Andrew Whitacre (awhit@mit.edu)
Andrew directs the communications efforts for CMS/W and its research groups. A native of Washington, D.C., he holds a degree in communication from Wake Forest University, with a minor in humanities, as well as an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. This work includes drawing up and executing strategic communications plans, with projects including website design, social media management and training, press outreach, product launches, fundraising campaign support, and event promotions.
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The 20th Anniversary of CMS
“What I found in talking at this personal rather than institutional level was that the draw of CMS was simultaneously more idealistic and pragmatic than we’ve described in the past.”
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Podcast: Eric Klopfer, “Design Based Research on Participatory Simulations”
CMS/W Professor Eric Klopfer and The Education Arcade are currently working on a set of “Participatory Simulations”: mobile collaborative systems-based games.
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Podcast: Lucy Suchman, “Artificial Intelligence & Modern Warfare”
Lancaster University’s Lucy Suchman’s concern is with the asymmetric distributions of sociotechnologies of (in)security, their deadly and injurious effects, and the legal, ethical, and moral questions that haunt their operations.
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Podcast: Vivek Bald, “If I Could Reach the Border…”
Vivek Bald reads from a new essay that uses a teenage encounter with police and the justice system to explore questions of immigrant acceptability, racialization, and the South Asians American embrace of model minority status.
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Podcast: Anushka Shah, “How Entertainment Can Help Fix the System”
Anushka Shah asks, our trust in politics and public institutions is falling globally — can entertainment and pop culture be a way out?
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Podcast: Helen Elaine Lee, “Pomegranate”
Helen Elaine Lee reads from the manuscript of her novel, Pomegranate, about a recovering addict who is getting out of prison and trying to stay clean, regain custody of her children, and choose life.
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Podcast: Nick Montfort, “Poet/Programmers, Artist/Programmers, and Scholar/Programmers: What and Who Are They?”
Nick Montfort is Professor of Digital Media at Comparative Media Studies/Writing. He develops computational poetry and art and has participated in dozens of literary and academic collaborations.
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Podcast: Christopher Weaver, “Amplius Ludo, Beyond the Horizon”
Weaver, founder of Bethesda Softworks, discusses how games work and why they are such potent tools in areas as disparate as military simulation, childhood education, and medicine.
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Megawatt, Professor Nick Montfort’s 2014 computer-generated book, now in German translation
Recently, literary scholar Hannes Bajohr brought Megawatt another interesting step forward, by modifying the code to output the text in German.
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Human vision, climate change, and white sharks: 2019 Science Documentary Videos
Produced by the graduate students from the 2019 class of the Graduate Program in Science Writing.
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Video: 2019 Science Writing Thesis Presentations
Our Graduate Program in Science Writing students read from their culminating works as they finish up they one-year program.
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Podcast: Haidee Wasson, “Do-it Yourself Cinema: Portable Film Projectors as Media History”
Haidee Wasson explores the long and vibrant place of portable film devices in the history of small media, repositioning the “movie theatre” as the singular or even central figuration of film presentation and viewing.
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Podcast: Sohail Daulatzai, “The Battle of Algiers as Ghost Archive: Specters of a Muslim International”
Sohail Daulatzai on The Battle of Algiers’ “competing narratives, a battleground over the meaning and memory of decolonization and Western power, and a site for challenging the current imperial consensus.”
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Podcast: Nick-Brie Guarriello, “The Good Stuff”: The Intersections of Work, Leisure, and Relational Bonding on Tumblr and Patreon
Nick-Brie Guarriello on the political economies and labor demands of micro-celebrity and Influencer culture across social media platforms regarding the Pokémon GO community.
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Video and podcast, Civic Arts Series: Myron Dewey, “Protecting the Water in Solidarity and Unity”
Myron Dewey has pioneered the blending of citizen monitoring, documentary filmmaking, and social networking in the cause of environment, social justice and indigenous people’s rights.
