I am a fourth year PhD student in the Media Studies program in the School of Journalism and Communication. I came to grad school so that I could be around people who care as much as I do about how we interact with media on a daily basis. My interest in media also has a lot to do with being a parent.

My undergraduate degree is in Film and Communications from a critical perspective, a program that we used to have here at the U of O before it merged with the School of Journalism and Communications. My Master’s thesis looked at the way that parents mediate TV in the home and how that connects to values. I found that the choices that families make have less to do with values and more to do with lifestyle; i.e. daily activities, the need for time to do chores, make a meal, work or rest, as well as marital status, and personality. Watching TV is often a consequence (reward or punishment) for doing or not doing a specific task. These results led me to rethink the way I look at screen time and to examine potential benefits, as well as looking at the message that magazines, doctors and parent organizations are giving parents about what is good or bad for kids when it comes to media.

I don’t think it is possible to study youth, technology and media, without diving into the academic area of New Media. The way we interact with content is rapidly changing, so I my current research focus includes TV as well as video games, YouTube and all types of social media. The graduate affairs committee recommended to me that I include the New Media Culture Certificate in my schedule. I’m glad that I did. The variety of classes that I have been exposed to because of this certificate have introduced me to supplementary historical context, methodology and philosophy – all of which I will be using as I conduct my research and write my dissertation. It has also been valuable to get to know NMCC students from other disciplines, and to have discussions that include perspectives from outside of the Media Studies program.

Balancing life, school and technology is a significant part of my daily existence. I blog with my son about it at: https://techlife2016blog.wordpress.com/

Useful Resource for new media students:

The New Media Reader: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-media-reader

The App Generation: https://www.amazon.com/App-Generation-Navigate-Identity-Imagination/dp/0300209347/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr

The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Video-Game-Studies/Wolf-Perron/p/book/9780415533324

Never Send a Human to Do a Machine’s Job: https://www.amazon.com/Never-Send-Human-Machines-Job/dp/1452282579/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/updating-remain-same

Are you interested in studying Art, Architecture, or Historic Preservation abroad!? Come find out about the many courses, locations, and funding opportunities available!

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Benjamin Levy – Technically Conceptual / Conceptually Technical: Stanley William Hayter and the Atelier 17

Thursday, October 20, 2016  6:00pm, Lawrence Hall – Rm 177

Benjamin Levy is a curator, print scholar, and printmaker. He is currently the Assistant Curator of Collections and Academic Programs at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. Previously he was in the Prints, Drawings & Photographs Department at the Baltimore Museum of Art. While in Baltimore he co-directed the Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints and was a contributor to BmoreArt Magazine. A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art in Printmaking and Book Arts, he trained as a collaborative master printer. He is a contributor for Art in Print, sits on the board of the Tamarind Institute of Lithography, and is currently involved with a catalog and traveling exhibition of the work of Stanley William Hayter and his workshop, the Atelier 17.

Don’t miss this lecture by best-selling author, public intellectual, scholar of religions, producer, and television host, Reza Aslan. Aslan will deliver a lecture titled “An Evening with Reza Aslan: Religion, Identity, and the Future of America.”

Tuesday, October 18th

7:30 p.m. in 156 Straub Hall.

“Through the lens of his own experience—his family fled Iran during the Revolution in 1979 and settled in the U.S. when Reza was seven—and the conflicts he faced as an immigrant growing up, Aslan will examine the crisis of identity that is currently gripping the U.S., and suggest some possible ways in which we should think differently about race, religion, and identity in order to abolish the hatred and discrimination that has led to this crisis. As Aslan points out, America has, from the beginning, been a diverse nation, built on immigration and ethnic diversity.

Reza Aslan is the author of the international bestsellers No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005), and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013). He is also the author of Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization (paperback edition, 2010), in addition to being the editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalties, Contentions, and Complexities. His next book, The Story of God, will be published by Random House (release date TBA). He is a contributing editor to The Daily Beast, and he also has written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Nation, Slate, and The Christian Science Monitor.

In addition to his dedication to the written word (he is currently a professor of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside), Aslan believes in the power of other forms of media to educate and shape perceptions. He is a television producer and the founder, President, and CEO of Aslan Media Inc. which runs BoomGen Studios, a media company focused on providing alternative coverage of the Middle East and its diaspora communities. In addition, he is executive producer of a new ABC TV drama, Of Kings and Prophets, a dramatic retelling of the biblical story of King David, from shepherd to king and prophet. He is also the host of a new CNN spiritual adventure series titled “Believer” (set to debut in 2017), which follows Aslan as he immerses himself in various forms of worship, ritual, and rites of passage found in religious traditions from around the world. Aslan is a frequent guest on television and radio programs.

Aslan holds a BA in religious studies from Santa Clara University; a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School; a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in the sociology of religions from UC Santa Barbara.”

The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book sale and signing. It will be live-streamed at: ohc.uoregon.edu.

Seating is limited to 500; no tickets or reservations.

Doors will open at 7 p.m. For more information or for disability accommodations (which must be made by Oct. 11th) please call (541) 346-3934 or ohc@uoregon.edu

The Oregon Rare Books Initiative is one of the many amazing resources here at the University of Oregon that fly under that radar – keep them in mind and don’t miss out on their first event of the year!

October 5, 2016

4:45 pm in the Browsing Room, Knight Library
Cynthia Herrup (History, USC, emerita)

Why pardons fail

“Whenever a presidency draws to its end, we Americans brace for the announcement of the president’s final pardons. We brace and then we complain: should George W Bush have commuted the sentence of Scooter Libby? Was it right for Bill Clinton to pardon financier Marc Rich? Had Gerald Ford promised in advance to pardon Richard Nixon? Pardons are meant to do good —to evoke mercy and to provide a necessary remedy to the sometimes overly harsh application of the law, but it is far easier to name scandals attached to them than wrongs righted. We accept the necessity of pardons but we fret that they are unfair, socially biased and too often products of special access. We don’t lack for critiques of pardoning, but these critiques usually concentrate on the specifics of who gives pardons, who gets pardons, and who benefits from pardons. In this lecture I want to turn in a different direction, to show how the history of pardoning in the early modern era suggests that the problem with pardons lies in the concept of pardoning itself. By looking at the history of pardons in the tumultuous world of seventeenth-century England, we can begin to rethink why we have pardons and whether they can ever do what we expect of them.”

Thanks to a third year of funding from the Oregon Humanities Center and from the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School (UVA), as well as to support from our co-sponsors, Special Collections and University Archives and the Clark Honors College.

Friday October 14, 9:30-10:30am

Digital Scholarship Center, Rm 142, Knight Library

The New Graduate Resource Fair last week was a great success, now it’s time to follow it up with another!

Come join students and staff from across campus for a casual coffee and snacks, and a chat about all things ‘new media and culture’!  Meet and connect with current and prospective participants, get a feel for the valuable interdisciplinary aspect of the program, and get your questions answered by the GE Emily Shinn and the Director, Professor Kate Mondloch.

We hope to see you there!

Congrats again to all of our 2016 graduates!

The NMCC blog will be on summer vacation for the next few months but will return in September to kick off the 2016-2017 school year! We wish everyone a safe and relaxing summer, and we look forward to seeing both new and returning NMCC students in the fall. Don’t forget to stop by our table at the annual Graduate Student Resource Fair!

See you in September for another great year with NMCC!