Comparative M E D I A Studies

1 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y

1
 I
n the life of every great university there are defining
moments, when the very best ideas are made tangible
and, then, come alive. Though few and far between, these
moments both reflect and crystallize what is, and provide a
vision for what can be. The creation of Comparative Media
Studies in 1999 was one such moment.
Under the extraordinary leadership of Henry Jenkins and
William Uricchio, CMS has grown from a cool idea into a
powerful and transformative organization. Drawing from
Dean Deborah Fitzgerald MIT’s long traditions of experimentation and exploration,
CMS has moved the humanities into a digital future, artfully
combining the analytical and creative rigors of humanistic
scholarship with emergent technologies and cultures. The result
has been dazzling, challenging, always moving forward.
It is with deep admiration for Henry and William, and
profound gratitude for their vision, that we celebrate this an-
niversary. MIT is so fortunate to include CMS in its roster of
“great ideas made real”—we trust that the next ten years will
be as inspiring as the first.

Deborah Fitzgerald
Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and
Social Sciences
Professor of the History of Technology in the Program in
Science, Technology, and Society
massachusetts institute of technology

22
10 YEARS
4 letter 22 projects 34 events editors Comparative Media Studies
From the Singapore-MIT Media Spectacle: Brad Seawell and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Director GAMBIT Game Remembering Andrew Whitacre 77 Massachusetts Ave., E15-331
William Uricchio Lab Chris Pomiecko d e seidg ni taonrds Cambridge, MA 02139
617.253.3599 / cms@mit.edu / cms.mit.edu
Philip Tan and Henry Jenkins
6 f e at u r e
Geoffrey Long i l l u s t r a t i o n s
The Evolution Please send comments to cms@mit.edu.
35 People, places, Andrew Whitacre
of Comparative 24 projects things

Media Studies HyperStudio Alumni Research Directors

William Uricchio Kurt Fendt Testimonials Chris Csikszentmihályi, C4FCM
Kurt Fendt, HyperStudio
14 projects 26 pa s t p r o j e c t
51 People, places,
Introduction Project New things Daniel Pereira, C3
William Uricchio Media Literacies Faculty Scot Osterweil, TEA

Erin Reilly Testimonials Philip Tan, GAMBIT

16 projects

Convergence 57
27 events People, places,
Headquarters Staff
Culture 10 Years of things

Consortium Happenings Visiting Scholars Justin Bland

and Postdoctoral Administrative Assistant
Daniel Pereira Brad Seawell and
Researchers Mike Rapa
Andrew Whitacre
18 projects Technology Support Specialist
The Education
32 events
57 Acknowledgments Brad Seawell
Arcade Behind the Desks Communications Coordinator
Communications Becky Shepardson
Scot Osterweil
Fourm, Media in 58 Acknowledgments Academic Coordinator
20 projects Transition, and And to Our Jessica Tatlock
Center for Future the Origins of Sponsors Events Coordinator
Civic Media CMS William Uricchio Andrew Whitacre
William Uricchio and David Thorburn Communications Manager
Andrew Whitacre Sarah Wolozin
Program Manager
 FROM THE DIRECTOR

W
elcome to the CMS 10th anniversary newsletter. and moving Zeitdokument. The
Looking back over this newsletter’s evolution from common cause offered by this
a photocopied and hand-stapled assemblage to the project, and the power of the
far more professional norms of recent years says more about community’s response, can in
our editorial and production staff than about the Program in retrospect be read as a synecdo-
Comparative Media Studies. Despite ten years of existence, we che for the larger CMS project.
effectively remain a start-up: dynamic and responsive to envi- The aggregated commitment,
ronmental shifts; ad hoc in terms of some of our operations; passion and participation of the
extraordinarily ambitious; and growing in leaps and bounds. community—more than any
CMS has not lost the exhilarating sensation that I experienced structural resources—produced
a decade ago when I joined Henry Jenkins in the program’s something meaningful, lasting,
first days. It’s been an amazing adventure, peopled by a cast of and some might argue, trans- William Uricchio

talented colleagues, superb students, and a dream administra-
tive and research team.
We began with a formula that Henry liked to describe as stone
soup: we provided the water and stones, and we scrounged
around, cajoled, or just plain conned others into contribut-
ing whatever substantive morsels they could. Thanks to a
brilliant recipe, a supportive faculty and dean, the talents of
Alex Chisholm and Chris Pomiecko, and some very generous
donors, CMS emerged as a hearty repast, richer and more nutri-
tious than we had any right to expect. It was the right program
at the right time.
CMS’s resilience manifested itself vividly in those early days.
We ran head-on into the Y2K panic, 9/11, and the “dot bomb,”
all of which proved disastrous for countless reasons, our fund-
raising efforts among them. But we came through. The tragedy
of 9/11, for example, served to pull the CMS community
together, and within a few days we produced re:constructions—
reflections on humanity and media after tragedy, a website (web.
mit.edu/cms/reconstructions) that remains a deeply creative
formative. CMS still benefits from pro bono teaching, still
thrives on the passion of its faculty, staff, and students, and still
manages to spin gold from straw.
Great ideas can change the world, but only
if they reach and influence the necessary
audiences. CMS gives this insight a new
twist: we seek to engage audiences and
reposition them as participants and
partners.
Despite tough times for stock portfolios and donors, a few
stalwart friends prioritized the CMS program, and the program
meantime developed an ever-larger cluster of funded research
projects. You’ll read about the work of these projects in the
coming pages, but to make a long story short, they enabled us
to extend the work of the classroom, to test it, and in many
cases, to have a very real impact in the world. And as if that

4
 F R O M FT EHAET D
impact were not enough, the projects also provided a new
dimension to our pedagogical efforts, a way to pay student
stipends, to support a talented research staff, and even to house
the program in the interval between when we outgrew our old
The CMS story continues to manifest itself
daily in the work of students, faculty and
staff, and in the impact of our graduates
who are active across the media ecosystem
and throughout the world.
headquarters but had not yet moved into our new location.
So what was the attraction? Comparative Media Studies po-
sitioned itself at the crossroads of new directions in cultural
research and education and the inherited traditions of the arts
and humanities. It combined diverse disciplinary approaches
together with sensitivity to the participants in media practice,
and an embrace of the manifold channels and processes of
communication in today’s fast changing world. It tested its
ideas, modified, deployed and extended them through applied
research and a commitment to public outreach. And it continues
to do so.
The CMS approach to making media studies comparative—
across media platforms, across historical divides, and across
national boundaries—has offered a solution to one of the key
challenges facing today’s top tier media studies programs. At
a time when scholars are grappling with media and cultural
change of seismic proportions, CMS provides a central staging
ground for new intellectual collaborations and cutting-edge
research interventions. The results of these interactions offer
U IRREE C T O R
innovative answers to both enduring and newly pressing
questions. Great ideas can change the world, but only if they
reach and influence the necessary audiences. CMS gives this
insight a new twist: we seek to engage audiences and reposition
them as participants and partners, a move that comes from
an understanding that media are not so much something we
consume, as something we do. This stance results in a commit-
ment to theory and practice, to engineering change in the real
world, to integrating arts and criticism, to combining humani-
ties and the sciences, and to maintaining a deep and nuanced
international perspective—all parts of a shared purpose
between CMS and the broader MIT community.
The pages ahead chronicle that story, and give it form. But
the CMS story continues to manifest itself daily in the work of
students, faculty and staff, and in the impact of our graduates
who are active across the media ecosystem and throughout the
world.
Ten years…it seems both an eternity and a sliver of time. But
somehow, it still tastes like stone soup.
William Uricchio, Director
Cambridge, MA
April 2010
5
 HISTORY
The Evolution of Comparative Media Studies
By William Uricchio, Director
T
ransition. CMS embraces it as an object of study, par-
ticularly as it relates to the history and future of media;
we are academically immersed in it, as a condition of
contemporary scholarship; and it is our institutional fate, as the
program responds to the opportunities and challenges at MIT.
Understanding transition implies a reference point, a
speaking position, and what better moment to take stock of
where we are, and where we are headed, than a tenth anniversa-
ry celebration? CMS began as an answer to a problem: how can
we prepare a new generation of specialists to understand media
change, to engage with it both critically and creatively, and to
lead public discussion on media futures? The digital turn ac-
celerated a dynamic as old as media itself: change. Historically,
the most stable media, even when backed by social regimes de-
termined to maintain the status quo, have repeatedly given way
to unexpected appropriations. Whether triggered by innovative
uses or the deployment of new technologies, these disruptions
to the expected order of things have often been smoothed over
in the retelling, giving way to seemless narratives of progress
6
and stability. But the quickened pace of change, amplified by
Image by Flickr user Dom Dada http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/
the howls of anxiety from established media industries and
proponents of the cultural status quo, have combined to make
the stakes of the current transition unmistakable.
But how to make sense of this? Our tradition of media study,
born within the disciplined walls of the academy and the coeval
of the media industries themselves, has fixated on largely stable
ensembles of technology and audiences. Humanities programs
tended to accrete around the media of film and television, and
while concerns centered on ever-changing textual systems and
audience engagements, the media themselves were largely taken
for granted and understood as little more than textual delivery
systems. This is not to belittle the important work that sought to
understand various forms of signification and the processes of
and conditions for sense-making. It is instead to suggest that all
too often, the field sought comfort in the imagined purity of its
object of study. Like our sister institutions, we at MIT studied
film; and sooner than most of our peers, we added the study
of television: in 1982, the MIT School of Humanities, Arts,
 HISTORY
and Social Sciences (SHASS)
formed an interdisciplinary
undergraduate program in the
Literature Section under the
lead of David Thorburn entitled
Film and Media Studies. The
accelerating pace of the digital
turn posed the same problem
here as elsewhere: should we
continue to accrete layers of
new media upon old, stacking
them into the media equiva-
lent of a Tower of Babel? Or
Now an Associate Provost at MIT, Philip should we default to disciplin-
Khoury is credited with being one of ary constraints, holding fast to
CMS’s staunchest institutional supporters
as Dean of SHASS.
film and television, and setting
aside the digital developments
for someone else to worry about? While many media study
programs opted for one or the other of these models, we took
a different path, evident in the formation of the two-year SM
program in Comparative Media Studies (2000) and the SB
program in Comparative Media Studies (2003).
The “C” in CMS says it all: rather than looking at media as
discrete silos and figuring out which two or three to include, we
sought to reformulate our focus, looking instead across media
forms at the processes of interaction and change. This required
understanding the particularities of each medium as a textual
system and as a set of historical practices, but it also allowed
us to look beyond these particularities to the interrelation-
ships among media technologies, texts and practitioners. The
comparative approach encouraged us to work not only across
media forms, but to explore them in different historical and
cultural settings, and to call upon a wide array of methodolo-
gies to understand and assess our findings. Just over a decade
ago, Henry Jenkins backed by then-Dean Philip Khoury, led a
group of SHASS faculty with overlapping interests in media.
They pulled together and gave substance to this idea. Drawing
on the disparate array of faculty expertise, CMS was born in
a spirit of collaboration and committed participation. Perhaps
it was in the air: In varietate concordia…“unity in diversity”…
could have been our motto; it was adopted a few months later
by the European Union.
The MIT Factor
The emergence of CMS from the humanistic study of film and
television is actually the latest expression of a much deeper and
more robust set of media developments at MIT. Consider the
long, distinguished, and eclectic history evident in the work
of Vannevar Bush (engineering), Ithiel de Sola Pool (political
science), Norbert Wiener (mathematics), Harold “Doc”
Edgerton (physics), Ricky Leacock (the film section), Noam
Chomsky (linguistics), and Nicholas Negroponte (media arts
7
 HISTORY
and sciences). The work of these and many other MIT col-
leagues binds together the development of Technicolor, the $100
laptop, stroboscopic photography, ARPANET, direct cinema,
free software, creative commons, the second self, manufactur-
ing consent, and yes, convergence culture. These and many
equally groundbreaking technologies, applications and critical
insights have been subsumed back into their originating disci-
plines. While media@MIT is a story that merits much greater
attention, its relevance for CMS can be found in the notion of
interdisciplinarity underlying these efforts.
In fact, a number of these developments owe their existence
to the Institute’s historically most generative strategy: disciplin-
ary border crossing. This strategy can be seen in the “Rad Lab”
during its heyday in the 1940s; or more recently in the floor
plan of the Stata Center, which encourages chance encoun-
ters; or for that matter, in the disciplinary mix built into the
Media Lab and the new Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer
Research. The contact zones between and among established
disciplines offer innovative new ways to frame questions—and
to answer them—while still being able to draw upon traditional
domains of expertise. Comparativity in this context offers the
latitude to assess and choose from among different approaches,
rather than being locked into a particular orthodoxy—an asset
in a time of change.
Consistent with this approach, CMS has actively sought
working partnerships with colleagues throughout SHASS, and
8
in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL),
the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), the
Media Lab, the Visual Arts Program, and elsewhere throughout
the Institute. Robustly interdisciplinary—or “undisciplined”, as
Henry Jenkins likes to call it—CMS thrived in MIT’s fertile en-
vironment. And yet surprisingly, the SB program in CMS made
history as one of the Institute’s first interdisciplinary degrees,
attesting to the Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational
Commons’ observation that many MIT students “increasingly
seek to explore professional paths that do not neatly map on the
traditional disciplines and major programs that we have long
offered.”1 As of this writing, CMS is the second largest under-
graduate major in SHASS! Clearly, MIT students have figured
out how to prepare themselves for a fast-changing field.
Comparative Media Studies: The Bigger Picture
Both the undergraduate and graduate programs encourage the
bridging of theory and practice, as much through courses as
through participation in faculty-led and independent research
projects and creative work. As an academic program, CMS has
been transformative, offering a historically grounded and cul-
turally informed way to understand the impact of digitaliza-
tion, globalization, and the redefinition of producer/consumer
relations on media industries, texts, and practices.
1  Report of the Task Force on the Undergraduate Educational Commons, p. 30
 HISTORY

fall 2004
s
In Medias Re of MIT Compara
tive Media Studies
The Newsletter

web.mit.edu/cms

presents new
research update
literacy in loc al schools Marks s
Measurings media Thus began Walke
r’s research journe
y
scores for old film

M
r in
the state of techno
logy Marks, senior lecture artin
by Reginald Owen to find out about u- r Arts, is the

V
Walker
isiting scholar Vera
the cracked
nearly stumbled on
tile and uneven floor
entered the classro
om of an
when she
elemen tary
lton section of inner-
school in the Carrol
city New Orleans.
“I was shocked at
the condition of the
classroom and the
school,” she said.
She expected to see
some things lacking
in low-income comm Music and Theate
in schools located es a new three-
the children’s attitud music curator for
nities. What were
toward technology?
formation is power
In a world where in-
and prestig e, how can DVD box set, More
American Film
Treasures from
Archiv es: 50 Films, 1894- Like CMS itself, the program’s public face has
compe te withou t experi-
these childre n 1931.
ence with computers?
dren be able
Would these chil-
to elevate themselves
environments and
from evolved from seemingly ragtag—for example,
their impoverished on
ns as communicati
emerge into positio
brokers in a digital
have computers?
world? Do they even
the newsletter, In Medias Res, was originally
ns
Answering these and other questio

photocopied by hand—to something altogether

rative
in this low-income has brought Walke
r to MIT’s Compa
g with
neighborhood. But s where she is workin
that Media Studie what she calls “the
Vera Walker she was surprised Henry Jenkins on
photo the school did not
Storyteller Project.”
more professional. But it has always maintained
--Isaac Singleton
t examines the
have basic things. “The Storyteller Projec y
where children technology in literac
This was a school role of media and
toilet paper and paper schools,” Walker
brought their own development in urban
towels. Most came
homes. Almos t all
from
qualifi
single-
ed
parent
for free feder- explain
s. “The Storyte
create educat ional
ller
progra
Project seeks to
mming for chil-
t
CMS’s collaborative, do-it-ourselves ethic,
s. y and cultural relevan
al breakfasts and lunche dren that is sociall

making great use of the talented people at hand.

