We often discover new media fascinations in roundabout ways. In February of 2022, when filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki emailed me to ask if I’d seen Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s “Forensickness” (2022), I had only the vaguest sense of what had come to be called the “video essay.” I...
I was punched in the gut. It hurt. I thought this would be the seminar session to bring all the theories and histories of documentary across analog and digital together with a big political and epistemological impact. But I should have summoned my semiotic training to...
The day: Monday, February 27, 2023. The place: A large lecture class in the new Engineering and Computer Science West building at the University of Texas-Dallas. It’s a wide space, accommodating 300 students. Great windows and elegant wood window treatments allow for...
It wasn’t long after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, that I knew I would need to teach a course on it. Six months later, with the war in full force, I launched a semester-long course titled “The Global Politics of the War in Ukraine.” I am an...
It’s bad, really bad, in higher education these days. Whether the pandemic is over or ongoing, its continuing impact has catapulted colleges and universities into a maelstrom of student disengagement, faculty quiet quitting, outright resignations, and draconian budget...
As I walked through an academic building on the Ithaca College campus a few weeks ago, I peeked into a class and saw something that surprised me. This image is now so pervasive, I should not have been at all surprised. The professor stood at the head of the room...
Many challenges, from enrollment declines to disengaged students to pandemic-induced recalibrations, confront higher education at the moment. But one disruption needs to occupy more space in our conversations: artificial intelligence. It's difficult to predict how...
“Pedagogy as Encounter” is an honest, innovative, erudite, and profoundly student-centered work. Naeem Inayatullah embraces the range of human behavior in the classroom, including emotions, discomfort, paradox, and spirituality. His method rejects all kinds of...
