Digital and Computational Studies Blog

February 12, 2018 | 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM | Hubbard Hall, Thomas F. Shannon Room [208]

The Trump White House promised “deconstruction of the administrative state”. But what does that mean? Is it happening? In this talk, Professor David E. Lewis of Vanderbilt University will assess President Trump’s approach to managing the executive branch during his first year in office, including his appointments (and vacancies); his organizational initiatives; and the interaction of political appointees and civil servants as the White House seeks to control the wider bureaucracy.

Lewis is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. An expert on the presidency, executive branch organization, and the US civil service, Lewis is the author, most recently, of The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance (Princeton University Press) and winner of the Herbert Simon Award for contributions to the scientific study of the bureaucracy. Before joining Vanderbilt, he taught at Princeton University and the College of William and Mary. Lewis currently serves as the president of the Southern Political Science Association and of the Midwest Public Administration Caucus.

Sponsored by the Department of Government & Legal Studies with support from the John C. Donovan Lecture Fund.

Free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided.

February 5, 2018 | 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Visual Arts Center, Beam Classroom

Ashley Ferro-Murray will discuss how certain trends in the history of the relationship between “technology” and “dance” impact her work as a curator of dance and theater at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), a multi-venue arts center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. From this historical perspective, Ferro-Murray will discuss a range of current curatorial projects including her work with Trajal Harrel, Maria Hassabi, Ali Moini, Okwui Okpokwasili, and Andrew Schneider. She will reflect on what she sees as the current and evolving state of incorporating digital culture into cross-disciplinary performance, including film and installation works, through the lens of her curatorial work with these and other artists.

Ferro-Murray is associate curator of theater/dance at EMPAC. She holds a PhD in performance studies with emphasis in new media from the University of California, Berkeley. Current commissions and coproductions include works by Mary Armentrout, Mallory Catlett, Elena Demyanenko and Erika Mijlin, Trajal Harrell, Maria Hassabi, Ali Moini, Andrew Schneider and Alice Sheppard.

She is also currently working on a book project titled Choreography and the Digital Era: Dancing the Cultural Differences of Technology. Based in part on her doctoral research and informed by her current curatorial practice, Choreography in the Digital Era explores the importance of movement in the construction of bodies and identity in the digital age. She has published in Media-N Journal, The Drama Review, and Dance Research Journal. Recent articles include ‘Transborder Immigrant Tool’, ‘Choreographic Resistance in the US-Mexican Borderlands and Technologies of Performance’, and ‘Machinic Staging and Corporeal Choreographies’. Ferro-Murray has given talks at University of California, Irvine, The University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Cornell University, and Bowdoin. She was previously the Andrew W. Mellon Creative Time Global Fellow and the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Grant. This summer Ferro-Murray will be on faculty of the NEH Institute for Digital Technologies in Theatre & Performance Studies at the University of Georgia.

Lecture sponsored by Digital and Computational Studies (DCS).

January 25, 2018 | 4:30 PM – 5:30 PM | Visual Arts Center, Beam Classroom

Andrea Steves, from the art collaborative FICTILIS, will talk about the project ‘The Museum of Capitalism’ – an institution dedicated to educating this generation and future generations about the history, philosophy, and legacy of capitalism, through exhibitions, research, and publication. The museum’s programs result from collaborations between a network of researchers, curators, artists, designers, filmmakers, writers, economists, historians, scientists, and non-specialists from all walks of life, including those with direct experience of capitalism.

FICTILIS is the collaborative practice of multimedia artists and curators Andrea Steves and Timothy Furstnau. The word “FICTILIS” is Latin for “capable of being shaped or changed; earthen,” which refers both to the form of their practice and the role it is intended to play within a larger culture.

FICTILIS has curated exhibitions, organized events, and been artists in residence or visiting artists in many different venues across the US and internationally, including Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA); Princeton School of Architecture (Princeton, NJ); Science Gallery (Dublin, Ireland); the Art Meets Radical Openness Festival (Linz, Austria); and the Santa Fe Art Institute (Santa Fe, NM). Recent projects have received grants from the Puffin Foundation, the Left Tilt Fund, and the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and have been nominated for the Human Impacts Institute’s Creative Climate Award, the COAL Art & Environment Prize in Paris, France, as part of ARTCOP21.

Lecture sponsored by Digital and Computational Studies (DCS).