I would find out l thinking skills.
“I wondered what and promotes critica 7
of these children on continued on page
about the attitudes
. Witmark Picture
technology,” she recalls This cover from The
may ap-
in the works for
and Organ (1913)

Story conference fourth Media in Transi tion

Album for Piano
conference, pears in the
More Treasures progra
notes courtesy Marti
n Marks.
m
Counterclockwise from left: the grainy cover
propos als for papers for the ence will explore sto-

C MS is accept ing 6-8, 2005. The confer from

“The Work
rytelling as a cultura
of Stories
l practice, a social
The conference will
their own societies
media forms within
ways in which stories
stories easily inhabi
t different media simult
adaptable.
As with all
among scholars, journa
Media
own tribal groups.
to 2000’s Treasures
,” to be held May
address why some
and politic al activit
stories endure, and
y as well as an art form.
how they migrate
s and historical eras;
across
the
The follow up
American Film Archiv
es was released in
ases American mo-
of the first issue; the fall 2004 issue; the spring
as well as other culture ion; and the way some September and showc
their first four
are deploy ed in period
s of media in transit
aneously while other
stories seem less tion pictures during
decades and includ
films but newsreels,
es not only narrati ve
industrial films, and 2009 cover, the first to feature an illustration
ate a conversation
CMS aims to stimul home movie clips.
in Transition conferences,
lists and media profes
sionals who may often only speak to their
continued on page
2 All the silent films
given newly record
in the set have been
ed music, with more
created and per-
by GAMBIT designers; and the fall 2009 cover,
than 35 piano scores new
as well as a dozen

Inside In Medi as Res

MIT4: the work
May 6-8, 2005
of stories formed by Marks,
scores contributed
The release of More
by MIT composers.
Treasures will be
combining graduate student photography and
Camb ridge, MA, USA a progra m of films and
MIT, celebrated with
director’s column,
people, places, things
2
,3
Abstracts accep
basis until Janua
ted on a rolling
ry 1, 2005
music in Killian Hall
ning at 8 p.m. The
on Oct. 27 begin-
event is free and staff graphic design.
forum / colloquium
schedule, 4-5 mm-forum/mit4 open to the public
.
web.mit.edu/co
tz acting associ ate director, 8
defran

9
 HISTORY
How is this achieved? A core of CMS-specific courses
(Theory and Methods; Major Media Texts; Media in Transi-
tion; Workshop) establishes the overarching structure that
enables students to make the most of a wide array of interdisci-
plinary electives available both at MIT and Harvard. Students
are encouraged to develop a broad understanding of key issues
surrounding media change that cut across different national
borders and delivery techniques; they are also encouraged to
develop an in-depth understanding of multiple media tradi-
tions, old and new. In this way, the program manages to provide
coherence and a common vocabulary while being uniquely
shaped to fit the needs of each student.
CMS helps students to become leaders who will shape and
enhance our understanding of media, drawing on their back-
ground in the humanities and the social sciences to tackle
compelling real-world problems. The CMS curriculum helps
students build upon their prior technical and professional
knowledge to develop new conceptual models and forms of
expertise and to expand their brainstorming, problem-solving,
negotiation, team work, leadership, project completion, and
communication skills. They are taught to translate conceptual
frameworks into a language that will allow their broad dissem-
ination and application. They are asked to test what they read
in their assigned texts against contemporary developments that
may change the media landscape. They interact with the best
contemporary thinkers on media, whether they are scholars,
10
journalists, business and government leaders, artists, activists,
journalists, or policy makers. They become important partici-
pants in ongoing research initiatives in areas such as educa-
tional games, media literacy, or branded entertainment, which
directly apply what they are learning in their classes to specific
challenges confronting education and industry.
Research
Through its research projects, symposia, and outreach
programs, CMS explores the social, economic, and cultural
impact of digital technologies and their analogue forbears
and asks important questions about democracy, diversity, and
cultural participation. The basic research themes were estab-
lished by the faculty at the outset of the program, and have
since been realized through a number of funded initiatives that
examine a wide variety of traditional and new media and their
uses. Sponsored research projects have included the Knight
Foundation supported Center for Future Civic Media (in col-
laboration with the Media Lab); the MacArthur Foundation-
funded Project New Media Literacies; The Education Arcade,
with sponsors such as NBC and the Smithsonian Institution
and carried out in collaboration with the Scheller Teacher
Education Program in DUSP; the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT
Game Lab, supported by Singapore’s National Research Foun-
dation and Media Development Authority and carried out with
help from CSAIL; the HyperStudio, dedicated to developing in-
 HISTORY
novative approaches to digital humanities and social sciences;
and the Convergence Culture Consortium, where researchers
from CMS and companies such as Turner Television, Yahoo,
MTV, Petrobras, and others discuss media futures and strate-
gies for enhancing cultural participation. The success of these
projects owes much to our talented research directors and staff,
to the many post-docs and visiting scholars that have been in
residence, and of course to our students.
While not typical of the traditional humanities research
support model, these projects have shown that our work is
relevant and that various organizations are willing to invest
millions of dollars to see it properly carried out. The projects
provide a way for CMS to extend its scholarly agenda into a
range of media encounters, and they provide a wealth of research
data, resource networks, UROPs (undergraduate research-
ers), internships, and even jobs for our students. The close fit
between research and the larger CMS mission is nowhere more
apparent than in the academic courses that the various projects
have sponsored. Topics such as media convergence, media
literacies, and civic engagement all attest to the link, but the
most dramatic developments have appeared in the form of the
games curriculum, a full spectrum of courses, many of which
were initiated and taught by GAMBIT and Education Arcade
post-docs and senior researchers. The projects have had one
additional benefit: the fifteen hours a week that most students
spend working as part of their research assistantship have trans-
formed the educational process, leveraging a complementary
set of skills and experiences to those typically generated in the
classroom. And above all, the projects have given us a forum in
which to test our ideas and extend them into the world, while
giving students and faculty an opportunity to work together
collaboratively.
Outreach
More than just a degree-granting program, CMS has worked
hard to share its distinctive approach to media studies, in the
process embracing its position as a leader in the field. In the spirit
of the academy best captured by the fact that we “give” papers
and make our scholarship public (a spirit exemplified by MIT’s
OpenCourseWare initiative), CMS strives to do its part. Beyond
lectures and publication, we make our various colloquia, con-
ferences, and research findings available through our website,
blogs, podcasts and newsletters. We have made the program
a center where scholars, critics, activists, and industry and
creative leaders converge for thoughtful discussion. Whether
through our weekly colloquium and Communications Forum
series, or the biennial Media in Transition conference, which
has won a position as a leading international forum for new
thinking on media, or the annual Futures of Entertainment
conference, an important niche for conversations between the
academy and industry—we have sought to extend a dialogue
to the larger community. Other conferences, such as those
11
 HISTORY
co-sponsored with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet
and Society and Yale’s Center for Internet Law, or on “Race in
Digital Space” co-sponsored with USC, or the countless other
specialized seminars and conferences we support, all offer ways
for our students and external constituencies to exchange ideas
and develop new networks.
We use the term “outreach” to mean three things. First
we reach out to members of other communities, be they
academics,or practitioners or policymakers, and invite them
into CMS as visiting fellows or speakers at our various events.
Second, we have sustained research partnerships with groups at
other parts of MIT, in other universities, and in other parts of
the world, allowing us to cultivate the systematic exchange of
ideas. And third, we make sure that whatever we do, from events
to student theses, is available on our website for the larger inter-
ested public. Together, these approaches have both fuelled our
thinking about media in transition, and been transformative in
impact, at least judging by the press coverage of the program
and the widespread pick-up of our concepts.
Transition
Ten years…ten graduating classes, and with them, wave upon
wave of talent. Professors, activists, industry strategists, media
makers, leaders in thinking about transmedia storytelling,
about the frontiers of media literacies, about new media and
civic engagement….Our graduates, like all of us, continue to
12
face the challenges of a fast-changing media scene. Social media
continues to spread, and its users continue to innovate; infra-
structural conditions such as memory, transmission speed and
processing power continue to improve; corporate concentra-
tion and political influence continue to grow, even as alternate
media and participatory culture thrive; and new areas such as
computational media—code, software, and platform studies—
continue to emerge. The case for CMS, and its commitment to
learning from the past and putting new questions to the future,
is stronger than ever. And its position is clearer than ever,
located at the juncture of the traditions of the humanities, the
lived practices of this cultural moment, and the emerging tech-
nological regimes that will do much to establish our horizon of
expectations. What, then, is ahead?
After a decade of depending on the generosity and talents of
many MIT faculty members, we look forward to stabilizing—
and formally recognizing—faculty participation in CMS. Yet,
we need to redouble our efforts to gain a few key media studies
positions. Henry’s departure to USC was symptomatic of a
problem on this front, and with any luck, it will also help serve
as a catalyst for its resolution. With core faculty and the larger
pool of talented colleagues from other departments, CMS can
redouble its efforts as a leading program in the field, one of the
School’s largest majors, and a significant research presence.
Most proximately, we look forward to enhancing our
network of collaborations, building on the connections that we
 HISTORY
have made with Sloan, CSAIL, DUSP, and other parts of the
Institute. The program’s move to the “old” Media Lab building
is not only a vast improvement over the physical conditions of
our first decade in Building 14, but it brings with it new oppor-
tunities to interact more fully with our neighbors in the Media
Lab and the Art, Culture, and Technology program. We will
also continue to intensify relations with our “other” neighbors
at Harvard such as Berkman and the Department of Visual and
Environmental Studies. As CMS moves ahead, it will continue
to develop its efforts to connect and network within the Institute
and with a growing number of global partners, both in terms of
joint research projects and the visiting scholars program. Only
in this manner can we can we continue to stay ahead of the
curve of global media developments.
With faculty, we will move towards the long-envisioned real-
ization of a Ph.D. program. The needs of an intensely mediated
world and the challenges brought about by fundamental
changes in the technologies and practices of media production,
distribution, and consumption have created a compelling need
for the kinds of expertise that CMS generates. We are confident
that our graduates can provide thought leadership in the field
of media studies as well as in the culture generally, but our
students require terminal degrees if they are to obtain appoint-
ments in the academy and leadership positions in research.
Consistent with the spirit of Mens et Manus, CMS will also
continue to embrace research as a defining program element.
The testing of ideas in the form of applied research has been
fundamental to our success as an intellectual endeavor and as
an educational program. CMS research activities have provided
its faculty and students with a way to extend the work of the
Institute to the world, and they have benefited the program by
attracting expertise and revenues, the latter providing stipends
for graduate students and attracting post-doctoral fellows. Our
research activities have shared three characteristics: they have
been collaborative, involving multiple faculty and students;
they have been interventionist, helping to generate insight and
change; and they have addressed multiple constituencies in the
media world including the industry, various cohorts of users,
media makers, analysts, and policy makers. The nature of our
future projects will inevitably change, reflecting the interests of
the faculty that lead them, the availability of financial support,
the creative partnerships that develop within the Institute, and
of course, the demands of the larger media environment. But
these three principles will continue to guide us.
Moving forward, CMS will take advantage of its internation-
al reputation and proven track record to continue building and
enhancing the program. MIT is positioned to have the most in-
novative media studies department in the country, and indeed,
in the world, continuing the Institute’s grand legacy. Our goal
in the coming years is precisely that: to be the top media studies
department, not in terms of size, but in terms of innovation,
insight, and leadership.
13
 PFREOAJTEUCRTES

N
apster and CMS appeared on the scene more or less si-
multaneously, and our thinking about media has never
been quite the same ever since. In the case of CMS, our
distinction was having both a comparative approach to the study
of media and a commitment to mind and hand, thinking and
making: Mens et Manus.
Research is core business at CMS. Unlike the research in most
humanities-based programs, which tends to be highly individu-
alistic, CMS understands research as a collaborative act, one
that draws members of the community together in common
cause. It sees research as a way to apply the ideas that we as a
field generate, extending the benefits of knowledge beyond the
walls of an academic institution. And, thanks to that engage-
ment, research offers us a way to test our ideas, to see what works
and what needs to be refined or rethought. This commitment to
collaboration, extension, and iteration has enabled us to attract
significant funding from foundations, government agencies, cor-
porations, and private donors. This funding, in turn, has enabled
us to get on with our work by hiring an excellent staff of research-
ers, supporting the majority of our students, and enhancing the
impact of our work—and our students—in the world.
The various CMS research projects have enabled structural
partnerships at MIT with the Media Lab, the Department of
Urban Studies and Planning, and the Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Lab, and they have had significant impact
from the games sector to digital humanities, from the K-12
classroom to the corporate boardroom, and in the civic media
sector as well.
Let’s take a look...
–W.U.

14
PROJECTS
F E AT U R E

15

he Convergence Culture Con-
sortium (C3) research project
is one of the program’s most
direct applications of CMS theory
and practice in the areas of corporate
media, digital media, and the creative
industries.
Launched in 2005 by Henry Jenkins,
William Uricchio, and CMS alum
Parmesh Shahani, ’05, the Consortium
built on previous research projects at
CMS that sought to directly engage
the media industries. Building on the
work of alums such as Aswin Puna-
thambekar, ’03, Shahani and a group of
CMS graduate students (Alec Austin,
’07; Ivan Askwith, ’07; Sam Ford, ’07;
Geoffrey Long, ’07; and Ilya Vedrashko,
’06) worked with Sloan School alumnus
David Edery, ’05, and a variety of
consulting researchers at CMS and
partner institutions around the world
to develop a partnership consortium
between media studies researchers
and media companies and brands. C3’s
goal for the past five years has been to
investigate the changing relationship
between media producers and their
audiences, new modes of advertising
and branding, the conglomeration of
media properties, and the implications
16
PROJECTS
By Daniel Pereira
of participatory culture. The project
launched with three founding partners:
GSD&M Idea City, MTV Networks,
and Turner Broadcasting.
The Consortium has produced a
series of white papers, including:
•  Fandemonium: A Tag Team
Approach to Enabling and Mobiliz-
ing Fans
•  Playing in Other Worlds: Modeling
Player Motivations
•  This Is Not (Just) An Advertisement:
Understanding Alternate Reality
Games
•  Moving Stories: Aesthetics and Pro-
duction in Mobile Media
•  No Room for Pack Rats: Media Con-
sumption and the College Dorm
•  How to Turn Pirates into Loyalists:
The Moral Economy and an Alterna-
tive Response to File Sharing
•  Selling Creatively: Product Placement
in the New Media Landscape
•  Vision Report 2010: In-Game Adver-
tising
•  Fanning the Audience’s Flames: Ten
Ways to Embrace and Cultivate Fan
Communities
The CMS/C3 research collaboration
was launched amidst the hardcover
release in 2006 of Jenkins’ Convergence
Culture—Where Old and New Media
Collide, now a highly influential text
in both media industries and media
studies circles.
By 2006, the Consortium expanded
from three to five corporate partners,
adding Fidelity Investments and
Yahoo! to the community. In 2008,
Brazilian companies Petrobras and
Internet Grupo (iG) joined. Today,
iG, Petrobras, and founding partner
Turner Broadcasting join new 2010
partners The Alchemists (a transmedia
storytelling company from Los Angeles
and Rio de Janeiro) and Nagravision SA
(Kudelski Group).
Building on the influence of Con-
vergence Culture, Jenkins and the
2007-2008 C3 research team led by
research manager Joshua Green and
project manager Sam Ford released
Illustration by Luis Blackaller
a well-received white paper entitled
Spreadability: If It Doesn’t Spread, It’s
Dead.
Spreadable media focuses on under-
standing how and why people spread
content and emphasizes that the spread
of content requires moving beyond the
mentality of stickiness and the mindset
of creating content that will “go viral”
and infect those who come into contact
with it, building instead on a model
that emphasizes the active role of the
audience in shaping the circulation and
contextualization of media content.
Jenkins, Green, and Ford are currently
working on a book project that brings
together research from throughout the
consortium community to flesh out
this idea and its implications for the
media industries, brands, academics,
and active audiences.
April 2009 saw the release of YouTube:
Online Video and Participatory Culture
by Green (with Jean Burgess). Green
collaborated with C3 researchers Ana
Domb and Xiaochang Li, Sam Ford,
and MIT Sloan School graduate student
and C3 researcher Eleanor Baird on the
content analysis and a resulting white
paper, entitled YouTube: Online Video
and Co-Created Value, leading up to the

release of the book. In spring 2009, three
more C3 white papers were released to
Consortium sponsor companies:
•  Tacky and Proud: Exploring Tecno-
brega’s Value Network
•  More Than Money Can Buy:
Locating Value in Spreadable Media
•  It’s (Not) the End of TV as We Know
It: Understanding Online Television
and Its Audience
While the C3 books and white papers
have been widely influential—both in
corporate media as well as independent
media circles—the series of C3-spon-
sored events since 2006 have garnered
the most passionate response.
In April 2006, CMS and C3 presented
Convergence 2006: THERE IS NO BOX,
with Jenkins playing the role of the
spoon-bending child from The Matrix.
In a mix of public and private sessions,
conference attendees discussed topics
including media history, brand loyalty,
fan productivity, patterns of multime-
dia use, online community formation,
the global television trade, marketing
in videogames, and the experience
economy. Drawing together consor-
tium members, faculty, and affiliated
researchers, this inaugural C3 retreat
served as a fitting end to the first year
of C3, providing an opportunity for the
diversity of perspectives the consor-
tium draws upon to be appreciated.
In April 2007, C3 presented Con-
vergence 2007: Collaboration 2.0. The
working premise of this event was
“Collaboration Marks Convergence
Culture.” Collaboration 2.0 explored
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models of collaboration, co-creation
and the opportunities for brand
revival within convergence culture. It
brought together researchers from both
national and international universities
to explore best practices for mobilizing
user-generated content and activat-
ing audiences as co-creators, to look at
the impact active audiences can have
on brands, and to consider new modes
for engaging the audience. The event
provided an opportunity for members From the first Futures of Entertainment conference, a panel made of up of (from left) Big
of the Consortium to talk to C3 re- Spaceship founder Michael Lebowitz, media research consultant Alex Chisholm, and former
searchers, academics, and other con- DC Comics president Paul Levitz. Photo by Geoffrey Long.
sortium members about the reshaping
By Futures of Entertainment 2 Looking forward, the current C3
of the industry.
(FOE2) in 2007, the logics of conver- research team consists of CMS graduate
November 2006 was the first Futures
gence culture were quickly becoming student Sheila Seles—who is working
of Entertainment (FOE) conference.
ubiquitous within the media world. on a C3 white paper for 2010 tenta-
With Jenkins and Green sharing duties
FOE2 brought together key industry tively titled Something Old, Something
as moderators on each panel, FOE1 in-
players who are shaping these new di- New: Understanding the Value of Tele-
troduced long form, “deep dive” panels
rections in our culture with academics vision’s Disaggregated Audiences. Sloan
(two hours or more in length) that have
exploring their implications. The con- School graduate student Ravi Inukonda
become the trademark of the annual
ference considered developments in ad- is contributing research in the area of
FOE event. Futures of Entertainment
vertising, cult media, metrics, measure- online advertising, specifically online
brings together key industry leaders
ment, and accounting for audiences, advertising networks and exchanges;
who are shaping the new directions
cultural labor and audience relations, and C3 Research Specialist Alex Leavitt
in our culture. As advertisers look for
and mobile platform development. is working on a research memo entitled
new ways to engage audiences, content
Futures of Entertainment 3 and 4 in “More Cerebral Gelatinizing Shows
creators search for new audiences,
2008 and 2009 saw a steady growth of Anytime, Anywhere: Constructing
and audiences’ quest for new ways to
the event—with a great mix of new FOE Audiences for Online Television in the
connect with culture, the nature of what
attendees—as well the “FOE fanatics” Media Ecology”. A variety of the C3
counts as “entertainment” is rapidly
who attend the event every year. FOE4 consulting researchers outside MIT are
changing. We are seeing the blurring
integrated a transmedia theme into day working on research memos based on
of aesthetic and technological distinc-
one of the conference. Since the event, their current academic work. In 2010
tions among media platforms, in the
C3 and the transmedia storytelling and beyond, CMS thought leadership
difference between “advertising” and
movement have received a huge amount continues in the form of C3 and its ev-
“content” and of the roles of “creator”
of press worldwide, and transmedia er-expanding network of scholars and
and “consumer.” The inaugural Futures
continues to gain currency within the practitioners. Stay tuned!
of Entertainment conference consid-
creative industries. FOE is now what
ered developments such as user-gen-
some consider the best annual con- Convergence Culture Consortium is online at
erated content, transmedia storytell-
ference of its size and subject matter convergenceculture.org.
ing, the rise of mobile media, and the
anywhere in the country.
emergence of social networking.
17

