We are pleased to announce a lecture by
Dr Anna Malinowska
University of Silesia

Objects and Technofeelia: Love in Contemporary Technoculture

The lecture is to be the first from the American Studies
Colloquium Series in this academic year.

Thursday, October 10, 2019
at 4:00 p.m

Where?

American Studies Center, room 317,
al. Niepodległości 22, Warsaw.

What?

This presentation aims to explain the semiotic and material dimensions
of love and how those two impact the ontologies of loving in technoculture. It will specifically engage into discussing the changes in “the substance of living” – and a human condition suspended between the organism and the machine – in order to see their impact on the substance of love. Our guest will speak of technological objects and their role in shaping amorous relationships, as well as touch upon technology, which considered responsible for this seeming change, exposes the semiotic constructedness of loving.

Who?

Anna Malinowska is an Assistant Professor at the University of Silesia, Poland. She spent last year at the New School in New York where she was doing a research project sponsored by Fulbright. She is a coeditor of Materiality and Popular Culture with Karolina Lebek, The Popular Life of Things (Routledge 2017) and The Materiality of Love: Essays of Affection and Cultural Practice with Michael Gratzke (Routledge 2018). She also wrote (with Toby Miller) Media and Emotions. The New Frontiers of Affect in Digital Culture (a special issue of Open Cultural Studies, 2017). She has authored many papers in cultural and media studies. Currently, Anna is working on a monograph titled Feelings Without Organs. Love in Contemporary Technoculture.

American Studies Colloqium Series

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 19: Between The Mundane and the Heroic: Vietnamese Presence in State Socialist Poland

December 16, 2024

We are delighted to invite you to the fifth lecture of the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2024/2025 Fall semester! This talk will examine the depictions of the (North) Vietnamese as freedom fighters within the context of the state socialist public sphere and the everyday life of Vietnamese students in Poland across generations. From idealized wartime reportages to mixed-race couples, the Vietnamese presence was marked by a multifaceted experience of adaptation, challenges, opportunities, and dynamic, interactive bonds with Polish society. This history continues to exert a profound influence on the contemporary Vietnamese diaspora and Polish-Vietnamese relationships.

Year 2024/2025

December 18: The Trump Transition – What is New and What is Not

December 14, 2024

Leadership Research Groupis inviting all those who would like to put the Trump transition to a presidential scholarship context and better understand the Trump transition decisions, the prospects for the future in domestic and foreign policy areas they bring, and the impact that Trump leadership may have on the political scene in Washington to a talk followed by a Q&A session by Professor Stephen Farnsworth.

Year 2024/2025

December 17: We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice

December 13, 2024

During the workshop “We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice”, Aleksandra Julia Malinowska, a doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw,will delve into the history of feminist manifestos and their pivotal role in the women’s movement in the United States. We’ll explore how activists of the second wave of feminism used grassroots publications to raise awareness, voice the demands of emerging women’s groups, and build communication networks between organizations spread across the country. Together, we’ll analyze the literary techniques that make the manifesto genre a powerful tool for inspiring activist mobilization beyond the pages of the text.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 12: Technological Imaginaries and the Universal Ambitions of Silicon Valley

December 12, 2024

Drawing on her new book, Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist imaginaries and the politics of digital technologies (University of California Press), in this talk Ferrari shows how these discourses, which she calls “technological imaginaries”, shape how we experience digital technologies. She discusses how, for the past 30 years, Silicon Valley tech actors have produced and popularized a specific way of thinking about digital technologies, which has become mainstream. This dominant technological imaginary brings together technocratic aspirations and populist justifications. While arising out of the peculiarities of Silicon Valley and of the American 1990s, this dominant imaginary has posited its universality by presenting its tenets as if they were global, unbiased, and equally suitable for everyone, everywhere. She argues that to really curb the socio-political influence of Big Tech companies we also need to understand, critique, and resist the power of their technological imaginary.

News

ASC Library has received funding from the Social Responsibility of Science

December 12, 2024

ASC Library has received funding from the Social Responsibility of Science (SON) program — “Support for Scientific Libraries,” implemented by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.