"The Centre is intended to supplement the present departments or their courses of instruction leading to degrees. It will foster a dialogue between the departments, the faculties, the Library and the Administration, in matters relating to cultural change resulting from technological innovation."
Marshall McLuhan (Draft Constitution, 1965)
Absent Here, Present There
Of the persistent anxieties new media bring, perhaps the most pointed is absence. Critics of new media technologies--novels, radio, movies, television, phones, social media, AI, VR all--tend to worry about the ways new media technologies seduce us into taking leave of ourselves. They slacken, attenuate, or obliterate our presence in the here and now. Living amongst our ubiquitous technology, distracted by rampant notifications, we are reminded, sarcastically, that we ought to go touch grass.
Meanwhile, as Marshall McLuhan understood, new media technologies also expose us to what is happening elsewhere, in ways that are often difficult to control and therefore frightening. With worrying absence comes presence: new forms of empathy, but also abrading overexposure. We scroll, or rather, doomscroll--attenuating our selves and our attachments to the immediate surround--only to attune our attention to the terrible things taking place elsewhere. Atrocity, however, also competes for attention with advertising and the social media amplification of the mundane.
This was already happening in McLuhan's age of cybernetics and television:
"Thus the age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconscious and of apathy. But it is strikingly the age of consciousness of the unconscious, in addition. ... Apparently this could not have happened before the electric age gave us the means of instant, total field-awareness. With such awareness, the subliminal life, private and social, has been hoicked up into full view, with the result that we have “social consciousness” presented to us as a cause of guilt-feelings. ... In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin."
We are overexposed, over-intimate, overwhelming aware of what is happening in the "total field" of the world--brought to you by Corn Flakes. New media bring new anxieties, new modes of absence, new modes of presence, new techniques for managing these new ways of situating ourselves in a world made present by new forms of mediation and new processes of commodification.
This condition is historical. Modernity, understood broadly, has fretted about new media's seductions to absence and celebrated its new forms of presence. This complex, however, seems to be on a path of constant intensification. Attention is increasingly intensively monetized, and new technologies aim to appropriate it from us ever more effectively.
The Centre for Culture and Technology will dedicate its inquiry in the 2024 and 2025 academic year to the theme of "Absent Here, Present There." This will be the theme to which our Artist in Residence and Faculty Fellows will address themselves. It will also be woven into our Monday Night Seminars and the research activities of our Working Groups.
This year, the Centre's two external Faculty Fellows will be Kris Paulsen (Ohio State University), author of Here/There: Telepresence, Touch, and Art at the Interface (MIT, 2017), and Hannah Zeavin (UC Berkeley), author of The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT, 2021). A call for internal Faculty Research Fellows is circulating, and the selected Artist in Residence will soon be announced.
Call for Applications: Faculty Research Fellows
DEADLINE: APRIL 30
The Centre for Culture and Technology is inviting applications for its inaugural class of Faculty Research Fellows. Faculty Research Fellows will serve terms of two years at the Centre for Culture and Technology. Faculty Research Fellowships will be awarded to any research-stream faculty member at the University of Toronto, from any department or program on any campus, working on questions of media and technology in critical, aesthetic, and/or humanistic modes. The selection committee will prioritize candidates whose research intersects with the programming theme of "Absent Here, Present There" - as detailed here.
Faculty Research Fellows will receive research funds of $5,000 per year, each year they hold the Fellowship (total award of $10,000), as well as up to 50 hours annually of research assistance from the Centre's Research Assistants.
Each year of their fellowship, Faculty Research Fellows will be expected to give a public talk related to their research as one of the Centre's Monday Night Seminars, and to attend all other Monday Night Seminars (10 total meetings). They will also be expected to participate in the Centre's Research Workshop (along with the Director and Graduate Research Fellows; 7 total meetings).
In addition, Faculty Research Fellows will, in consultation with the Director, develop a plan for extramural funding of their ongoing research. This plan will include submission of at least one grant application to SSHRC or another relevant funding body each year of the fellowship. Fellows will receive intensive mentorship and support in grant planning and writing from the Centre's Director, as well as the Faculty of Information's research staff. The Centre may offer in-kind support or additional funds in cases where granting agencies require matching funds from U of T (e.g., SSHRC Connection Grants). Additional supports may include a book manuscript seminar and/or on-campus events with book editors from relevant presses. In cases where a Fellow is successful in a grant application through the Fellowship, the Centre will work with the Fellow’s home unit to explore a course release or other supports for the project where plausible and appropriate.
The Faculty Research Fellows program is, effectively, a research incubator: the program will support faculty members as they articulate their media studies research for granting agencies, publishers, and new audiences. In particular, we aim to expand Fellows' imagination and capacity for multi-modal and collaborative research. Priority will be given to early-career candidates, or established candidates who do not currently hold multiyear grants (e.g., SSHRC Insight or Partnership stream grants).
Fellowship applications will consist of:
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a cover letter of not more than one page;
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a CV;
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a research statement of not more than two pages, detailing the candidate's ongoing and future research, and explaining the intersection of the candidate's research with the Centre's programming theme, “Absent Here, Present There”;
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a writing sample (published or unpublished), preferably related to the research to be undertaken during the term of the Fellowship; and,
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contact information for the candidate's immediate supervisor (dean, chair, director).
Applicants should send all application materials by email to cultureandtech@utoronto.ca, not later than 30 April 2024. Inquires about the fellowship may be addressed directly to the Director of the Centre, Scott Richmond, at s.richmond@utoronto.ca.
▸ PDF download: 2024-26 CCT Faculty Research Fellow Call
Call for Applications: Graduate Research Fellows
DEADLINE: APRIL 30
The Centre for Culture and Technology is inviting applications for two 2024/25 Graduate Research Fellowships. Graduate Research Fellows will be advanced PhD students from any department or program at the University of Toronto working on questions of media and technology in critical, aesthetic, and/or humanistic modes. The selection committee will prioritize candidates whose research intersects with the programming theme of "Absent Here, Present There" - as detailed here.
Graduate Research Fellows will receive a stipend of $7,500 for the year, and are encouraged to use these funds to forego a term of TA appointment, to allow dedicated research and writing time. Graduate Research Fellows are also allotted up to 20 hours of research assistance from the Centre’s Research Assistants.
Graduate Research Fellows will be expected to give a public talk related to their research as one of the Centre’s Monday Night Seminars, and to attend all other Monday Night Seminars. They will also be expected to participate in the Centre’s Research Workshop (along with the Director and Faculty Research Fellows), and to participate generally in the intellectual life of the Centre for Culture and Technology. They will also be invited (but not expected) to participate in the Centre’s summer institute, “Computer Class,” held the week of 17 June 2024.
Fellowship applications will consist of:
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a cover letter of not more than one page;
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a CV;
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a dissertation abstract of not more than 2 pages;
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a writing sample, preferably a completed dissertation chapter; and
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a letter of support from their supervisor.
Applicants should send all application materials, excluding the letter of support, by email to cultureandtech@utoronto.ca, not later than 30 April 2024. Supervisors should send letters of support under separate cover to cultureandtech@utoronto.ca, also by 30 April 2024.
Eligible students will have completed all non-dissertation degree requirements, including comprehensive and special field exams, and have had a dissertation proposal approved. Priority will be given to students in their 4th and 5th years of graduate study.
▸ PDF download: 2024-25 CCT Graduate Research Fellow Call
Artist in Residence
Announcement coming soon!