T
he Education Arcade (TEA)
explores games that promote
learning through authentic
and engaging play. TEA’s research
and development projects focus both
on the learning that naturally occurs
in popular commercial games and on
the design of games that more vigor-
ously address the educational needs of
players. Our mission is to demonstrate
the social, cultural, and educational po-
tentials of videogames by initiating new
game development projects, coordinat-
ing interdisciplinary research efforts,
and informing public conversations
about the broader and sometimes un-
expected uses of this emerging art form
in education.
TEA projects have touched on math-
ematics, science, history, literacy,
and language learning, and have
been tailored to a wide range of ages.
They have been designed for personal
computers, handheld devices, and
on-line delivery.
Looking Back
As one of the earliest research groups
in Comparative Media Studies, The
Education Arcade is itself nearing the
completion of its first decade. It began
18
PROJECTS
By Scot Osterweil
life as the Games-to-Teach Project,
a Microsoft-funded initiative with
CMS dating back to 2001. The project
resulted in a suite of conceptual frame-
works designed to support learning
across math, science, engineering, and
humanities curricula. Working with
top game designers from industry and
with faculty across MIT’s five schools,
researchers produced 15 game concepts
with supporting pedagogy that showed
how advanced math, science, and hu-
manities content could be uniquely
blended with state-of-the-art game
play.
In 2003, Games-to-Teach became
The Education Arcade, and it reflected
CMS’s collaborative, cross-disciplinary
approach to applied humanities. It was
a partnership between CMS and MIT’s
Scheller Teacher Education Program in
the School of Architecture and Planning
and the University of Wisconsin-Mad-
ison, and was headed by co-directors
Alex Chisholm (CMS), Eric Klopfer
(STEP), and Kurt Squire (UW).
In 2004 and 2005, TEA sponsored
conferences with the Entertainment
Software Association at its E3Expo in
Los Angeles and in the process cemented
MIT’s central role in the expanding
public conversation about the educa-
tional potential in games. During the
same period, CMS grad student Philip
Tan led a team of graduate and under-
graduate students in the development
of Revolution, a ground-breaking mod
of the role-playing game Neverwinter
Nights, transforming it into an explo-
ration of societal conflicts in pre-revo-
lutionary Williamsburg, Virginia.
The Education Arcade Today
In the intervening years our colleagues
in Wisconsin have launched a separate
parallel research group of their own,
and while we continue to work closely
with them, TEA is now wholly at MIT.
It nevertheless continues to thrive as a
collaboration between CMS and STEP
under Eric Klopfer’s direction, and
it currently supports several strands
of research. Eric’s work has focused
on the use of handheld devices in the
emerging genre of Augmented Reality
(AR) games, and on StarLogo TNG, a
programming language that supports
student creation of 3D games and
simulations. Concurrently, CMS grad
students and TEA staff working with
me have created a wide range of on-line
games and simulations. In this effort, we
have largely focused on initial concep-
Image from Caduceus
tion, game design, and the development
of pedagogical strategies, sometimes
performing the actual game develop-
ment in-house, and sometimes working
with outside partners, but always with
the goal of creating games that will
actually make their way into the market
and students’ hands, while at the same
time advancing our research agenda.
A large number of CMS graduate
students affiliated with The Education
Arcade have gone on to careers in the
game industry. These include Philip
Tan, ’03, Karen Shreier, ’05, Ravi Pu-
rushotma, ’06, Dan Roy, ’07, Kristina
Drzaic, ’07, Alec Austin, ’07, and Evan
Wendell, ’08, while Lan Xuan Le, ’09,
has continued to work on games in the
course of her doctoral studies.
TEA’s founding directors, Alex
Chisholm, Eric Klopfer, Kurt Squire,
and I have launched Learning Games
Network, a companion not-for-profit
that advances learning games in realms
outside the university. Projects include
games about language learning, mid-
dle-school science, and literature. LGN
also plays a leadership role in promoting
greater collaboration among developers
of learning games nationwide.

At this writing, The Education Arcade
is busier than ever. Projects include,
generally grouped, augmented reality
games and online games.
augmented reality games
Ubiq Bio
Currently in development, Ubiq Bio
(working title) will be a series of
AR games on challenging biology
topics, including genetics and natural
selection. It is funded by the National
Institutes of Health.
LIONS Project
This project engages middle school
students in playing and authoring
augmented reality games as part of
an after-school and summer enrich-
ment program. In partnership with the
Missouri Botanical Garden, our goals
are to explore the benefits and limita-
tions of utilizing AR games and AR
game design software to help St. Louis
area youth develop STEM skills and
positive attitudes about science and
technology. The AR curriculum is one
part of the larger LIONS Project (Local
Investigations of Natural Science)
funded by an NFS-AYS grant.
Zoo Scene Investigators
The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium,
Dublin, OH, partnered with the TEP lab
to create a new AR game for its middle
school (grades 5-8) field trip visitors.
In this game, Zoo Scene Investigators, a
zoo security guard has tackled a mys-
terious nighttime intruder. Players use
their mobile devices to search the zoo
grounds looking for clues which could
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link the intruder with the illegal wildlife
trade. Research questions focus on the
use of mobile devices to provide inter-
active narrative augmenting existing
live animal exhibits.
TimeLab
TimeLab starts with a video that sets
the players 100 years in the future when
global climate change has wreaked
havoc on Cambridge. They are then
sent back in time to the present day to
study ballot initiatives that could po-
tentially remediate the effects of global
climate change in the future. Players
walk around the MIT campus and
surrounding areas collecting informa-
tion (real and virtual) on methods of
reducing climate change and the impact
of climate change on Cambridge.
Sponsored by the Center for Future
Civic Media, TimeLab has been played
with a number of groups including
parents and kids at the Cambridge
Science Festival, adults as part of the
Center for Future Civic Media, and
MIT students as part of a class.
Online Games
MIT/Smithsonian Curated Game
In partnership with the Smithsonian
Institution, we are creating an alternate
reality game that will be played by
middle schoolers nationwide over a
period of eight weeks in spring 2011.
Collaborating with each other, with
MIT undergrads, and with Smithso-
nian scientists, students will do real
science while investigating the causes
of a fictional cataclysm. It is funded by
the National Science Foundation.
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Microbes
This is an on-line simulation that will
introduce kids to the role that microbes
play in the oceans’ ecosystem. Though
constituting the majority of the sea’s
biomass, undersea microbes are still
little understood. Professor Roman
Stocker of the MIT Department of Civil
and Environmental Engineering has
performed groundbreaking research
on microbial behavior, engineering
lab equipment that makes possible
studies that can’t be undertaken in
open oceans. We are working with him
to create a game that will help educate
the general public about his findings.
Microbes is funded by the National
Science Foundation.
Waker and Woosh
In the summer of 2009, students in the
GAMBIT Lab created two games that
figure in TEA’s current research. Woosh
and Waker were created in tandem
as educational games. Waker has a
narrative, expressed through cutscenes
and supported by its in-game art, while
Woosh’s art is entirely abstract. Both use
identical gameplay to expose players to
two basic physics concepts, requiring
players to manipulate the graphical
representations of displacement and
velocity in order to navigate through the
game. We are exploring whether either
the narrative or the abstract form of the
game is more effective in promoting
student engagement with, and under-
standing of, the physics topics.
Caduceus
A game for pre-teens, Caduceus intro-
duces players to medical science and
philanthropy in a puzzle adventure
game set in steampunk world. In this
game we also modeled new approaches
to involving parents in their children’s
game play, a mechanism intended to
support learning by reinforcing its
situation in a larger social context.
Funded by Children’s Hospital Boston,
it can be played at generationcures.org.
Kids Survey Network
We are now completing work on multi-
player games will be part of the larger
Kids Survey Network site, managed by
project partner TERC. The games will
introduce players to ideas about data
collection and representation. We have
also created a series of videos that will
appear on the site, and which hopefully
will be as entertaining as they are in-
formative in familiarizing students
with the challenges of survey taking.
Kids Survey Network is funded by the
National Science Foundation.
Lure of the Labyrinth
Lure of the Labyrinth was designed by
The Education Arcade and developed
in partnership with Maryland Public
Television and Boston developer
Fablevision. A puzzle-adventure
game designed to help middle-school
students explore pre-algebraic math,
Labyrinth went online in January 2009
and can be played for free at labyrinth.
thinkport.org.
The Education Arcade is online at
educationarcade.org.
19

T
he Center for Future Civic
Media supports research at MIT
to innovate civic media tools
and practices to strengthen geographic
communities. It bridges the Media Lab
and CMS and received initial funding
from the John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation.
The Center develops systems for
sharing, prioritizing, organizing, and
acting on information, such as new
technologies that support civic media
and political action. It serves as an in-
ternational resource for the study and
analysis of civic media; and coordinat-
ing community-based test beds.
These three activities are vitally inter-
connected. We study the existing uses
of civic media to identify best practices
and urgent needs; connect those
insights to the development of new
tools and processes; partner with local
groups to put these tools and processes
into the hands of community builders;
and monitor the results to inform the
next phase of development.
Transforming civic knowledge into
civic action is an essential part of
democracy. As with investigative jour-
nalism, the most delicate and important
information can often focus on leaders
20
PROJECTS
By William Uricchio and Andrew Whitacre
and institutions that abuse the trust of
the communities they serve. By helping
to provide people with the necessary
skills to process, evaluate, and act upon
the knowledge in circulation, civic
media ensures the diversity of inputs
and mutual respect necessary for
democratic deliberation. Some of what
emerges at the Center looks like tradi-
tional journalism, while some moves in
radical new directions.
Accomplishments
Comparative Media Studies and the
Media Lab literally won the Center’s
start-up funding, with a proposal by
Henry Jenkins, Mitch Resnick, and
Chris Csikszentmihályi securing first
prize in the inaugural Knight News
Challenge in 2007. It has allowed Com-
parative Media Studies to become a
thought leader in understanding civic
practices. From research associate
Anna Van Someren’s work on partici-
patory culture and civic decision-mak-
ing to CMS alumni Colleen Kaman’s
and Abhimanyu Das’s projects to help
kids engage with their communties,
CMS is at the fore of developing tools
for civic action. Here is a sampling of
CMS-based projects for the Center:
Comix News Network is an open-
source web tool by Abhimanyu Das
(SM ’09) for people to create web comics
easily as a complement to regular
student reporting and as a platform for
discussions about issues that concern
them. It is designed to enable and
encourage artistic engagement, civic
journalism, and social networking.
Project Roebling, being developed
by Audubon Dougherty (SM ’10), is
the first educational platform targeting
the tens of thousands of refugees that
are resettled into the U.S. every year.
Roebling is a participatory learning
laboratory that creates a digital bridge
between refugees and other marginal-
ized youth throughout the world. Using
the online peer-to-peer, extensible and
social program, students develop new
media literacy skills through collabo-
rating on storytelling projects using
maps and multi-media.
Say What?!, a collaboration between
Media Lab students and CMS’s Colleen
Kaman (SM ’09), is a seven-part
workshop exploring the relationship
between empathy and civic engage-
ment. The workshop fosters mutual
understanding, collaborative problem-
solving, and self-expression.
Old and New Media: Converging
Image from Google Earth
During the Pakistan Emergency is
a whitepaper written by Huma Yusuf
(SM ’08) that addresses the knowledge
gap about new media and democracy
in the developing world. It examines
how digital technologies—such as cell-
phones and live internet streams—and
new media platforms—including blogs,
YouTube, Flickr, and Facebook—were
used to access information, organize
political action, generate hyperlo-
cal news reports, and promote citizen
journalism during the “Pakistan
Emergency,” a period of heightened
political instability between March
2007 and February 2008.
Open Park is a model for collab-
orative online news production being
developed by Florence Gallez (SM ’10).
As collaboration and the sharing of
skills and resources have proved to be a
winning formula in other professional
spheres, Gallez considers it “only logical
to explore what this new practice could
do for the future of journalism.”
Colleagues based at the Media Lab
have also generated noteworthy civic
media tools:
ExtrAct, a set of Internet-based, data-
basing, mapping, and communications

technologies for geographic communi-
ties impacted by natural gas develop-
ment, is a novel platform spearheaded
by Center director Chris Csikszent-
mihályi for community education and
civic action. It provides the means for
these communities to generate infor-
mation about their own particular con-
ditions as well as connect with, learn
from, and act in concert with other
communities that share similar issues
or engage with similar companies. To
develop these tools we are working with
a network of lawyers, citizens’ alliances,
national activist organizations, and en-
vironmental health experts in Colorado,
New Mexico, Ohio, New York, Pennsyl-
vania, West Virginia, and Texas.
Sourcemap, from Media Lab re-
searcher Leo Bonanni and visiting
scientist Matthew Hockenberry, is a
social network built around supply
chains, enabling collective engage-
ment with the sources and material
of consumer products. It provides
resources for calculating the carbon
footprint and geographic spread
of various products and services,
including consumer electronics, travel,
and food.
And Newsflow, by Center fellow
Jeffrey Warren, is a dynamic, real-time
map of news reporting, which displays
the latest top stories—all from the last
few minutes—and the news organiza-
tions which covered them. Viewing
news in this way lets us see how the
choice of “top stories” by news bureaus
is geographically unequal, or rather,
what areas of the world are neglected by
various national news sources.
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Featured Events
The Future of News and Civic Media
Each summer, the Center hosts Knight
Foundation and our fellow News
Challenge winners for the Future of
News and Civic Media Conference.
Knight Foundation unveils its next
class of Challenge winners, and it is a
prime chance for civic media projects to
be invented, reinvented, dissected, and
combined. Conference sessions follow a
barcamp format, ones generated on-site
by the attendees themselves. Barcamps
have included everything from the
practical “Fundraising for Nonprofit In-
vestigative Journalism” to the provoca-
tive “Reporting Under Repression”.
MBTA Hackathon
Public transportation is vital to life as
we know it in Cambridge and Boston,
so in early 2010, the Center partnered
with the MBTA, Massachusetts’ bus
and rail authority, for a two-day
hackathon of transportation data. Par-
ticipants brought great ideas for phone
or web apps and played with real-time
bus tracking and train information.
The hackathon resulted in new tools
for making the average commuter’s
life easier and set a higher bar for data
transparency in governement agencies.
Communications Forums
The Center co-hosts two Forums,
allowing us to welcome incredible
speakers to MIT, from The Atlantic’s
Marc Ambinder and City Year founder
Alan Khazei to Global Voices’ (and
Center fellow) Ethan Zuckerman and
NPR’s Juan Williams.
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Csikszentmihályi’s ExtrAct project, featured with this image on the MIT homepage in 2009,
has helped communities defend their land and environmental rights.
IAP
During MIT’s Independent Activi-
ties Period, Csikszentmihályi and
Nadav Aharony have taught Call for
Action, a four-day intensive seminar
on mobile phones and activism. It
addressed questions such as how can
mobile networked devices be used for
social change, politics, and expression?
Can phones help to organize people,
gather information, and enable col-
lective action to stop global warming?
Organize labor? End a war? Internation-
al speakers ranging from community
activists to UNICEF workers discussed
the problems with existing technolo-
gies and suggested parameters for new
systems.
Csikszentmihályi and the Media Lab’s
Dale Joachim hosted a class to discuss
innovative technologies relevant to the
crisis following the 2010 earthquake in
Haiti. Students got to choose their own
projects but also mixed with people of
widely different technology expertise.
The class organized presentations from
technologists, activists, and Haitian
community members. It was an intense
hands-on session aimed at seeding
projects that will make a difference in
Haiti much beyond the earthquake.
Our Thanks
We at CMS offer our sincere thanks to
the John S. and James L. Knight Foun-
dation for their generous financial
support and focus, not just for the
Center for Future Civic Media but for
dozens of other civic media projects.
We also express our thanks to two
former colleagues in particular: Ellen
Hume, who served as our founding
research director and brought her years
of journalistic experience to a group
of techies, and Ingeborg Endter, our
outreach manager.
The Center for Future Civic Media is online
at civic.mit.edu.
21

