Departmental Seminar
Throughout the academic year, the Sociology Department hosts a seminar series featuring research work by our faculty, our advanced PhD students, and by other prominent scholars in the field. This page contains the seminars scheduled for the current academic year 2008-2009. If you are interested in attending a seminar, please email sociology@bc.edu in advance.
September 25
Anne Fausto-Sterling
Biology and Women's Studies
Brown University
Measuring the Environment: Meaningful Approaches to Biology and Sociology
12-1:30
To attend seminar, contact sociology@bc.edu.
October 13
Rosanna Hertz
Sociology and Women’s Studies
Wellesley College
"Donor Siblings or Genetic Strangers: The Internet and the New Networked Family"
12-1:30 McGuinn 5th Floor Lounge
October 30
Dorothy Roberts
Law, African American Studies and Sociology, Northwestern University
Is Race-based Medicine Good for Us?: A Scientific and Political Question
12-1:30
To attend seminar, contact sociology@bc.edu.
November 10
Stephen Pfohl
Sociology, Boston College
Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery: on the Cultural Politics of Fascination and Fear
12-1:30 McGuinn 5th Floor Lounge
December 1
Cathy Riessman
Sociology, Boston Cellege
Narrative Analysis and Bob Dylan: What's the Connection?
12-1:30 McGuinn 5th Floor Lounge
November 10, 12-1:30
Professor Stephen Pfohl
Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery: on the Cultural Politics of Fascination and Fear
Beginning with a somewhat magical image of the human body transubstantiating into a fleshless cybernetic machine, this presentation explores the fascinations and fears of magic in relation to contemporary information-based forms of power. Magic is today a common metaphor in the realms of advertising, mass entertainment, and politics. Think, for instance, of the magic of Disney, the magic of Macy’s, or the magic of this or that new technological innovation, fashion, or virtual battlefield. Drawing upon historical, anthropological, and theological discussions of the relationship between magic and technology, and also between digital and analogical forms of communication, “Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery” attempts a sociological theorization of magic and its relationship to technology at three distinct moments of Northwestern history—(1) the fascinations and fears of “natural magic” during the European “witch craze” and Renaissance, (2) the suggestive mesmeric magic of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and (3) the hypnotic techno-magic of contemporary digital culture. Once associated with streaming analogical flows of energetic-material connection between humans and our natural-historical environments, magical spiritual rituals were targeted for repression during the emergence of modern Northwestern society. Today, however, magic is making a big-time comeback with the onset of high-speed digital technologies of cybernetic command and control. In what ways do contemporary technologies of image management, sensory fascination, political persuasion, and the conduct of war operate as a kind of simulated return of repressed magical communications? “Digital Magic, Cybernetic Sorcery” concludes with a critical sociological mediation on the mesmerizing effects of being awash in the fascinations and fears of dense televisionary loops of communicative feedback. Here we find suggestive evidence of both the technological amplification of earlier modern modalities of social power and an unprecedented opportunity for future social and cultural change.
To attend seminar, contact sociology@bc.edu
Archives
The Sociology Department Seminar Series is generously supported by the Boston College Dean of Arts and Sciences and by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.