Yeong Ran Kim

This course aims to create everyday archives in collaboration with community members from the College’s surrounding neighborhoods. Working with SLC’s community partners, students will create a team blog to document the modes of perception, consciousness, and affect that characterize everyday life. Drawing upon Ann Cvetkovich’s “radical archive of emotion,” José Esteban Muñoz’s “ephemera as evidence,” and David Román’s “archival drag,” we will explore aspects of everyday life that often go unnoticed but are crucial for understanding who we are and how we perceive the world. By utilizing digital media, we will engage in expanded modes of recordkeeping, intervention, and preservation. During the semester, students will work toward a collective exhibition at BWCC. Conference work in this course will consist of a collaborative, community, digital-media project based on dialogue with diverse community members.

This course explores various digital humanities projects and engages in innovative methods for community-oriented research through a queer feminist praxis. Through a combination of readings, discussions, and conference projects, students will gain an understanding of key concepts and theories related to race, gender, sexuality, disability, and technology. The course will provide students with practical skills for creating digital projects, as well as opportunities to work with communities. Conference work in this course will consist of a collaborative, community, digital-media project. That format will allow us to cultivate emerging moments of coming together that vitalize creative making, as well as to find innovative ways to share what was learned from a community-engaged research teaching experience and curatorial practice. This interdisciplinary and practice-based course invites students from all disciplines. Potential group conference projects: (1) leading film and media workshops for local communities, (2) creating an interactive storytelling project on Yonkers and Bronxville, and (3) curating an (online or on-site) exhibition. Prior experience in teaching and/or media production is welcome but not required.

This interdisciplinary course examines queer/trans artistic and activist practices in the global digital culture. We will explore the ways in which queerness and transness are performed and constructed through digital media, as well as the impact of digital technologies on the formation of a new sense of being-with. Topics will include queer/trans representation and politics; the role of social media in activism and community formation; and the digital in relation to identity, power, and knowledge production. Through critical analysis and hands-on projects, students will gain a deeper understanding of queer and transgender issues with digital media and digital technologies.

This interdisciplinary course will examine queer/trans artistic and activist practices in global digital cultures. We will explore how queerness and transness are performed and constructed in digital media across different cultures and regions. How do queer and trans folx create an alternative space, in order to survive and thrive in the hostile world? How do queer and trans DIY cultures shape the critical study of digital media today? Topics will include queer/trans politics of representation, the discourses of visibility and violence, the role of social media in trans and queer activism, and the digital culture’s relationship to trans and queer identity and knowledge production. Through critical analysis and hands-on projects, students will gain a deeper understanding of queer and transgender issues in the global media culture, reimagining their own individual and collective pasts, presents, and future possibilities.

The emerging field of sound studies has garnered attention across various disciplines, including music, history, cultural studies, urban studies, science and technology studies, and environmental studies. By shifting our focus to the auditory realm, this course will explore how sound offers a mode of knowing attuned to different sonic registers of the everyday. This course will offer an introduction to diverse theories and practices of sound. How do we listen to voices unheard? What roles do digital technologies play in listening to these voices? How does technological mediation shape our experience of sounds? Beyond just voice, what other sounds deserve our attention? How do we navigate feelings of pleasure, repression, rage, and isolation that transcend dominant language? How does the digital culture contribute to community formation through voice, sound, and performance? Readings and discussions will range across digital studies, technology, art, sound studies, cultural history, critical-race theory, feminism, queer theory, and more. Beyond the readings and discussions, students will be responsible for "sonic writings," a site-specific field recording study, and a final paper/project. No prior experience in audio recording and editing is required.

This course will offer a thorough introduction to the major themes and issues in digital-media studies, making it a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of digital media. Throughout the course, we will explore various topics across disciplines, engaging in history, materiality, and affect of media technologies. This will include examining the material and cultural histories of computing, which help us understand how digital technology has evolved and impacted society over time. We will also delve into media archaeology, a field that explores a heterogeneous set of theories and methods to investigate the material history of media technology, challenging the supposed newness of digital culture. Another key aspect of the course will be to engage in the turn to affect and emotion in media studies: How do we experience, both cognitively and bodily, the circulation of emotion and affect in social media? How does this experience shape our mode of being in the world? The case studies introduced in the course will focus on transnational digital practices, recognizing that digital media is not confined by geographical boundaries. We will aim to critically understand the development of methods, ideas, practices, tools, and objects within digital-media studies. No prior knowledge of digital-media studies is required.

This class examines queer/trans artistic practices, together with trans, queer, and decolonial theories. We will focus primarily on the work of queer- and trans-identified artists within a larger context of contemporary artistic experimentation that aims to envision a more-than-human world. On the one hand, we will interrogate existing parameters of inclusion and neoliberal citizenship; on the other, we will explore a new set of sensibilities and relationalities emerging from visions of a new mode of being (or being-with). At the horizon of this world in transition appears a mode of unmasterful art practice, which suggests new ways of making and responding to art. Students will engage in textual study, as well as direct artistic production or performance involving diverse media and methods.

This course is designed for students with a strong interest in community work and digital-media production. We’ll explore new forms of research-creation and pedagogical-performative modes of engagement by considering the role of digital media in making new connections, building friendships, and forging communities. We’ll examine the relation of aesthetics to politics and explore the myriad ways in which theory and praxis can inform one another, with special attention to digital-media pedagogy. This course largely has three components: 1) a group creation of a multimedia performance piece; 2) designing an after-school program and running the program on Saturdays for community youth; and 3) curating an online exhibition on the College’s website. In the first month of the semester, we’ll create a multimedia performance piece together as a class, based on ethnographic research in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, or Bronxville. In so doing, students will learn about surrounding communities and become equipped with the basic skills needed for digital-media production. Students will then have the opportunity to put those skills into practice as we design a new kind of after-school program and host a digital-media workshop for public-school students in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and Bronxville. This course asks students to play the role of teaching artists by integrating their art form, perspectives, and skills into the community setting. Students will team up to teach and support youth participants to create a multimedia performance piece, through which they will show and tell stories about themselves and their communities. All workshops will take place on campus on Saturday afternoons from 1pm to 3pm. Scheduled workshop dates are February 26; March 5, 12, 26; and April 2, 9. In the final month of the class, we will design a website together in order to host an online exhibition based on the works that are produced in previous months, including students’ works and the youth participants’ works. This format will allow us to cultivate emerging moments of coming together that vitalize creative making, as well as to find innovative ways to share what was learned from community-engaged research, a teaching experience, and curatorial practice.