I
n 2006, the Singaporean govern-
ment issued a call to a number of
universities for collaboration on
such areas as biotechnology, environ-
mental engineering, and, most inter-
esting to CMS, interactive and digital
media. CMS alum Philip Tan Boon
Yew SM ’03 and CMS co-founders
Henry Jenkins and William Uricchio
responded with a proposal for the
Singapore-MIT International Game
Lab. Their proposal combined MIT’s
thirty years of leadership in game in-
novation and game studies with Sin-
gapore’s energetic digital youth culture
and aimed to test new ideas in games
by actually making games. With this
blend of experience, theory, and real-
world applicability, in April of 2007 the
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab
was born.
GAMBIT explores new directions of
development for game studies and the
game industry, encouraging collabo-
ration between MIT and Singaporean
institutions, universities, polytechnics,
art schools, and companies. Possible
areas of such exploration include
Gamers, Aesthetics, Mechanics,
Business, Industry, and Technology—
hence, “GAMBIT.”
22
PROJECTS
By Philip Tan and Geoffrey Long
“It sounds like a grand governmental
plan,” says Tan, now GAMBIT’s U.S.
Executive Director, “but it’s all being
done by actual people on the ground
who are passionately interested in
games, and the kinds of problems and
challenges we face in games, because we
want to push this medium forward.”
Model
To fulfill this mandate, GAMBIT is
structured as two labs—a Cambridge
lab in Kendall Square adjacent to the
MIT campus, and a Singapore lab over-
looking the country’s main river and
the historic Raffles Hotel.
At the beginning of the summer,
forty top Singaporean undergraduates
in programming, art, sound design,
game design, and management board
a 24-hour flight to the U.S. lab, where
they work in teams with undergrads
from MIT, the Rhode Island School of
Design, and the Berklee School of Music.
Each group gets a game-related research
question from a product owner—a re-
searcher from MIT or a Singaporean
university, who acts as a client—and is
given eight weeks to produce a short,
playable game prototype addressing the
research question.
At the end of the summer, completed
games are posted as free downloads on
the GAMBIT website for the world to
play and critique. Product owners move
their research forward with a playable
prototype based on their research, and
students return to Singapore with not
just a finished game in their portfolio
but with the invaluable experience of
working in a team under real-world
development conditions. GAMBIT
examines each of the game prototypes
and selects a few for continued develop-
ment. This is where the Singapore lab
takes the lead.
Not every Singaporean student
returns to school or begins military
service once the GAMBIT summer
program concludes—a few are selected
to join the Singaporean GAMBIT
lab. Under the guidance of Singapore
Executive Director Teo Chor Guan,
this full-time team develops new games
based on the most promising concepts
from the summer game prototypes.
For example, GAMBIT’s first summer
program yielded a game called Wiip,
which let players crack a Nintendo Wii
controller like a whip as the ringmaster
in a circus. The Singapore lab decided
to make a new game based on Wiip’s
unique characters, art style, music, and
Image from Carnivale: Showtime
circus setting, and after a few months of
development produced the award-win-
ning Xbox LIVE Indie Game Carney-
Vale: Showtime. By participating in this
“finishing school” program, students
in the Singapore lab earn valuable real-
world experience and game credits as
they take their games to market, making
these alumni even more desirable to the
Singaporean game industry.
While the Singapore lab focuses on
development, the U.S. lab functions as
a research hub for game studies during
the academic year. Working with Philip
Tan in the U.S. lab are Jason Beene,
art director; Andrew Grant SB ’93,
technical director; Geoffrey Long SM
’07, researcher and communications
director; Marleigh Norton SB ’98, lead
interaction designer; Abe Stein, audio
director; Sara Verrilli, development
director; Matthew Weise SM ’04, lead
game designer; Rik Eberhardt, studio
manager; Generoso Fierro, outreach
coordinator; Claudia Forero-Sloan,
finances; and Mike Rapa, technol-
ogy support specialist. The lab is
also home to a number of scholars,
including visiting associate professor
Mia Consalvo, postdoctoral research-

ers Doris C. Rusch and Clara Fernán-
dez-Vara, and a long string of visiting
scholars including Jesper Juul, Mitu
Khandaker, Jaroslav Svelch, and others
from a range of countries: Norway,
China, Canada, and many more.
The U.S. lab also hosts courses on
topics such as writing for games, game
history, gender studies in games, and
meaningful games, providing MIT
graduate and undergraduate students a
place to conduct more lengthy explora-
tions into game concepts, development
tools, and research topics. Collaborat-
ing with colleagues at nearly a dozen
different Singaporean universities,
the U.S. lab continually assembles the
research questions that will drive each
following summer’s game prototypes.
Games
In addition to GAMBIT’s thirty game
prototypes, the Singapore lab has also
produced four fully-featured games to
date: Backflow, a mobile phone game
that was named a finalist in the 2008
Independent Games Festival Mobile;
Snap Escape, a photography-and-action
game for Facebook nominated for the
2010 Mochi Awards; Monsters In My
Backyard, a puzzle-action platformer
featuring Pinocchio, an experimental
auto-rigging software from MIT; and
CarneyVale: Showtime, which was a
finalist for the Seumas McNally Grand
Prize at the 2008 Independent Games
Festival, one of the PAX 10 featured
games at the 2008 Penny Arcade
Expo, and the Grand Prize Winner
of Microsoft’s 2008 Dream-Build-
Play Challenge. In 2010, CarneyVale:
Showtime became the first Singaporean
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HEUEECRA
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game to sign a distribution contract
with Microsoft, with the Windows
version of the game scheduled to debut
in 2010.
Prototypes produced in the first
year included Backflow and Wiip; Au-
diOdyssey, a game playable by both the
sighted and the blind; and The Illogical
Journey of Orez, which was GAMBIT’s
first collaboration with The Education
Arcade. In 2008, the lab produced
Ochos Locos, a card game platform
created for the One Laptop Per Child
XO computer; Akrasia, a game about
addiction showcased at the IndieCade
International Festival for Independent
Games; and Picopoke, an interpretive In 2010, building on its stellar outreach to the game design community, GAMBIT launched a
photo game for Facebook named a video podcast series available on TechTV (techtv.mit.edu/collections/gambitgamelab).
finalist in the 2009 Independent Games
Festival Mobile. Other notable games Joshua Diaz SM ’09 in The Journal of Revolution, which was completed while
included Rosemary, an adventure game Transformative Works and Cultures; he was a visiting scholar at the lab.
exploring memory and nostalgia; numerous articles by Jovan Popovic’s lab In 2010, the U.S. lab announced that
Waker, a project with The Education in the ACM Transactions on Graphics; GAMBIT affiliates William Uricchio,
Arcade (named a finalist in the 2010 collaborations between Singapore and Geoffrey Long, and Jesper Juul will be
Indie Game Challenge); Moki Combat MIT researchers such as Alex Mitchell co-editing Playful Thinking, a series of
2.0, Abandon, and Dearth, three col- from National University of Singapore short books on game-related topics for
laborations with the MIT Computer and Nick Montfort of CMS and the the MIT Press to debut in 2011.
Science and AI Lab, and Tipping Point, Program in Writing and Humanistic Overall, GAMBIT’s primary success
a board game based on research from Studies; and multiple articles in such has been its influence on game studies
the MIT Sloan School of Management. game industry publications as The and development worldwide. At the
Game Career Guide and Gamasutra. 2009 Games Convention Asia con-
Successes Representatives from the lab have ference, the director of training at
In addition to these games’ multiple also presented at such industry and Lucasfilm Animation Singapore held
awards, the lab has also enjoyed great academic conferences as SIGGRAPH, up GAMBIT as an example of what
success with its research. To date, re- IndieCade, Foundations of Digital a games education program can be.
searchers from the lab have published Games, FuturePlay, the Game Education Moving forward, GAMBIT aims to
nearly sixty articles in international Summit, Media in Transition, Descola- continue to raise that bar, continue
journals, including a critical historical gem, Games for Health, the Indepen- producing innovative, creative games,
perspective of BioShock by Matthew dent Game Conference, and the Game and continue training creative game-
Weise in Eludamos; a history of the Developers Conference. Research from makers for both sides of the world.
chiptunes movement by CMS graduate the lab has been showcased in multiple
students Kevin Driscoll SM ’09 and books, including Jesper Juul’s A Casual GAMBIT is online at gambit.mit.edu.
23

H
yperStudio – Digital Hu-
manities at MIT – explores
the potential of new media
technologies for the enhancement
of education and research in the hu-
manities and social sciences. Our
work focuses on new methodologies
and practices enabled by digital tech-
nologies and their impact on scholarly
inquiry and educational practice. In
close collaboration with scholars,
educators, students, and developers, we
conceptualize, develop, and deploy me-
dia-rich projects combined with inno-
vative digital tools. HyperStudio is part
of the School of Humanities, Arts, and
Social Sciences (SHASS), and one of the
research groups within Comparative
Media Studies.
HyperStudio works across the dis-
ciplines in SHASS with projects and
initiatives ranging from Anthropology,
History, Literature, Foreign Languages,
and Political Science. Over the years,
we have partnered with groups in other
schools at MIT and outside partners,
developing concepts for educational
and scholarly projects and consulting
on best practices and implementation
strategies. The audience for our educa-
tional projects ranges from a few sec-
24
PROJECTS
By Kurt Fendt
ondary-level initiatives to primarily col-
lege-level and adult education projects.
Funding for HyperStudio comes from
a mix of sources with project-specific
grants from organizations such as the
National Endowment for the Humani-
ties and other foundations.
HyperStudio’s research is conducted
within the context of the emerging field
of Digital Humanities. We typically
focus on projects containing smaller
datasets ranging from a couple of
hundred to several thousand media
items. The innovative humanities tools
that we create to interact with these
media repositories are always driven
by educational or scholarly needs and
are being developed in close collabora-
tion with faculty and students. We have
identified four main areas in our digital
humanities research.
Visualization
HyperStudio develops visualization
tools and methods that support scholars
and students to research content from
a variety of perspectives and param-
eters. All tools are being developed as
dynamic tools, that is, tools such as
timelines that can be integrated into the
learning and research process, support-
ing users in formulating new questions
or reexamining existing visualizations.
Collaboration
With greater availability of media,
texts, and other data there is an increas-
ing need by scholars and students (who
we consider as novice scholars) to share
their research findings and collabo-
rate on the interpretation of complex
content. Drawing on social network-
ing concepts and ideas that evolved in
participatory media, HyperStudio is
working on a set of tools that support
our users in their collaboration activi-
ties in novel ways. Scholars will be able
to combine different kinds of media
texts, data, and visualizations and form
an interpretative argument and share
these with their peers. Other scholars
can then integrate these interpretations
into their own work without losing
access to the original texts and data.
Dynamic media
While there a number of innovative
tools available for static media such
as images, there is a surprising lack of
tools that can support scholarly work
with dynamic media such as video and
audio. Together with other research
Image from U.S.-Iran Missed Opportunities
teams, HyperStudio is exploring forms
of fine-grained video and audio anno-
tation that can then be integrated with
other collaboration and visualization
tools to support the close reading of
media such as theater plays and inter-
national films from a variety of angles,
cultures, and domain expertise.
Online publishing
This new research area explores new
forms of publishing that can only be
done online. Since most of HyperStu-
dio’s work focuses on the research or
learning process, we are investigating
and experimenting with formats that
support the evolving nature of research
on the one hand while also meeting the
needs of scholarly publishing and peer
review on the other.
Within this context, HyperStudio has
developed a number of projects and
tools. Our overall approach is the con-
ceptual discovery and development
of a humanities project and its peda-
gogical uses. HyperStudio’s project
platforms provide students and faculty
with flexible online environments to
create, annotate, and share media-
rich documents for the teaching and

learning of core humanistic subjects.
Using our open standards platforms,
faculty members build subject-specific
archives that extend the use of multi-
media materials in the classroom and
enable the formation of learner commu-
nities across disciplines and distances.
In its earlier years primarily focusing
on projects for learning foreign
languages and cultures such as the
NEH-funded Berliner sehen project for
German Studies, a major grant from
MIT’s d’Arbeloff grant for Excellence
in Education allowed HyperStudio to
realize projects across SHASS. Under
the title: Metamedia – Transforming
Humanities Education, HyperStudio
has developed close to thirty media rich
project along with an online platform
called m:media. The Metamedia project
focuses on creating shareable multime-
dia archives for use in MIT humanities
subjects, and, increasingly, in collabo-
ration with outside arts and humanities
organizations. Flexible learning tools
allow teachers and students to use the
archives to create customized teaching
modules for use in the classroom.
Humanities subjects often rely on col-
lections, and our approach allows for
the creation of “mini-archives” which
can be navigated, sorted, and annotated
by students. The Metamedia model
allows a wide variety of possible navi-
gation interfaces for a given archive, as
well as among archives, while maintain-
ing a standardized backbone among
all the projects. For this reason, our
digital projects are not simply websites;
they’re flexible and highly interac-
tive learning environments, adaptable
resources which teachers can use to
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build teaching modules according to
their specific needs.
With new scholarly needs arising,
more “digital” becoming available,
and more faculty working on online
projects, HyperStudio has been devel-
oping a new on-line platform called
Repertoire. Repertoire is HyperStu-
dio’s toolkit for use in digital humani-
ties research projects and collections.
Its central design precept is to provide
individual digital humanities projects
flexibility in modeling, analyzing,
and presenting their materials as they
choose—while also allowing research-
ers to combine features from other
projects in innovative ways. Fundamen-
tal to Repertoire’s philosophy is that
digital humanities materials and inves-
tigators have unique concerns and that
while they may share techniques and
perspectives, no one size fits all. Hence,
for the Comédie-Française Registers
project, which hinges on analysis of
digital archives, Repertoire supports
data-extracting markup analysis. This
enables the project to maintain a set of
data that reflect the Registers’ archival
appearance while also providing a
database of play attendance data for
analysis and visualization. For projects
like the U.S.-Iran Missed Opportunities
initiative that depend on collaborative
creation of interpretive narrative and
timelines, Repertoire offers user man-
agement and wiki-style interlinking
essays. The Global Shakespeare project
will adapt this essay module, using its
own database of Asian Shakespeare
performances and videos.
All of our digital humanities tools
will be open source. Tools such as
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HyperStudio’s dynamic timeline called
Chronos or innovative implementations
and prototypes such as the collaborative
timelining tool Emergent Time will
be made available to a larger Digital
Humanities audience in order to
contribute to new modes of scholarly
inquiry and innovative teaching.
Outreach
In addition to our research and devel- An image from a Japanese performance
opment initiatives, HyperStudio has of Othello, collected as part of the Global
conducted a variety of outreach activi- Shakespeare archive.
ties. Besides the StudioTalks at MIT,
ranging from topics such as Walter Team
Benjamin’s Arcades Project and its Integral to the HyperStudio team are
relevance to digital humanities or talks the CMS graduate students who play
on software studies and the possibili- a vital role as digital humanities re-
ties of capturing the artistic process searchers and faculty lead on projects.
in a digital format, HyperStudio has Together with the software develop-
developed a biennial conference called ers, the project manager, and the other
Humanities + Digital (hyperstudio.mit. team members, they are responsible for
edu/h-digital/). The first conference developing new concepts and innova-
takes place in May of 2010 on the topic tive ways to integrate traditional hu-
of Visual Interpretations. The confer- manities scholarship with new digital
ence will bring digital practitioners opportunities. Several of HyperStudio’s
and humanities scholars together with former graduate students (Christo-
experts in art and design to consider pher York, ’01, Karen Verschooren, ’07,
the past, present, and future of visual Whitney Trettien, ’09) have remained
epistemology in digital humanities. connected to HyperStudio in one or the
The goal is to get beyond the notion that other way and are still contributing to
information exists independently of the research of HyperStudio.
visual presentation, and to rethink vi-
sualization as an integrated analytical HyperStudio is online at hyperstudio.mit.edu.
method in humanities scholarship. By
fostering dialogue and critical engage-
ment, this conference aims to explore
new ways to design data and metadata
structures so that their visual embodi-
ments function, as Johanna Drucker
puts it, as “humanities tools in digital
environments.”
25

