planetary futures

Course Direction and Conception:Dr. Orit HalpernDr. Orit Halpern is a Strategic Hire in Interactive Design and Theory and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University, Montréal. Her work bridges the histories of science, computing, and cybernetics with design and art practice. Her most recent book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke Press 2015) is a genealogy of interactivity and our contemporary obsessions with “big” data and data visualization. She is now working on two books. The first, titled The Smartness Mandate, is a history and theory of “smartness”, environment, and ubiquitous computing and the second tentatively titled Resilient Hope investigates how design and actuarial technologies manage un-representable and un- calculatable catastrophes of environment, security, and finance.She is also a co-director of the Speculative Life Research Lab, a speculative design research cluster at the intersection of art and the life sciences, architecture and design, and computational media that is part of the Milieux, Institute for Technology, Art and Culture. She has also published and created works for a variety of venues including Grey Room, E-flux, Volume, The Journal of Visual Culture, Public Culture, Configurations, C-theory, and ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany.She has an MPH. from Columbia University School of Public Health, and completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University in the History of Science.www.orithalpern.net www.speculativelife.com

Pierre-Louis Patoine

Assistant professor of American literature at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Pierre-Louis Patoine is the author of a book on the role of the empathic, physiological body in the experience of reading (Corps/texte, ENS Editions, 2015). He has published articles on contemporary American literature, biosemiotics and literary neuroaesthetics, is co-editor of the online journal Epistemocritique (epistemocritique.org) and co-director of the Science/Literature research group (hypotheses.litorg.org).

Instructors: Visiting Lecturers:Sarah Sharma, University of TorontoEzekiel Dixon Roman, University of Pennsylvania:Bernhard Foing, European Space Agency:Marie-Pier Boucher, Post-doc Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Assistant Professor University of Toronto Perig Petrou, CNRS Paris Jonathan Hope Associate professor
Département d'études littéraires
Université du Québec à Montréal Participants, Creators and Authors:Hicham AwadKatherine BuseBlair BainbridgeNadia ChristidiCatherine CornumMaya Indira GaneshSégolène GuinardNatalie KoernerJoel LaforestGarrett LockheartCécile MartinMatthew NyeJune PhamDaniel RourkeAndrés SalasJoana RodriguesHarsh Seetharama BhatMargaret SymuleskiHeloise ThomasTricia Tosomade with Lay Theme