Steering Committee

Stephen Duncombe's research interests lie in the intersection of culture and politics. He is the author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, and coauthor of The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York. His newest book...

Stephen Duncombe's research interests lie in the intersection of culture and politics. He is the author of Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader, and coauthor of The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York. His newest book, Dream: Re-Imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, is being published in early 2007. In 1998, he was awarded the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching by the State University of New York, where he taught before coming to New York University. Duncombe has also been a political activist, co-founding the Lower East Side Collective and working as an organizer for the NYC chapter of Reclaim the Streets. He is currently working on a book on the role of fantasy and spectacle in radical politics in Victorian England. » Full Profile

Anthropologist, filmmaker, and professor Faye Ginsburg is founding and current Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History, as well as co-Director of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, where she is David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology. Recipient of numerous honors and awards including MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and...

Anthropologist, filmmaker, and professor Faye Ginsburg is founding and current Director of the Center for Media, Culture and History, as well as co-Director of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, where she is David B. Kriser Professor of Anthropology. Recipient of numerous honors and awards including MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and grants from Ford, Rockefeller, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, her work focuses on cultural activism in different contexts, from right to life women in the abortion debate to the work of indigenous filmmakers. Her first book Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community received four awards, and she has gone on to author/edit three more, most recently Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. She is completing a book, Mediating Culture: Indigenous Identity in a Digital Age, and is beginning a new research project — A Special Education — on disability, religion, media, and education. » Full Profile

Eric Klinenberg's work on media and cities is motivated by theoretical questions, interpretive challenges, and a passion for public and politically engaged social science. For his first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Klinenberg spent five years doing fieldwork, interviews, and archival research...

Eric Klinenberg's work on media and cities is motivated by theoretical questions, interpretive challenges, and a passion for public and politically engaged social science. For his first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2002), Klinenberg spent five years doing fieldwork, interviews, and archival research to explain why more than seven hundred people died during a short heat wave in Chicago, and to understand why these deaths were so easy to ignore, deny, and forget. For his second book, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media (Metropolitan Books, 2007), Klinenberg conducted intensive research in newsrooms, media corporations, and the emerging media reform movement. In addition to his scholarly research, Klinenberg also appears often on radio and television and contributes to magazines such as Rolling Stone, The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Slate. » Full Profile

Anna McCarthy is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Cinema Studies at NYU, and Co-Editor of the journal Social Text. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School at UPenn, teaching a semester-long graduate seminar titled "Media, Culture and Citizenship: Histories, Debates, Paradigms." She is author of Ambient Television: Visual Culture...

Anna McCarthy is Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Cinema Studies at NYU, and Co-Editor of the journal Social Text. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School at UPenn, teaching a semester-long graduate seminar titled "Media, Culture and Citizenship: Histories, Debates, Paradigms." She is author of Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Public Space (Duke University Press, 2001) and coeditor of the anthology Media/Space: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age (Routledge, 2004). McCarthy has been the recipient of a J. Walter Thompson Company Research Grant, at the Hartman Center, Duke University, 2002 and a Faculty Fellowship, from NYU to fund the Project on the Cold War as Global Conflict, at NYU's International Center for Advanced Study, also in 2002. Her work in film and television history and theory includes articles in October, Journal of Visual Culture, GLQ, Montage/AV and the International Journal of Cultural Studies. Her current research traces fantasies of governing by television in the postwar U.S. » Full Profile

Nicholas Mirzoeff joined the Department of Art and Art Professions with the goal of creating a cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary visual culture program. "This is a very exciting opportunity," says Mirzoeff, who considers the new program a validation of the field of visual culture, once considered a subdivision of art history. The new program also...

Nicholas Mirzoeff joined the Department of Art and Art Professions with the goal of creating a cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary visual culture program. "This is a very exciting opportunity," says Mirzoeff, who considers the new program a validation of the field of visual culture, once considered a subdivision of art history. The new program also signals the primacy of the visual image, he believes, which affects our lives to a greater and greater extent each day. "In fact, what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century is going to require a visual literacy that will be as fundamental as reading, math and science literacy."

His recent book, Watching Babylon: The War in Iraq and Global Visual Culture, enlarges upon this intriguing notion. Mirzoeff also launched a public series on war and violence, focusing on the Iraq war in particular. "It's a continuation of a visual culture seminar that I ran prior to 9/11 with Merritt Stange, who is a member of the Humanities faculty at Cooper Union. When I came to NYU it seemed sensible to revive the series because issues of war and the representation of violence are so important today." Mirzoeff is currently completing Visual Rights: A Politics for the Global Contemporary, a book calling for a political turn in visual culture by means of claiming a right to look as the right to see and oversee government in literal and metaphorical senses. » Full Profile

Professor Mirzoeff is also on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Visual Culture and Situation Analysis.

Jan Plass' research explores the intersection of cognitive science, computer science, and design to further our understanding of the effective use of multimedia and the web for learning and instruction. He has recently written about cognitive load in multimedia learning, effective visual communication with computer simulations, and intelligence testing with simulations...