By Erin Reilly
P
roject New Media Literacies,
now housed at the University of
Southern California, got its start
as a CMS research project in 2005, the
same year as Pew Internet & American
Life project study found that more than
half of all teens have created media
content, and roughly one-third of
teens who use the Internet have shared
content they produced. In many cases,
these teens are actively involved in what
we are calling participatory cultures—
a culture with relatively low barriers
to artistic expression and civic engage-
ment, strong support for creating and
sharing one’s creations, and some type
of informal mentorship whereby what
is known by the most experienced is
passed along to novices. It’s a culture
in which members believe their con-
tributions matter, and feel some degree
of social connection with one another
(at the least they care what other people
think about what they have created).
Since 2005, New Media Literacies has
published an influential white paper,
Confronting the Challenges of Par-
ticipatory Culture: Media Education
for the 21st Century; created a series of
resources for educators including the
Teacher’s Strategy Guide, the Learning
Library, and in collaboration with
Howard Gardner’s GoodPlay Project,
developed Our Space, a digital media
and ethics casebook; conducted field
research to support and iterate the de-
26
PA S T P R O J E C T
velopment of these education resources;
and collaborated in national and inter-
national professional development ini-
tiatives.
Participatory culture shifts the focus
of literacy from one of individual ex-
pression to community involvement.
The new literacies almost all involve
social skills developed through col-
laboration and networking. These
skills—such as play, performance, mul-
titasking, networking, transmedia nav-
igation, and others—build on the foun-
dation of traditional literacy, research
skills, technical skills, and critical
analysis skills taught in the classroom.
Participating fosters a learning ecology
where youth acquire new knowledge
across invisible boundaries and offers
opportunities to practice these skills
across work and play, school and after-
school, face-to-face encounters and
online communities.
A growing body of scholarship
suggests potential benefits of these forms
of participatory culture, including op-
portunities for peer-to-peer learning,
a changed attitude toward intellectual
property, the diversification of cultural
expression, the development of skills
valued in the modern workplace, and
a more empowered conception of citi-
zenship. Access to this participatory
culture functions as a new form of the
hidden curriculum, shaping which
youth will succeed and which will be
left behind as they enter school and
the workplace. Some have argued that
children and youth acquire these key
skills and competencies on their own by
interacting with popular culture. Three
concerns, however, suggest the need for
policy and pedagogical interventions:
•  The Participation Gap: the unequal
access to the opportunities, experi-
ences, skills, and knowledge that
will prepare youth for full participa-
tion in the world of tomorrow.
•  The Transparency Problem: the
challenges young people face in
learning to see clearly the ways
that media shape perceptions of the
world.
•  The Ethics Challenge: the
breakdown of traditional forms of
professional training and socializa-
tion that might prepare young people
for their increasingly public roles as
media makers and community par-
ticipants.
Educators must work together to
ensure that every American young
person has access to the skills and
experiences needed to become a full
participant, can articulate their under-
standing of how media shapes percep-
tions, and has been socialized into the
emerging ethical standards that should
shape their practices as media makers
and participants in online communi-
ties.
At New Media Literacies, one of our
goals is to invite educators at every
level and discipline to participate in
an on-going dialogue related to our
research questions. We consider this
dialogue as a process toward building
a participatory form of scholarship
known as a worked example. A worked
example is a multimedia presentation of
one or more key moments, findings, or
interesting challenges or tensions that
emerge out of field testing of educa-
tional materials. The name is intended
to suggest that the “working” of the
example—the building of something
approximating the experience of the
curriculum or moment and through
that process new ideas emerge and are
investigated—is a crucial element of
synthesis of data.
As we work toward creating our
worked examples to synthesize and
summarize our field research, we invite
educators to participate and contribute
to our on-going dialogue and help us
grapple with exactly what it is that we
see and learn from our field data and
field experience.
To this end, everyone is invited to join
NML’s Community to participate in a
series of conversations around the de-
velopment of New Media Literacies ed-
ucational resources and our field work.
They can join a conversation of a topic
crucial to our understanding of effect of
new digital media on today’s learning
environments. Each discussion high-
lights evidence and collected artifacts
from our field research to support and
initiate dialogues.
Project New Media Literacies is online at
newmedialiteracies.org.

C
omparative Media Studies
has never shied away from
putting its work on display, not
just for its own sake but to challenge
CMS’s own thinking about the focus
and direction of media research. That
ethos has resulted in remarkable public
events—talks, forums, conferences,
film series, almost any format you can
think of—all of which puts a spotlight
on the academic creativity and excel-
lence demanded by CMS . . . and almost
all of which, fantastically, is available as
audio or video at cms.mit.edu.
Some of the events, such as the “Race
in Digital Space” and “Computer and
Video Games Come of Age” confer-
ences, were dramatic one-off enter-
prises. But others, highlighted below,
have come to define both Compara-
tive Media Studies at MIT and media
studies as a powerhouse, international
field.
Colloquium
The CMS Colloquium series provides
an intimate and informal exchange
between a visiting speaker and CMS
faculty, students, visiting scholars, and
friends. Each week during the term,
CMS hosts a figure from academia,
industry, or the art world to speak
about their work and its relation to our
studies. These sessions are free, open to
the public, and serve as an excellent in-
troduction to our program. The collo-
quium is also the source for our weekly
podcasts, broadcast to the world at large
T E EX VT EHNETASV Y
10 Years of Happenings
By Brad Seawell and Andrew Whitacre
on our website and in the iTunes Store.
The Colloquium has hosted such
luminaries as the X-Men’s Chris
Claremont, famed comics critic Scott
McCloud, political campaign adviser
Tucker Eskew, Yochai Benkler and
Wendy Selzer of Harvard’s Berkman
Center for Internet and Society,
Pulitzer Prize-winning MIT professor
Junot Díaz, online game scholar Celia
Pearce, and even wrestling champion
and author Mick Foley.
Communications Forum
The biggest draw in CMS’s first ten years was a 2008 visit by acclaimed sci-fi/fantasy author
Neil Gaiman for the inaugural Julius Schwartz Lecture. Gaiman has since won a Newbery
Award for The Graveyard Book, and the film adaption of Coraline received an Academy
For more than thirty years the MIT Award nomination. Video of his lecture is available at techtv.mit.edu/collections/cms.
Communications Forum has played a
unique role at MIT and beyond as the Stephen Jay Gould, publisher and New ativity, and community of comics and
host of important conversations about York Review of Books founder Jason popular entertainment. The lecture
all aspects of communications, with Epstein, MPAA president Jack Valenti, is hosted by CMS and was founded to
special emphasis on emerging technol- political consultants Joe Trippi and honor the memory of longtime D.C.
ogies (see page 32). Leading academics, Cyrus Krohn, author Thomas Frank, Comics editor Julius “Julie” Schwartz,
journalists, political figures, and legal scholar Cass Sunstein, New York whose contributions to our culture
corporate managers have appeared at Times media columnist David Carr, include co-founding the first science
its conferences and panels. The Forum Shakespeare scholar Stephen Green- fiction fanzine in 1932, the first science
continues its rich tradition of organiz- blatt, and Deadwood creator David fiction literary agency in 1934, and the
ing quality public discourse as the pro- Milch. first World Science Fiction Convention
gramming division of CMS. in 1939. Schwartz went on to launch
Addressing an array of bold commu- Julius Schwartz Lecture a career in comics that would last for
nications topics, speakers over the years This is an annual event held to honor well over 42 years, during which time
have included Associated Press reporter an individual who has made signifi- he helped launch the Silver Age of
Helen Thomas, evolutionary biologist cant contributions to the culture, cre- Comics, introduced the idea of parallel
27
 EVENTS

NYU media scholar Stephen Duncombe (left) and New York Times media columnist David From IAP 2009, Mystery Science Theater 3000 creators Joel Hodgson (left) and Trace
Carr appeared at a Communications Forum on politics and popular culture in 2009. Beaulieu (right) with Jason Begy (SM, ‘10) and Outreach Coordinator Generoso Fierro.
Photo by Greg Peverill-Conti. Photo by Andrew Whitacre.

Pavel Curtis (left) and Tim Berners-Lee in 1997, speaking on privacy, freedom, and regula- From IAP 2010, GAMBIT lead game designer Matthew Weise leads a workshop on adaptng
tion at the first Media in Transition conference. games from other media. Photo by Geoffrey Long.

28

universes, and had a hand in the rein-
vention of such characters as Batman,
Superman, the Flash, Green Lantern,
Hawkman, and the Atom.
Like Schwartz himself, the first two
Schwartz Lecture speakers were pop
culture heroes in their own right: Neil
Gaiman, creator of the D.C. Comics
Sandman series and the 2009 film
Coraline, and J. Michael Straczynski,
screenwriter and comic book author
best known as the creator of the science
fiction series Babylon 5.
IAP
CMS takes pride in its participation in
MIT’s Independent Activities Period,
the two weeks each January when
anybody can teach on a topic of their
choice. Often, CMS faculty will teach
a condensed course for credit, such as
Mia Consalvo’s IAP course on conduct-
ing textual analysis. But more often,
faculty and staff use IAP as a chance to
put their passion on display. The best-
known IAP class at MIT, in fact, was
former CMS director Henry Jenkins’
Dr. Seuss reading and lecture, which
he held for eighteen straight years. But
lesser-known events still made a mark.
CMS’s technology assistant Mike Rapa
and his wife Jen screened eight films by
Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam. And in
January 2009, grad student Jason Begy
and GAMBIT events planner Generoso
Fierro were pleasantly surprised when
their small talk about Mystery Science
Theater 3000 ballooned into a several-
hundred-person event after MST3K
founders Joel Hodgson and Trace
Beaulieu asked to speak and show clips
from the show.
T E EX VT EHNETASV Y
Media in Transition
In 1999, the Media in Transition project
came to an end. But to help launch
the new Comparative Media Studies
program, the Communications Forum
created a biennial Media in Transi-
tion conference. Six conferences later,
the MiT conference is known as the
preeminent event of its kind, bringing
together a cross-disciplinary collection
of scholars from dozens of countries,
who discuss themes key to the future of
media studies. The 2002 conference, for
example, brought talks on globaliza-
tion and convergence—half a decade
before “convergence” was a common
term in the field. The most recent con-
ference, in 2009, brought hundreds
of attendees to the MIT campus all
focused on the storage and transmission
of data, obliging humanities scholars to
consider the acceptance, sharing, and
survival of their increasingly digitized
work.
Humanities + Digital: Visual
Interpretations Conference
A brand-new conference comes via
HyperStudio, picking up in Media
in Transition’s off-year to carry on
similar topics. The first Humani-
ties + Digital Conference happens in
May 2010 to tackle the visualization
challenges inherent to contemporary
scholarship. How do visual representa-
tions of complex data help humanities
scholars ask new questions? How does
visual rhetoric shape the way we relate
to documents and artifacts? Can we
recompose the field of digital humani-
ties to integrate more dynamic analyti-
cal methods into humanities research?
HyperStudio’s conference brings digital
practitioners and humanities scholars
together with experts in art and design
to consider the past, present, and future
of visual epistemology in digital hu-
manities. The goal is to get beyond the
notion that information exists inde-
pendently of visual presentation, and to
rethink visualization as an integrated
analytical method in humanities schol-
arship.
Futures of Entertainment
As advertisers look for new ways to
engage audiences, content creators
search for new audiences, and audiences
quest for new ways to connect with
culture, the nature of what counts as
“entertainment” is rapidly changing.
We are seeing the blurring of aesthetic
and technological distinctions between
media platforms, of “advertising”
and “content” and of “creator” and
“consumer”. Futures of Entertainment
brings together key industry leaders
who are shaping these new directions
in our culture. The conference will
consider developments such as user-
generated content, transmedia story-
telling, the rise of mobile media, and
the emergence of social networking.
Heading into its fifth conference in
2010, Futures of Entertainment has
taken its spot as one of the great annual
gatherings of content creators, advertis-
ers, and academics.
Media Spectacle
Founded by late CMS program ad-
ministrator Chris Pomiecko, Media
Spectacle celebrates his love for film-
making by showcasing the finest video
projects created by MIT students, staff
,and faculty.
Now in its twelfth year, the event has
received submissions of every genre
from experimental to documentary to
narrative works created on every con-
ceivable platform and device.
The event is judged by esteemed
members of the CMS community as
well as Cathy Pomiecko, Chris’s sister.
After each year’s selected pieces are
screened, the undergraduate winner
for best film receives a cash prize and
the Chris Pomiecko Trophy, followed
by the Claude Berry Award for the best
non-undergraduate entry.
29
 EVENTS

Snapshots from the 2009 Future of News and

Civic Media Conference, hosted by the MIT
Center for Future Civic Media. This annual
conference brings together winners of the
Knight News Challenge—smart, decidated
inventors and researchers, all addressing the
changing information needs of citizens in the
U.S. and worldwide.

30
T E EX VT EHNETASV Y

CMS affiliates also use events to raise funds for charity.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, for example, GAMBIT
staffer Abe Stein created a 48 hour marathon in which staff,
students and friends played a game of their choosing from
start to finish for online pledges to Partners In Health for
Haiti relief. The event raised over $5,500. Clockwise from
top left: Marathoner playing a complete season of NHL2010;
Generoso Fierro pointing out to Abe Stein that it’s 5:44am,
at which point they have been playing twenty-three straight
hours; Abe Stein, exhausted in the last hours. GAMBIT’s
videos are avilable at http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/gam-
bitgamelab. Video stills by Generoso Fierro. Background
image by the United Nations Development Programme.

31

The Communications Forum, Media in Transition,
and the Origins of CMS
A 1982 poster for a talk on an information
census. The Forum was known as the MIT
Research Program in Communications
Policy. The description begins, presciently,
“People talk of an ‘information explosion.’”
F
ounded in 1978 by the late
Ithiel de Sola Pool, a pioneer in
the study of communications
who taught in MIT’s Political Science
Department, the Communications
Forum has played a unique role at MIT
and beyond as a site for cutting-edge
discussion of the cultural, political,
economic, and technological impact of
communications, with special emphasis
on emerging technologies. Leading
scholars, journalists, media producers,
political figures, and corporate execu-
tives appear regularly at conferences
and panels sponsored by the Forum.
32
EVENTS
By David Thorburn
Originally housed in the School of
Engineering and affiliated with the
Center for Transportation, Policy, and
Industrial Development, the Forum
moved to the School of Humanities and
Social Science in 1998, two years after I
became director.
This transition was more than a
change of address. Though it retained
its commitment to rigor and clarity
about scientific and technological
matters, the Forum now began to focus
more systematically on the social and
cultural significance of communica-
tions media.
At the same time, MIT’s thriving
cross-d isciplina r y u ndergraduate
program in Film and Media Studies—
soon to become Comparative Media
Studies—had established a secure base
of enrollments and participating faculty
drawn from all sections in the Humani-
ties. As the name of the new program
implies, a key principle of our enlarging
conception of media study was that no
medium can be understood fully in
isolation. Both the historical develop-
ment of a medium and its relations with
ancestor systems and contemporary
media forms must be central to the
serious study of communications.
This idea of a media studies curricu-
lum—at once more historical and more
attentive than existing programs to the
intricate rivalries, collusions, and inter-
actions among contemporary media—
seemed to us a compelling rationale for
our burgeoning undergraduate program
and for a new graduate program.
In 1997, in anticipation of the Forum’s
move to the School of Humanities and
Social Science, Henry Jenkins and I
applied to the John and Mary R. Markle
Foundation for funds that would help
to establish the intellectual ground for
a graduate program. The result was a
$600,000 grant for the Media in Tran-
sition project, a four-year series of
lectures, discussions, and conferences
comparing earlier periods of decisive
technological and social change with
our contemporary experience of media
transformation and convergence.
Media in Transition
The inaugural conference was held at
MIT in 1997. Its title, “Technologies of
Freedom?,” echoed that of Pool’s most
influential book, the added question
mark suggesting the need to consider
the darker possibilities of our digital
future.
Other conferences in the series
some images are available at web.mit.edu/transition. Photo by Andrew Whitacre.
The MIT Press’ Media in Transition book series. Sample chapters, excerpts, and
included “Transformations of the
Book” (1997), which considered aspects
of the legacy of the culture of print as it
began its migration to digital formats;
“Democracy and Digital Media”
(1998), which considered the double
power of new technologies to nourish
democratic and grassroots movements
but also to strengthen extremist voices;
and “The Internet: Next Generation
and Beyond” (also 1998), a collabora-
tion between the Forum and MIT’s
Industrial Liaison Program at which
MIT researchers described their vision
of the future.
The culminating conference in
October 1999, titled “Media in Tran-
sition,” marked the launch of the new
graduate program in Comparative
Media Studies. The strongest papers
and reports generated by the project
are available in two volumes published
by the MIT Press, Democracy and New
Media and Rethinking Media Change.
The Media in Transition project’s work
is more extensively archived on its
website: web.mit.edu/m-i-t.
Over the next decade, the part-
nership of CMS and the Forum was
fortified and extended in a series of
 T E EX VT EHNETASV Y

The sixth and most recent Media in Transition conference featured a panel on Archives and
History. From left, John Miles Foley, director of The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at
the University of Missouri; Lisa Gitelman, co-editor of New Media, 1740-1915, an entry in
the Media in Transition book series; Rick Prelinger, an archivist whose collection of films
was acquired by the Library of Congress; and Ann Wolpert, director of MIT Libraries and a
Communications Forum board member. Photo by Greg Peverill-Conti.
Dr. An-Pang Kao (left), President of Kainan University, Taiwan, with Communications
Forum Director David Thorburn (right) at MIT’s Stata Center. A group of Kainan scholars
led by Pres. Kao spent a day on the MIT campus, touring MIT facilities and visiting with
MIT faculty and administrators. Kainan University helps to fund the Forum, which
sponsors a cultural exchange program for Kainan students and professors.

