create counteraffectual classrooms that anticipate and interrupt kairotic spatial power. 16. Strive to refuse comfort and immediate intelligibility as mandatory classroom presences. 17. Create pathways that empower cozy space understandings of classroom practice. 18. Vector students wherever possible as dynamic ability constellations in assessment