Becoming Media Conference 2: Practices

—a core program conference organized by Sarah Tindal Kareem, University of California, Los Angeles, and Davide Panagia, University of California, Los Angeles

Despite the absence of a clearly articulated concept of medium, new ways of transmitting thought proliferated in the early modern period, as did reflection on the meaning of these new forms. This series of conferences investigates the objects, practices, and modes of attention associated with these new modes of communication and expression in the early modern and modern periods.

The second conference focuses on practices from collage to “commonplacing” associated with particular media. It is especially concerned with exploring the relationship between current practices in the digital humanities and older models of data collection and analysis. The participants’ presentations will illuminate the bi-directional flow between old and new media: the way that delving into early modern media practices from theatrical illusion to dictionary-making can reframe the way we understand our own relationship to our current media landscape, as well as vice versa.