biennial Media in Transition confer-
ences in addition to smaller confer-
ences covering a variety of topics such
as digital cinema, race in digital space,
and technology and education. These
events helped to establish the distinc-
tive character of media studies at MIT,
branding CMS as uniquely committed
not only to interdisciplinary, com-
parative, and historical approaches to
communications study but also to a
discourse about media that includes
media makers, journalists, corporate
spokespersons and policy-makers as
well as academics.
In the third Media in Transition con-
ference, on the changing role of televi-
sion, for example, participants included
John Dimling, chairman of Nielsen
Media Research; Charles Ferris, former
chairman of the Federal Communica-
tions Commission; the TV journalist
Marvin Kalb; and scholars and re-
searchers drawn from many fields in
the humanities and social science.
A significant feature of our confer-
ences has been their international
character. In the most recent Media in
Transition gathering, presenters came
from twenty-five foreign countries.
Nearly half our international visitors
have returned for a subsequent confer-
ence, and some have become regulars.
These international voices have
nourished our conversations, of course,
and they have also carried CMS prin-
ciples beyond the U.S., into their own
institutions and professional cultures.
The Forum’s Future
Beginning in January 2006 the Forum
inaugurated an exchange program
with Kainan University, Taiwan. The
project brings students from Kainan
to MIT each term to study media, lit-
erature, language, and other humani-
ties subjects as well as engineering and
management.
In addition, MIT faculty members
travel to Taiwan every other year to par-
ticipate in symposia or to deliver talks
on media and technology. Forum board
member Shigeru Miyagawa, Head of
Foreign Languages & Literatures, has
just returned from such a lecturing
visit. Two years ago a group of MIT re-
searchers led by CMS Director William
Uricchio organized a symposium that
offered a sampling of how MIT labs and
classrooms deploy educational tech-
nologies.
The Forum also frequently col-
laborates with other groups at MIT,
including the Technology and Culture
Forum and the Center for Future Civic
Media, which is currently complet-
ing a two-year series of panel discus-
sions focused on the civic uses of digital
technologies. These and other Forum
activities are archived on our website at
web.mit.edu/comm-forum.
Henry’s intellectual vision and moral
energy have been central to the Forum’s
activities over the past decade, and he
has been a primary architect along with
William of the Media in Transition
conferences. Carrying on in Henry’s
absence will be difficult and challeng-
ing. But he has agreed to remain on the
Forum’s governing board, and I hope
his voice, however muted by distance
and new commitments, will continue
to inspire all of us at MIT.
The Communications Forum is online at
web.mit.edu/comm-forum. Communications
Forum Coordinator Brad Seawell contributed
to this article.

33

Media Spectacle: Remembering Chris Pomiecko
H
ow can I describe Chris
Pomiecko’s contributions
to the Comparative Media
Studies Program? He was there before
the beginning. As the first administra-
tor of the MIT Film Office, he was the
point of contact for pretty much anyone
in SHASS who had an interest in film:
he would talk to the faculty when they
would drop off their film orders and
make reasoned suggestions about what
films we should be teaching; he would
talk to the students as they came to
pick up the films we assigned and make
reasoned suggestions to them about
what else they should be watching; he
would be involved in any event in the
school—and often, beyond—which
included film screenings, and he would
often create his own projects if he saw
a film which he felt strongly needed to
be shown on campus. He was our point
of contact with a diverse array of other
student and staff organizations on
campus.
Every so often, he would tap that
network and organize a screening
of MIT-produced films, sometimes
including his own work, always taking
great pleasure in showing off what his
friends had made and making sure they
heard about each other’s projects. As
the name “Media Spectacle” implies,
34
EVENTS
By Henry Jenkins
the program would be expansive,
including everything from experimen-
tal films and videos to endless kung fu
comedies to documentaries showing
off lab experiments. Some of what was
shown could have made its way onto
the program of a major festival, much
of it was painfully bad, yet he was less
interested in the films as products and
more interested in helping the people
who made them. The festival would be
his way of nudging people to complete
half-finished projects or to get shy
media makers to open up their work to
a larger audience. It played a vital role
in shaping the film culture on campus.
The Media Spectacle was clearly
something that grew out of his great and
very public love of cinema and his more
private but still very clear affection for
those people he came into contact with.
Chris’s often sarcastic sense of humor
masked a gentle spirit, a warm heart,
and a nurturing soul.
Chris ran a tight ship with his student
workers, making sure that the screenings
for classes went off without a hitch, and
the few times something went wrong,
it was inevitably my error in filling out
the request forms, rather than a glitch
in his well oiled system. He created an
enormous sense of team spirit through
his pizza parties and the campy t-shirts
he would design (many of which were
favorite parts of my personal wardrobe
for years and years). And he was there
for each and every one of them in their
times of need, kicking them in the butt
or cheering them up as required, even
welcoming them into his home.
When we launched the CMS graduate
program, he extended this role to the
graduate students when he assumed
the position as Program Administra-
tor, and for the first few cohorts, it was
impossible to imagine CMS without
Chris sitting at his desk and greeting
them when they came into his office.
We were all scrambling so hard in
those early days that it would have been
hard to give every student the attention
they needed, but Chris understood that
attending to the student needs came
first and he helped to set a tone for the
administration of the program over the
coming decade. Sometimes this would
require him to push back unessential
parts of his job to the frustration of
some faculty (me among them) who
might have thought those tasks to be
of the highest priority, but over time,
I’ve come to respect the wisdom of the
choices he made, and as CMS grew, he
was someone that William and I leaned
on for wise advice and dispassionate
council.
It is hard to describe the shock to the
by Flickr user sushiesque
Image of the Coolidge Corner Theater, Brookline, Mass.,
CMS community when Chris died in a
car accident in 2005. It was as if someone
had ripped the heart out of the program,
though the community rallied together
and provided each other support. It was
clear that we needed to do something
to insure that Chris’s spirit remained
a strong presence in the program. The
Media Spectacle, now formalized as an
annual event with prizes, became our
way of paying tribute to his long-time
service and his deep passion for sup-
porting the work of student filmmak-
ers.
Generoso Fierro has done an out-
standing job curating the Spectacle in
more recent years. The technical quality
has improved dramatically, thanks both
to more formal instruction at MIT and
to the more participatory culture sur-
rounding us which has given students
more chances to express themselves
through film and video. I have been
lucky enough to attend and judge many
of the Spectacles and always come
away inspired by the creativity of MIT
students, staff, and faculty.
Media Spectacle occurs each spring and is
open to all members of the MIT community.

I
n the fall of 2008, just after CMS co-
Director Henry Jenkins announced
his decision to pursue new challenges
at the University of Southern California,
CMS began inviting graduate students
to describe what their work with CMS
meant to them, to their time at MIT,
and to their professional lives. Here, we
collect the responses we’ve received over
the last year.
Jim Bizzocchi, SM ‘01
As a tenure-track Assistant Professor
in the School of Interactive Arts and
Technology at Simon Fraser Univer-
sity, I continue to build my career as a
scholar, a mentor, and an artist. I am
particularly pleased to have mentored
graduate students to completion. I am
also pleased to have recently received
a university award for excellence in
teaching. My ambient video art has
been well-received—my latest work,
“Cycle,” has been selected for a dozen
exhibitions and festivals. My academic
publishing is proceeding well. In
the past year I have published, been
accepted or presented book chapters,
journal articles, and conference papers.
P E O P L ETT,EEFP
XELTTAATH
X HCUEEERA
Alumni Testimonials
In all my professional activities, I
draw deeply on my experience in Com-
parative Media Studies. I continue to
take advantage of the many outreach
activities CMS supports on media,
transition, society and culture. The
program has given me standards for
excellence in scholarship, teaching, and
mentoring that I strive to reach in all
my activities.
David Spitz, SM ‘01
The two years I spent at MIT, from
1999-2001, turned out to be transitional
not just for me but for everyone. Being
a CMS graduate student during this in-
credible “boom and bust” cycle gave me
a front-row seat to some of the defining
perspectives of the era: from the venture
capitalists and dot-com CEO’s roaming
around campus like wolves (and later
lambs); to the entertainment executives
we met during our graduate class’s West
Coast tour; to the research scientists
who were already thinking about, and
in many cases building, what would
become Web 2.0.
In 2005, after a few years in Deloitte &
ASEV
V, YYT H I N G S
Touche’s “dot com” consulting practice
and sixteen months in Columbia’s ac-
celerated MBA program, I joined WPP
Group, where I am currently director of
business development for WPP Digital.
My task is to develop partnerships
and investments that will “catalyze”
the world’s largest communications
services group as it transitions its ad-
vertising, media, public relations and
market research businesses into the
digital era. This role sits at the inter-
section of technology, marketing, and
customer insight—much like the CMS
program I entered ten years ago.
Christa Starr, SM ‘01
A decade ago—in the early months of
1999—I was working long hours and
late nights on a movie called Star Wars:
The Phantom Menace. I believe it was
a Tuesday night when an email from
Henry Jenkins hit my inbox, saying he
was starting a graduate program at MIT
and would I be interested in applying.
The next morning, I walked into my
manager’s office at ILM and said, “I’m
sorry—I have to go now.”
There are few things in this world as
special as being invited to participate
in an MIT program. And even fewer
can compare to the experience of being
one of the first five graduate students
admitted to CMS.
Henry had assembled an impressive
lineup of teachers and guest lecturers—
William Uricchio, Edward Barrett,
Chris Weaver, and many others—with
the express purpose of studying media
as it transitioned from the relatively
passive forms of television and film
into the vast interactive and immersive
frontier of the Internet.
Like any fledgling department, it had
its fits and starts, but I believe I emerged
from the program with a greater under-
standing of the history of media in the
world and a clearer idea of how I could
use emerging media to tell the types of
stories I wanted to tell.
It’s been a decade, and rarely a day
goes by when I don’t use some of what I
learned in CMS in my working life. It’s
part of who I am and what I do, and I’ll
always be grateful.
Christopher York, SM ‘01
I am currently doing archival research
for a Ph.D. in African History at Yale.
It’s a testament to CMS’s range and
vision that, while I no longer study
media, all my current academic interests
can be traced back to people, courses,
and projects at MIT. After finishing my
CMS thesis on regional tourism as a
35

form of consumerist ethnography (with
William Uricchio and Michael Fischer
at MIT and Kay Warren at Harvard),
I decided to follow interests in social
studies of science and history of tech-
nology in an African colonial context.
My dissertation explores pre-colonial
iron-working and trade in Sub-Saharan
Africa, focusing on iron’s central role in
managing fertility and human wealth.
I also continue to have an interest in
digital humanities begun at CMS under
Kurt Fendt: my dissertation will employ
mapping iron trade routes.
Without CMS’s emphasis on reading
cultural artifacts and popular practices
in context, connecting technology to
social movements, and thinking pro-
ductively across traditional disciplines,
my approach to African history would
be very different indeed.
Candis Callison, SM ‘02
When I started CMS in fall 2000, I
came straight out of industry and was
eager for a chance to reflect on the fast-
paced cauldron of convergence I had
come from. A few months later, the
dot-com bubble I had come of age in
36
PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
professionally had burst. In CMS, I not
only got the chance to reflect on those
experiences, but I encountered a praxis
of theory and experiment that led me
to consider another direction in life:
academia. Upon graduating, I chose
to stay at MIT and began a doctoral
program in Science, Technology, and
Society, which I will soon complete. My
academic research hasn’t strayed from
CMS topics—I’ve spent the past several
years trying to understand how climate
change gets invested with meaning
through the work of media, scientists,
and various social movements.
Anita Chan, SM ‘02
The work I began with CMS for my
master’s project, “Collaborative News
Networks: Distributed Editing, Col-
lective Action, and the Construction
of Online News on Slashdot.org,”
continues today in varied, new forms.
In 2008, I completed a Ph.D. program at
MIT’s Science, Technology, and Society
Program with a dissertation that
studied electronic governance in Peru,
and the ambition to cultivate rurally
inclusive network societies in contem-
porary development plans. Work from
these veins of research earned support
from the National Science Foundation
and Columbia University’s Center for
the Study of Law & Culture and has
been published in the journals Science
Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, the
Revista Iberoamericana de Comuni-
cacion, and in the edited volumes The
Inner History of Devices and Interna-
tional Essays in Law & Society.
In fall 2009, I joined the faculty of the
Institute of Communications Research
at the University of Illinois, Urbana-
Champaign as an assistant professor of
Media Studies. My intellectual curiosity
was continually challenged and fostered
at CMS, and I am so very grateful for
the friends, colleagues, and mentors
that I had the fortune to find there.
Qi Wang, SM ‘02
Simply put, without CMS I would not be
where I am now as quickly and happily.
Currently I’m an assistant professor
in cinema and media at Georgia
Institute of Technology, but the real
starting point of this path was at CMS.
When asked about my CMS back-
ground and later Ph.D. concentration
in film studies, I often reply: “It’s after
comparing various media at CMS that I
realized film is my favorite medium”—
with the valuable comparative, transi-
tional, and connected perspective built
in from the very beginning.
I also made documentaries and
currently work as curator for the influ-
ential REEL CHINA Documentary Bi-
ennial—my initial interest in documen-
tary was kindled right there in CMS’s
lab where I played with Final Cut Pro,
fascinated and indefatigable, cutting
my first documentary digitally until
three in the morning. I feel extremely
proud to be part of the CMS family
and will always be grateful to Henry,
William, Shigeru, Jing, and others.
Margaret Weigel, SM ‘02
It’s been a long, strange trip for this
one-time graphic designer and musician
since I embarked on two years of mind-
altering studies with Henry, William,
and many others. I spent two years
after graduation as Henry’s partner in
crime for a new three-year MacArthur
grant on digital media and learning.
(Hey, Henry, do you remember “krispy
walrus”?). I would not be at Harvard’s
Graduate School of Education today,
working as a researcher and project
manager, if I hadn’t quit my design
job and taken a chance on a very new
graduate program—and if they hadn’t
taken a chance on this unlikely scholar.
CMS was always more than the sum
of our assignments. I learned how to
study hard, skim fast, and write even
faster. During that time I also met some
wonderful people and made some per-
sistent friendships. I hope CMS survives
this turbulent period and emerges even
stronger.

Michelle Woodward, SM ‘02
The critical skills I gained in analyzing
media and images from a variety of
perspectives in the CMS program have
enriched all my subsequent work. Since
2002, I have been photo editor at the
magazine Middle East Report where I
use photographs to show our readers
a nuanced picture of the region not
often seen in the mainstream media. In
writing for scholarly journals I draw on
knowledge gained through the wonder-
fully diverse range of classes available
to CMS students. I might not have
ventured into blogging about photogra-
phy and my life in Beirut during 2007
(at mwoodward.com) if I hadn’t had
the hands-on experience with multiple
media formats that was such a valuable
part of the CMS experience.
I also recently began teaching pho-
tography in Johns Hopkins’s Odyssey
program of liberal arts courses for
adults, where I focus on combining
technical instruction of composition,
design, and light with visual literacy
and critical analytical skills—undoubt-
edly inspired by CMS.
Stephanie Davenport Rubino, SM ‘03
P E O P L ETT,EEFP
XELTTAATH
X HCUEEERA
My family and I recently left Cambridge
to relocate to sunny San Diego. I have
been doing consulting with my former
employer March Communications, a
boutique technology PR firm. I managed
media campaigns for telecom and
software clients, as well as development
efforts for both the agency and clients.
I was drawn to March given their focus
on helping European companies break
into the U.S. market and willingness
to let me take on smaller, experimen-
tal projects touching on Second Life,
mobile storytelling, and 3D animation.
CMS represents a tumultuous period
in my life when I tried to drink in every-
thing the MIT environment had to offer
in two all-too-short years, find continu-
ity with the work world where I still had
a toe in the action at France Telecom,
and find an outlet for my creative side.
Hungry for more, shortly after gradu-
ation I completed a CMS-like program
at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts
at Boston University. I am happy to still
be in touch with many of the bright,
often eccentric folks I met during my
time at MIT, who share an interest in
all things “new” media.
Nadya Direkova, SM ‘03
I work as a Senior Interaction Designer
at Google. My work focuses on user
experience research and design and
ASEV
V, YYT H I N G S
on using game techniques for creating
better web experiences. I presented
some of my insights at the IXDA con-
ference in Vancouver, and I reconnect-
ed with CMS by teaching a workshop
on experience design during IAP this
winter. It was a pleasure to be back in
school and share my work with the
students.
CMS has been a great platform for
me: connecting me to great people,
sharing the MIT experience, and intro-
ducing me to media industry partners.
The former Games-to-Teach project
gave me a start in the world of educa-
tional game design and introduced me
to Microsoft R&D and Leapfrog. Every
time I meet CMS faculty and students, I
am inspired by their talent, self-starter
attitude and unique and successful
journeys.
Robin Hauck, SM ‘03
Though the Infinite Corridor, Colloqui-
um, and all-nighter cram sessions feel
like things from a lifetime ago, my CMS
experience informs and invigorates my
present life every day. Currently, I am
the editor-in-chief of a lifestyle site for
women living in and around Boston.
I founded Misstropolis (misstropolis.
com) with the intention of raising the
quality of online content for women in
their 30s, 40s ,and 50s. In a start-up,
every day is business school: Entrepre-
neurship 101. On a daily basis I find
myself utilizing or sharing knowledge
I learned while at MIT. My classes laid
the groundwork for a deep understand-
ing of the modern media landscape
and equipped me as well as anyone
with knowledge of related theory. Fur-
thermore while a student in CMS, sur-
rounded by the most innovative minds
in the country, I found the confidence
in my voice and my ability to state my
opinions so that I could put something
on the page and send it out to the
world. That confidence has enabled me
to follow an entrepreneurial path in a
fiercely competitive media space.
Even though it was hard and I had
children at home demanding my
attention, I never wanted CMS to end.
The two years on the MIT campus were
some of the richest in my entire life.
Thank you, infinitely!
Zhan Li, SM ‘03
I am a Ph.D. student at USC’s
Annenberg School for Communica-
tion, so I write this update with mixed
feelings. I’m hugely excited that Henry
has joined our school and that there
will be opportunities for me to work
closely with him again. My planned
dissertation research will focus on new
media directions in scenario planning,
and I foresee rich overlaps with Henry’s
work.
At the same time, like many, I follow
37