Jan Plass' research explores the intersection of cognitive science, computer science, and design to further our understanding of the effective use of multimedia and the web for learning and instruction. He has recently written about cognitive load in multimedia learning, effective visual communication with computer simulations, and intelligence testing with simulations, and has been studying the effects of individual differences (e.g., spatial ability, verbal ability, executive functions) on the comprehension of scientific materials and on second language acquisition. His interests also include the design and development of instructional multimedia and web-based applications, and particularly issues of information architecture, interaction design, and information design. His current research project, funded by USDOE/IES, investigates the effect of different types of visual representations in computer simulations on science learning.

Plass is on the editorial boards of Journal of Educational Psychology, Computers in Human Behavior, Educational Technology Research and Development, and Journal of Research on Technology in Education and is a contributing editor for the new Wiley Visualizing series. » Full Profile

Jay Rosen is a press critic and writer whose primary focus is the media's role in a democracy. A member of the faculty since 1986, he teaches courses in media criticism, cultural journalism, press ethics and the journalistic tradition, among other subjects....

Jay Rosen is a press critic and writer whose primary focus is the media's role in a democracy. A member of the faculty since 1986, he teaches courses in media criticism, cultural journalism, press ethics and the journalistic tradition, among other subjects.

Since 1990, Professor Rosen has been a leading figure in the reform movement known as "public journalism," which calls on the press to take a more active role in strengthening citizenship, improving political debate and reviving public life. From 1993 to 1997, he was the Director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, funded by the Knight Foundation and housed at NYU. The project's goal was to further the movement for public journalism by holding seminars for working journalists and researching their experiments. Rosen's book on the subject, What Are Journalists For?, was published in 1999.

As a press critic and essayist, he writes and blogs frequently on media and political issues. His work has appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and Salon, among other venues. Most recently, Professor Rosen launched PressThink, a weblog about journalism that recently won a Reporters Without Borders "Freedom Blog" award. His new venture is NewAssignment.Net. » Full Profile

Professor Stephens is the author of A History of News, an extended history of journalism that has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." His latest book, the rise of the image the fall of the word, a historical analysis of our current communications revolution, was published by Oxford University Press. Professor Stephens is also...

Professor Stephens is the author of A History of News, an extended history of journalism that has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year." His latest book, the rise of the image the fall of the word, a historical analysis of our current communications revolution, was published by Oxford University Press. Professor Stephens is also the author of Broadcast News, the most widely used radio and television news textbook, and the co-author of Writing and Reporting the News. In recent years, he has written numerous articles on media issues and aspects of contemporary thought for publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The Columbia Journalism Review.

Stephens recently completed a trip around the world, during which he reported on globalization for the public radio program "Marketplace" and the webzine Feed and wrote essays on travel for LonelyPlanet.com. His commentaries have aired on NPR's "On the Media." Professor Stephens has been history consultant to the Newseum. » Full Profile

Professor Sturken's work spans the fields of cultural studies, popular culture, consumer culture, and art and technology. It is interdisciplinary with an emphasis on the ways in which individuals create meaning from cultural products and artifacts, focusing on cultural memory and national identity, images and visual culture, the social function of art, and the cultural effects...

Professor Sturken's work spans the fields of cultural studies, popular culture, consumer culture, and art and technology. It is interdisciplinary with an emphasis on the ways in which individuals create meaning from cultural products and artifacts, focusing on cultural memory and national identity, images and visual culture, the social function of art, and the cultural effects of technology. She teaches courses in popular culture, visual culture, advertising, the culture of technology, and cultural studies.

Sturken co-authored of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford University Press) with Lisa Cartwright in 2001. This text demonstrates how theories of the visual can illuminate particular image genres and issues of representation. It is intended for both general readership and undergraduate courses across several disciplines, including communication, media studies, and art history. Sturken's Tourists of History: Memory, Mourning, and Kitsch in American Culture examines aspects of cultural memory, consumerism, and paranoia in American culture in relation to the response in the US to the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995 and the terrorists attacks of 9/11. This book is concerned primarily with the cultural memories associated with these events and their manifestation in forms of kitsch, consumerism, and compulsive reenactment. Her other publications include Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (University of California Press, 1997) and Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technology, published in 20011 by Temple University Press. » Full Profile

Issues of civil liberties—particularly women's rights, and freedom of speech and conscience—propelled Professor Zimmerman from a career in journalism into law, and she has taught, lectured, and written extensively on all of these subjects. Her other major area of academic specialization is intellectual property. In the fall of 2001, she was...

Issues of civil liberties—particularly women's rights, and freedom of speech and conscience—propelled Professor Zimmerman from a career in journalism into law, and she has taught, lectured, and written extensively on all of these subjects. Her other major area of academic specialization is intellectual property. In the fall of 2001, she was invited to be the inaugural holder of the Distinguished Visiting Hosier Chair in Intellectual Property at De Paul College of Law in Chicago. In 20013, she delivered the 17th Annual Manges Lecture in intellectual property at Columbia University. Zimmerman is also a co-editor of Expanding the Boundaries of Intellectual Property: Innovation Policy for the Knowledge Society (published by Oxford University Press in 2001). In spring, 2006, she was awarded a STIRCD research fellowship by the London School of Economics to work on intellectual property issues.

Outside activities include chairing the both the First Amendment Rights Committee of the American Bar Association and the Civil Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Zimmerman is a member of the Copyright Society's board of trustees and is a member of the editorial board of the Society's Journal as well as that of the Communication Law and Policy Journal. » Full Profile