Cause/Effect: CMS Graduate Student Conference

Much of the cinema and media studies field focuses on phenomenological and ontological accounts of media’s forms and objects. Though the nature and effects of cinema and media objects are important, there remains an explanatory gap. Per Peter Lipton, “knowing that something is the case is necessary but not sufficient for understanding why it is the case.” This conference prioritizes the causes that generate identifiable effects of media forms in order to further our understanding of the medium and its objects, and so gain a sense of the points of control. In explaining such points of control, from a range of methods and approaches, we may attend to the structures of influence at play—both internally and externally—within film and media.

We welcome keynote speaker Stephanie Dick, Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. Her current research explores the establishment of the first centralized law enforcement databanks in the 1960s, the political and technological construction of “criminality” within them, and their role in mass incarceration and ongoing racial injustice in policing.

Schedule:
Friday, April 28
3:30pm: Opening remarks by Daniel Morgan
4:00pm: Keynote address by Stephanie Dick
7:00pm: Cause/Effect: An Assortment of Shorts screening

Saturday, April 29: 9am-6pm: Panel discussions

Visit the conference website, causeeffect2023.wordpress.com, for more information.

Sponsored by the Adelyn Russell Bogert Fund of the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Department of Cinema and Media Studies, Film Studies Center, Department of Anthropology, Department of English, Department of Comparative Literature, Mass Culture Workshop, Digital Media Workshop, and Humanities Division Graduate Student Council.