news about the future of CMS. MIT
should not only support but expand
this unique program. CMS’ ideas are
groundbreaking—the program offers
students an unusually high level of
freedom and support. Without having
had the privilege of developing my
interests in such an environment, my
present career path would not have
been possible.
Aswin Punathambekar, SM ‘03
I spent my middle-school years in
Madras (now Chennai), the center of
the Tamil film industry. And as luck
would have it, my family lived close to
a grand marriage hall that was often
the site of film shootings. On many af-
ternoons, I would rush home, drop my
schoolbag, and run to this marriage
hall to hang around, chat with people
on the sets, gaze at film stars and on
rare occasions, get a picture taken with
one of them! As a fan, I always knew
media mattered. It’s just that middle-
class youth in 1980s India did not
quite know how to make a career out of
engaging with media. Many years later,
I had the support and good fortune to
38
PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
leave the science and engineering world
and make my way, via a stop in Athens,
Georgia, to CMS.
At CMS, Henry Jenkins, William
Uricchio and other teachers and col-
leagues taught me why media studies
matters and involved me in a joyful
and truly collaborative effort to define
what matters in media studies as we
move through the 21st century. While
a reflection on what CMS means to me
could run several pages, I can say with
confidence that the most important
lesson I learned, one that I try to pass
on to my own students at the University
of Michigan, is this: to read, write and
think with kindness and generosity.
Sangita Shresthova, SM ‘03
I recently completed my Ph.D. at UCLA
and am embarking on new creative
film and dance projects as I rework
my dissertation on Bollywood dance
into a book. Looking back, CMS ap-
proaches to media and storytelling led
to new, exciting and complex media
innovations. For me, CMS opened new
doors for me in ways I never imagined
possible. As a dancer, choreographer,
filmmaker and scholar, I constantly
draw on my CMS experiences in all my
work. I sincerely hope that MIT will
find ways to keep the CMS program
and vision alive. In all my travels, I have
seen nothing like it.
I feel grateful, privileged and proud
to be part of the CMS community. As I
am currently based in Los Angeles, I do
also look forward to welcoming Henry
to his new home here and hope to par-
ticipate in the fostering of a West Coast
reincarnation of CMS.
Philip Tan, SM ‘03
I have been the executive director of
the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game
Lab since 2006. Together with William,
Henry, thirteen staff members, five
graduate students, and a whole other
lab in Singapore, we’ve built a combi-
nation of curiosity and proficiency that
uses cutting-edge research to put smiles
on faces. We’ve grown relationships and
projects with other schools and within
MIT, with the game industry and in-
dependent game developers, and with
researchers, students, and game players
from all over the world.
After working with CMS in Games-
to-Teach and The Education Arcade,
GAMBIT was the logical next step for
my personal growth as a game maker,
as well as for the ongoing contribu-
tions of CMS to the development of
the medium of videogames. Tackling
the ever-growing challenges with the
creativity and support of the staff,
William, and Henry has made this the
most personally rewarding job that I’ve
ever had.
R.J. Bain, SM ’04
My Comparative Media Studies experi-
ence actually began before I attended
a single CMS lecture as a student. As a
member of the CMS staff, I witnessed
first-hand the considerable time and
hard work that Henry and his team put
into fundraising on behalf of the CMS
program. Working closely with Henry
and his family, as they made personal
sacrifices for the sake of a new academic
program, made a huge impression on
me both as a humanist and as an adult.
As a student, the CMS program
challenged me to reconsider my ideas
regarding communication and self,
and I emerged, after two years, not
only with a greater awareness of how

individuals interact with each other but
with a better understanding of who I
am as an individual. My time with the
CMS faculty and my fellow students
helped provide me with a foundation
of theoretical knowledge that continues
to inform my work in the television
industry on a daily basis.
Recently, I worked as a producer
on the 11th season of the CBS reality
competition series Big Brother. I find
it fitting that I’ve been asked to reflect
on my CMS experience while working
on a television show that makes use of
documentary and games to tell stories,
streams live to the web 24 hours a day,
and has a dedicated fan following unlike
any series of its kind. By providing me
with the tools to think creatively and
critically about topics such as these,
CMS has made me a more mindful and
deliberate media producer.
My years at CMS were some of the
most formative of my life, and I’ll
forever be grateful for the opportuni-
ties I was provided, thanks to the dedi-
cation of Henry and the CMS faculty
and staff.
Michael Epstein, SM ‘04
Well, I’m just like everyone else: mixing
it up. Every day, in fact, I do that CMS
two-step between creative media work
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and analysis of media change—waking
up to draw up specs for an iPhone appli-
cation to go with Kevin Lynch’s Image
of the City, then it’s time to check in
on animation for a historical narrative
in Beacon Hill, and then company
finance, and then relating architecture
to detective fiction. The mix of old and
new is probably what’s most settled
with me from the CMS program, and
it’s a warm beacon in the mobile media
world, that can be brazenly opportunis-
tic, and poorly rooted in the old crafts of
story, a sense of place, and reflection.
I run Untravel Media, a multidis-
ciplinary studio that specializes in
mobile media storytelling. Professor Ed
Barrett advised on one of our projects to
develop a walkable iPhone companion
to a PBS special about a historic
murder. In fact, some of my classmates
may recall a spring day in 2003 when I
brought them to Beacon Hill to run a
crude prototype of this application. It
miserably failed as the flowering trees
and fresh environs trumped any of my
GPS triggered grainy videos. But the
“ah ha” of that little excursion and the
realization that mobile media needs
a new storytelling approach could
only have happened through a praxis-
oriented program like CMS. These are
still fundamental lessons we use in our
productions, and the vision is finding a
foothold in the growing communities
of iPhone and mixed-reality producers.
On a personal note, I got married to
Silvia, whom I met in Venice through a
CMS connection. We reside happily at
the foot of Beacon Hill surrounded by
several waypoints in a historic murder
story.
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Clara Fernandez, SM ‘04
When I arrived at CMS, my main
research interest was the cinematic
versions of Shakespeare on film. Two
of the best scholars in the field, Peter
Donaldson and Diana Henderson,
were associated with the department,
so it seemed the right place to go. I also
brought with me a substantial collection
of videogames, which I had become in-
terested in as a field of research. While
having such a wide range of eclectic
interests would not have had room
most other places, it is a requirement to
become a CMS student.
Although I wrote my thesis on Orson
Welles and Shakespeare, in the end I
decided to focus on videogames and
went to Georgia Tech to get my Ph.D. in
digital media.
Now, I’m back in CMS with a group
of other CMS alumni, studying and
making games. I still love theatre
and my Hamlet, Macbeth, and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
CMS was a turning point in my career
and also in my personal life. While
I went through a time of change and
challenges, I found an exciting career, a
bunch of good friends, and a wonderful
partner. It was the right place at the
right time.
Amulya Gopalakrishnan, SM ‘06
For someone—me—with a rather con-
stricted view of the humanities, CMS
was a happy surprise. Its approach
was both reflective and relevant, and it
provided the kind of environment that
naturally fostered creative cross-con-
nections. My friends in the program
were doing entirely different kinds of
work, and whether at those weekly
dinners at Senior House, or tramping
down the Infinite Corridor, or at
colloquia, those conversations are a big
part of my CMS memories.
I also think back of Henry’s stu-
pendous and singular commitment
to CMS, and to each one of us. Don’t
know how he did it, but I can’t thank
him enough.
My CMS experience has definitely
seeped into the way I think of culture
and media. I moved back to journalism
in India, reporting and anchoring for
NDTV, a TV news network. I covered
tech and social media for a bit, and
began to appreciate the extent to which
CMS gave us frontline perspectives on
emerging media debates. After a year,
I shifted to the editorial pages of the
Indian Express, where I manage the
op-ed page and also write columns on
media, culture and tech.
“We’re all smatterers, in a way. But
a great deal of civilization depends
on intelligent smattering,” said Frank
Kermode, about the enterprise of
literary study. For me, CMS was the
best kind of smattering, bringing a
humanistic intelligence and historical
grounding to thinking about media.
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Moneta Ho (now Kushner), SM ‘04
I will always treasure my memories of
the two years that I spent in the CMS
program at MIT. There was a lot of
positive energy and excitement with
faculty and classmates working on in-
teresting projects and collaborations
in an emerging field. We got to surf
websites, watch movies and play vid-
eogames for our homework—how cool
is that?
At the center of it all was Henry. I am
excited for Henry and wish him the best
in his new endeavors but also hope to
see the CMS program at MIT continue
to grow and thrive. CMS provided me
a great background for my career as a
user experience designer at Microsoft,
where I have been working for the five
years since graduation. Thanks, CMS!
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
Brian Jacobson, SM ‘05
Since leaving CMS in 2005, I have
tried to carry on the program’s spirit
of collaboration and generosity in my
research, writing, and teaching. I have
also continued to seek out similar sites
of interdisciplinary thinking and com-
parative scholarship, most recently as a
2008-2009 Humanities, Arts, Science
and Technology Advanced Collabora-
tory (HASTAC) Scholar.
My Ph.D. dissertation at the Univer-
sity of Southern California, “Studios
Before the System: Architecture, Tech-
nology, and Early Cinema,” examines
the origins of the relationship between
cinema and architecture in the world’s
first film studios.
This work has earned pre-disserta-
tion research support from the Social
Science Research Council’s (SSRC)
Dissertation Proposal Development
Fellowship (Visual Culture field, 2007),
and from fall 2009 through fall 2010 I
will be conducting archival research
in Paris, London, and New York under
the auspices of a Fulbright Advanced
Student Fellowship to France and the
SSRC’s International Dissertation
Research Fellowship.
The training I received from Henry,
William, and the students and faculty
I met at MIT continues to animate my
work, and I remain grateful for the ex-
periences that CMS made possible in
two (too) short years.
Sarah Kamal, SM ‘05
I joined CMS as a novice in the human-
ities, trained in the tidiness of linearity
through my bachelor’s in mathematics
and practiced in the idealism of hu-
manitarianism via my development
work in Uganda, India, and Afghani-
stan. It took some gentle jostling for
me to let go of stubbornly narrow un-
derstandings of theory, research, and
the nature of knowledge. But thanks to
CMS I learned how to express myself in
the world of cacophonous, ambiguous
debate rather than conclusive proof.
Ah, the trauma of entering the messy
real world!
CMS, in my eyes, offered openness
towards ideas, to the unpopular in the
popular, and modeled a human ac-
ceptance, intellectual generosity, and
embracing of diversity that I cherished.
After graduating from MIT, I worked
with UNIFEM in Afghanistan on
media strategies. I edited the National
Action Plan for the Women of Afghani-
stan, a policy platform for the Afghan
government to improve the status
of women over the next ten years. I
wrote for Oxford Analytica, the UN
Chronicle, and Oxfam’s Gender and
Development journal. And throughout
I held Henry’s crystal clear prose and
William’s attention to historical pattern
as examples in my professional and, to
my own surprise, continued academic
pursuits.
Life has been hard at times, abrasive.
But I think I’m on the other side for
now, as a Trudeau Scholar conduct-
ing my doctoral studies at the London
School of Economics. And CMS lives
on in my life, wrapped in nostalgia and
gratitude. Many thanks.
Andrea McCarty, SM ‘05
The two years I spent at CMS were two
of the most valuable years of my life. I
entered CMS in 2003 from the media
archiving world, looking for a graduate
experience that would give me time to
read, research, and think about media.
What I found was an incredibly rich
intellectual landscape, with many op-
portunities to explore ideas and to
work on interesting projects. Between
my thesis work, time spent on projects
at the HyperStudio, class work and

colloquia, I was able to make con-
nections between media theory and
practice on many different levels.
I have since left Cambridge and now
work as director of archives and asset
management at HBO in Los Angeles.
My CMS experience regularly informs
my professional life as I watch media
projects evolve at HBO and provide the
material assets for repurposing content
on a variety of media platforms.
One of the most extraordinary things
I experienced at CMS was a sense of
finding my place among a community
of like-minded scholars. My ’05 class-
mates, as well as Henry, William, Kurt
Fendt, and other professors, made the
experience unlike any other. CMS was
a supportive environment in which to
try out new ideas, experiment, learn
and grow. I hope that MIT will find
the means to support and grow this
program that provided me both a
temporary home and a lifelong founda-
tion.
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Rekha Murthy, SM ‘05
After eight years in web and radio, I
entered CMS ready for a Big Change
and seeking ideas for the Next Thing.
I was split between hope that the
program would give me more profes-
sional direction and self-caution that I
was asking a lot. Well, my CMS expe-
rience exploded that dichotomy and
far exceeded my hopes. I’m still a gen-
eralist, but now I see generalism as a
strength, not a drag. Henry, William,
and my outstanding classmates were
both validating and challenging. I came
out inspired and no more specific. But I
see that’s the condition of a media en-
thusiast in the current age, and I now
can embrace it.
Since CMS, I’ve remained in the
Boston area. I’ve been an information
architect for a consulting company, a
product manager for a mobile software
startup, a freelance user-experience
designer, and now, in the most delight-
fully open-ended of titles, director
of projects + partnerships for Public
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Radio Exchange, just down the street
from MIT in Harvard Square. When
PRX released an iPhone app with
hundreds of public radio streams, I was
asked to do the media outreach. I faced
the media and technology implications
head-on and unafraid and encouraged
stations, listeners, bloggers, and jour-
nalists to do the same.
CMS has given me a flexible roadmap
to lifelong learning and media con-
sumption. My tastes are broader than
they used to be: I read graphic novels,
watch TV series from beginning to end,
and enjoy the breakdown of genre and
taxonomy. I try to help others cross
their own borders and assumptions,
as when I lead academics, government
officials, and citizens on walking tours
of street media in Central Square.
I am so glad I have been able to stay
within MIT’s geographical orbit, in
order to stay plugged into its formi-
dable social, intellectual, and creative
forces. I have been honored that Henry
and William have regularly reached
out to keep me in that orbit, and I look
forward to that continuing.
Swati (Mia) Saini, SB ’05
After I received my degree in CMS, I
interned at CNN for the summer before
joining Goldman Sachs full-time as a
hedge fund salesperson. I then left to
attend Harvard Business School. I am
now currently an anchor/reporter for
Forbes Video Network where I cover
business and finance stories.
Karen Schrier, SM ‘05
I’m working as an executive producer at
Scholastic in their digital division, and
I’m also a doctoral student in games
and education at Columbia University
and adjunct professor at Parsons New
School for Design. There are so many
ways I continue to benefit from the
program Henry and William created.
My CMS education helps every day
at Scholastic, where we develop trans-
media properties, prototype games and
websites, analyze new media and digital
trends, and develop social networking
tools. For the first few months, my boss
introduced me by proudly saying “she
studied at MIT with Henry Jenkins.”
Also, CMS has helped me tremen-
dously in terms of publishing my work
and getting into conferences, and of
course, with my doctoral studies. I’m
excited to have Henry write the forward
to my book on ethics and games.
Beyond that, my friendships and col-
laborations were an integral part of my
CMS experience and were (and continue
to be) extremely rewarding. In fact,
upon hearing of Henry’s departure, the
class of ’05 worked together this past
year to write a letter to MIT President
41

Susan Hockfield to express the impor-
tance of CMS to MIT and beyond.
I know that this type of camaraderie
is no small part due to the ability of
Henry, William, and the CMS faculty
to hand pick the right students and
to create a culture of cooperation,
integrity, openness, and intellectual
curiosity. I am inspired to foster this
type of culture when I (hopefully) start
my own program in the future.
Parmesh Shahani, SM ‘05
My experiences with CMS’s Con-
vergence Culture Consortium were
directly responsible for me getting the
dual job of editorial director of the
Indian fashion magazine Verve and
head of vision and opportunities in the
Incubation Lab at the Mahindra Group,
where I worked on venture capital and
new media. I spread the convergence
mantra across both jobs.
I have also spent three years traveling
India and the world with my book
Gay Bombay, which emerged out of
my CMS master’s thesis. This time
has coincided with the emergence of
a strong gay rights movement in India
and ground-breaking incidents of
activism and legal change. I have found
my book and myself in the center of
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
this storm, often being called upon to
serve as a spokesperson. It has been an
exhilarating, emotional, and humbling
journey. Finally, I have helped in trans-
lating creative and corporate India
for the world at forums such as Next
Media (Banff, Canada), XMedia Lab
(Auckland, New Zealand) and the
Prague Bollywood Film Festival.
It’s pretty clear that none of this ex-
citement would have happened without
CMS. It changed my life for the better
and I am indebted to Henry, William
and the rest of the CMS faculty, as well
as to the incredible staff and students of
the program for providing me with the
academic and entrepreneurial opportu-
nities to spread my wings.
Yannis Zavoleas, SM ’04
Since graduation, I have been teaching
architectural design and digital media
as assistant professor in the School of
Architecture, first at the Technical Uni-
versity of Crete, and then at the Univer-
sity of Patras, Greece, where I am now.
The time I spent studying at CMS was
decisive for me, for I was granted the
intellectual framing to systematize my
ideas. I come from an interdisciplinary
background combining architecture
and digital media. For that, CMS was
perhaps the best place to critically link
these design areas; moreover, I was un-
restricted from any of the conventional
or mainstream definitions about archi-
tecture.
I have gradually constructed ap-
proaches, which are in a sense more
reflective of me: on the methodologies
and practices about architecture and
how these may relate to the available
tools and the rhetoric of design.
Over the past six years, I have
exhibited and published my work, and
presented in over thirty conferences in-
ternationally. Being an academic, I have
been able to evolve my ideas by testing
them in workshops and in class with
my students, too. Some of these ideas
actually sprang from my experience at
CMS. Overall, I thank CMS for encour-
aging me to think creatively in novel,
often subversive, ways, in order to ef-
fectively challenge my field.
Chia Berry, SB ‘06
I live in fabulous Austin, Texas, and
work in the feature film and commer-
cial broadcast industry where I get
my hands dirty assisting in all aspects
of production. I enjoy dabbling in
different forms of visual media. I’m still
trying to figure out all the ways to apply
my degree.
Vanessa Bertozzi, SM ‘06
My time at MIT was challenging, mind-
blowing, but most of all, as I’ve worked
in my career, it has been useful. I work
at Etsy.com, the online marketplace
where artists, craftspeople, and collec-
tors sell their hand-made and vintage
items. Etsy is a community of people
across the world that shares a passion
for making things and supporting in-
dependent artists. I run Etsy’s blog and
oversee our video podcast (blog.etsy.
com). The combination of big ideas
from CMS and their application has
informed not just the way I view the
world but the way I participate in it.
At CMS, we grappled with theory and
history and tried to use those frame-
works to understand the culture we
live and breathe, but there was another
added insight into work and life and
culture: Henry and William instilled
in us a respect for others as we went
about our research. This is something
that grounds the work I do today, and I
will carry that forward throughout my
career. I know I speak for many when
I say Henry and William and everyone
at CMS played a very benevolent role in
our “practice of everyday life.”

Nikki Pfarr, SB ‘06
This spring I’ll be graduating from the
Institute of Design with an MDes. Next
up: a Ph.D. My research interests lie
at the crossroads of design thinking,
human-technology interaction, and
behavioral economics. CMS provided
a unique, interdisciplinary founda-
tion for the type of work I now do in
academia and industry.
Ivan Askwith, SM ‘07
Three years after CMS, I am now the
Director of Strategy for Big Spaceship,
an award-winning creative agency in
Brooklyn, NY.  I owe this entirely to
CMS, since my thesis work on Lost’s
transmedia storytelling first led me
here, and pushed me to ask the same
kinds of questions I’m now responsible
for tackling on behalf of brands and
content producers.   about what I’m working on. I have lately
Since leaving 14N, I’ve gotten the
chance to work with a huge range of
clients, including Second Life, Sony,
Adobe, A&E, AMC, USA, EPIX, and,
most recently, Activision, Wrigley and
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GE, on some of the coolest projects I
can imagine. Throughout, the most
rewarding aspect has been the chance to
bring thinking from MIT—on transme-
dia, alternative reality games, branding
and fandom—into direct practice and
conversation, in ways that help the en-
tertainment and marketing industries
rethink their core assumptions.   connected thread that follows through
And in the process, here’s what I’ve
found without fail: there is a real hunger
for the “applied humanities” approach
that CMS embodies.  There’s a deep
desire to understand culture, audiences
and engagement in more meaningful
and less formulaic ways, and a growing
respect for insights from once-disre-
garded areas like game design, fandom
and media studies.
The time I spent at CMS and with
the Culture Convergence Consortium,
learning from Henry, William and my
incredible cohort, will remain among
the most valuable, satisfying and life-
changing experiences I have ever had.
I’m forever grateful for the time I got to
spend at MIT, and for the chance to be
part of this community, and can’t wait
to meet the students who will join us in
the decades to come.
Chris Casiano, SB ‘07
I have continued working as a game
designer, making a return to my home
state of Maryland. I spend my time
playing games and deflecting questions
had a chance to return to my CMS roots
by catching up on gaming academia.
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Kristina Drzaic, SM ‘07
Post CMS I’ve had grand adventures! I
moved to Australia, contributed to the
book I Link Therefore I am: The Legend
of Zelda and Philosophy and, best of all,
became a designer of games. Currently,
I’m working as a story designer for Ir-
rational Boston. I have no doubt that
CMS helped me discover and obtain my
dream career.  rewarding two years of my life and un-
When I entered CMS I was a
filmmaker with an interest in how
film theory tied into videogames. Two
years later I magically materialized
with a thesis that channeled all my
knowledge and passion for videogames
into something useful (game secrets as
player-driven design!) and, even better,
an understanding of participation and
the meta-structures that tie all media
together.  college in the Bay Area since my gradu-
 CMS has changed the way my brain
functions. Each day at CMS is different.
I could be baking strangely flavored
cookies to illustrate the play experience
of  The Cherry Orchard,  discussing the
theories behind the modern idea of time
with William, or designing the learning
game Labyrinth with Scot Osterwiel in
The Education Arcade. While the course
material may, at first glace, seem all over
the place every disparate activity has a
so that everything latches together.
Considering media on the meta-level
has changed my approach to all media,
and given me a unique viewpoint on my
industry. If I could I would relive CMS
all over again.
Amanda Finkelberg, SM ‘07
My time at CMS was possibly the most
doubtedly the hardest I’ve ever worked.
The experience of living and working
amongst such an unbelievably talented,
creative, and dedicated group of people
at MIT was unforgettable. I am par-
ticularly grateful for the opportunities
I had as a research assistant, working
with New Media Literacies, Literature
Professor Diana Henderson and ICue.
I have been teaching at a digital arts
ation in 2007. My class is a mixture
of theory and practice and I derive
my media worldview from my CMS
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mentors, Henry and William. My
students are constantly challenged to
think about their roles as producers,
fans, and consumers and to always
situate technology in an appropriate
historical context. I think the unique
subject matter and perspective of CMS
has kept me ahead of the curve when
addressing issues in contemporary
media.
In June of 2009 I gave birth to my
son Milo and have been really enjoying
spending time with him.
Sam Ford, SM ‘07
For many academic disciplines, de-
veloping specialization and expertise
brings with it narrowing one’s interest.
As an undergraduate at Western
Kentucky University, trying to decide
what to do next with my life—that was
one of my fears. My attention roamed as
an undergraduate student, and I wound
up with four majors and a minor across
three different university departments.
As I thought about the job possibilities
of what was next, it appeared my best
choices would be becoming a profes-
sional journalist, at a time in which no
one was sure exactly what that meant as
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
a career goal with newspaper bureaus
closing and newsrooms laying reporters
off as never before, or going to graduate
school, where I would choose one
among my myriad interests to pursue.
And then I found CMS.
My two years working with Henry,
William, my fellow students, and the
cast that comprised the CMS faculty
and staff had immeasurable impact on
my life, both personally and profession-
ally. CMS presented me the opportuni-
ty to forge a research track and career
that found common themes among my
many passions. From examining my
personal relationship with media to
thinking through the media savvy of
the Baptist preachers of my childhood,
from studying the public policy im-
plications of Internet regulation to
examining patterns of media consump-
tion and sharing in tape trading com-
munities and college dorm rooms, from
studying historical and contemporary
media texts alike to examining the
potential impact of digital communica-
tion on small weekly newspapers, CMS’
distributed network and eclectic mix of
interests opened rather than narrowed
my interests, all the while teaching me
the skills and modes of thinking that
would help guide my post-CMS career.
I’m particularly grateful for the oppor-
tunities afforded by teaching courses on
the cultural history of U.S professional
wrestling and U.S. soap operas while at
CMS and for the chance to help launch
and later help manage the Convergence
Culture Consortium after graduation.
The community that has formed around
that project from both the media in-
dustries and the academy has led to
a variety of valuable projects for me:
my current job as Director of Digital
Strategy at Peppercom Strategic Com-
munications, co-editing The Survival of
the Soap Opera with Abigail De Kosnik
and C. Lee Harrington (due out from
the University Press of Mississippi in
2010); and the Spreadable Media  book
project I’m currently working on with
Henry and Joshua Green.
Most of all, though, I’m thankful for
the colorful characters who have filled
my life, from my time in CMS. This is a
network that spans both the globe and
a broad range of career interests. Yet, I
feel there is a shared ethos among many
of us, shaped in part by our time with
Henry, William, and the many people
who have contributed to the CMS ex-
perience. I look forward to seeing  the
work that is yet to come from the CMS
alumni network and knowing that, even
as my time as a graduate student at MIT
grows more distant, it will continue to
impact my life in new and surprising
ways.
Neal Grigsby, SM ‘07
When I wrote my master’s thesis on
narratives of adolescence for CMS, I felt
driven by a long-standing interest in
the subject matter.
Looking back on it now, however, it is
clear that my focus on “coming of age”
stories was no coincidence after my
experience with the program. When I
began the program I had little clue about
what to expect, or about how I could
possibly contribute given the caliber of
talent and intellect that surrounded me.
Henry and William proved two patient
and effective mentors, and my friends
in the program the most supportive of
peers. By the time I left the program I
felt genuinely transformed.
My studies and especially my expe-
riences with the two research groups
that I worked for—the Project for New
Media Literacies and the GAMBIT
Game Lab—helped me connect the dots
personally and professionally, to turn
what seemed like a bunch of disparate
interests and concerns into something
like a possible career. On a purely
causal level I owe my current position
to CMS—I was referred to the project
from a colleague at NML—but the debt
I owe is certainly deeper than that. I am
currently the community manager at
Tikatok, the self-publishing website for
children. Working as part of a startup,
you are asked to do a staggeringly broad
array of tasks. I can’t imagine a program
that could have better equipped me for
this environment than CMS. More
recently, the company was acquired
by Barnes & Noble, and the challenges
have changed dramatically, but my ex-
perience with CMS has proven just as
valuable.

Rena He Huang, SM ‘07
I joined wigix.com, a California-based
startup in the summer of 2007, and
went back to China to lead the catalog
team. Wigix.com is an online market-
place driven by the community. The
catalog is built with the joint efforts of
our editors and members (if CMS hadn’t
taught me how to deal with user-gener-
ated content, at least it had warned me
of such thing). Now, two years later, our
catalog has grown to cover over three
million unique items and is one of the
company’s most valuable assets. My
experience building the digital archive
for Chinese animation films with the
metamedia group at CMS has prepared
me well for my current job.
Hands-on skill and experience is one
great benefit of CMS. More importantly,
CMS is a great educational experience
that I could have at nowhere else. We
got the support and encouragement we
need to pursue our research interest, no
matter how weird it may appear. For the
first time, I saw that education can be
as challenging, interesting, and useful
(and torturing) as this. And I believe
it can only happen at a place like MIT
and could not have happened without
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Henry and William, who, with great
passion, turned their ideas into reality.
Now, I live happily with my daughter
and husband in Beijing. My memories
of CMS are all warm. Thanks, CMS!
Geoffrey Long, SM ‘07
In 2003, I stumbled across a Technol-
ogy Review article on something called
transmedia storytelling. As I read
through it my heart started racing - this
was what I’d been obsessed with, what
I wanted to do, what I wanted to study.
My BA was in English and philosophy,
but it was the application of classical
thinking across emerging media that
really got me going. Unfortunately, I
couldn’t find a graduate program where
I could keep exploring this interdis-
ciplinary, nontraditional space. Now,
here was this “Henry Jenkins,” and here
was this bizarre, wonderful thing called
“Comparative Media Studies.” I’d
finally found what I was looking for.
I finished my SM in CMS in 2007, but
I still haven’t found anyplace I’d rather
be. CMS is still ahead of its time and
it has suffered its share of slings and
arrows for it, but working with C3, with
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GAMBIT, with Henry, William, Beth,
Ian, Chris, Gene, Sarah, Becky, Brad,
Andrew, Kurt, Scot, Erin and everyone
else, has been a dream. Through CMS
I’ve gotten to meet brilliant people like
Neil Gaiman, Ellen Kushner and Frank
Espinosa; see incredible places like
China, Greece and Germany; and work
on fantastic things like the book series
I’m now coediting with William and
Jesper Juul for the MIT Press.
The world is calling - the transmedia
space is exploding and after getting
married last Halloween there’s this
“family” project to get started on—but
I’ll always remember these years
working with CMS as a life-changing
time of great wonder and discovery. I’m
intensely grateful for these experiences,
for this intellectual framework, and for
this family of friends and colleagues.
No matter what comes next, I intend
to pass the CMS message, model and
heart forward. As Henry and William
have demonstrated, this is how real
world-building is done.
Dan Roy, SM ‘07
It’s hard to imagine where I would be or
what I would be doing today if not for
CMS; the community has affected me
profoundly. I’m still working with Ravi
Purushotma (’06) and Scot Osterweil
on games teaching language, and hope
to continue doing so for a long time.
Thank you Kevin Driscoll ’09, Lan Le
’09, Ana Domb Krauskopf ’09, and
Lauren Silberman ’09 for all your help
on that! The work I did with Ravi, Scot
and many other CMSers on Lure of the
Labyrinth (Kristina Drzaic ’07, Evan
Wendel ’08, Elliot Pinkus ’10, Lan Le
’09, and Alec Austin ’07) as a student
gave me a strong foundation and phi-
losophy for learning games.
That collaboration propelled me on
an adventure to San Francisco, where I
made other games to teach math, met
new people, explored an exciting city,
and missed CMS. When I returned
to Cambridge, the CMS community
welcomed me with open arms, easing
the transition. The work I did with
Eric Klopfer, Henry, and Alice Robison
on my thesis continues to shape and
push my thinking about mobile and
cross-platform games. The annual IAP
workshops CMS offers along with the
Global Game Jam at GAMBIT have
become valued traditions for kicking off
the New Year. Most of all, the sense of
possibility that pervades each conver-
sation continues to inspire me. I can’t
think of a better group to vet visions or
play the game of life with.
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Liwen Jin, SM ’08
My two years at CMS were definitely
the most valuable and memorable ex-
perience in my life! It opened up to
me a kaleidoscopic and thrilling world
of western humanities and rigorously
trained me how to approach problems
in different ways. I flew to join the
CMS program directly from China in
the summer of 2006. Since then I have
experienced remarkable educational
and culture differences. In CMS class-
rooms, students were always encour-
aged or even compelled to think and
critique independently from various
perspectives rather than simply follow
established opinions. For example, in
China we were taught at school that
Darwinism was a scientific “fact”
while in the U.S. many youths only
regarded it as a “hypothesis” that is
open to questioning and debates. I can
still recall that I quickly got frustrated
during the first semester as cultural
clashes imposed great challenges to me
at the beginning. However, after being
exposed to various types of reading
materials, research projects, classroom
discussions and seminars, it eventually
ignited my strong curiosity and passion
towards the western media and society.
CMS further inspired me to intensively
learn and think about cultural and
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
societal differences and convergences
between the West and East, which was
undoubtedly one of my biggest gains at
CMS!
I am currently working as an analyst
at IDC/IDG—a global market research
and consulting firm headquartered in
Framingham MA. My position involves
extensive quantitative and qualita-
tive research on market data. Though
the learning from CMS does not
directly apply to my day-to-day work,
the childlike curiosity, independent
reasoning and creative thinking with
which CMS equipped me has helped
and benefited me ENORMOUSLY!
Thank you all, Henry, William, Jing
Wang, Kurt Fendt, my ’08 classmates,
and other professors and staff!
Andres Lombana, SM ’08
Practicing and studying media continue
driving my journey. After Cambridge, I
moved to Austin, where I am currently
a Ph.D. student in the Radio-Televi-
sion-Film department at the University
of Texas. I am glad I was part of the
community and program that Henry
and William developed at MIT.
The CMS experience was certainly
challenging and mind-blowing.
Thinking across media, having a his-
torical poetic perspective, doing media
theory/practice, and understanding
new media literacies continue shaping
my work. All I learned during my years
at MIT resonates in my everyday life as
a media explorer, researcher, artist, and
educator.
Huma Yusuf, SM ’08
Working as a reporter in Karachi,
Pakistan, with a monthly news
magazine, I was enticed by the notion of
journalism that amplified the voices of
the insightful and impassioned people I
regularly interviewed. Although I could
not articulate it at the time, I wanted to
combine citizen journalism and social
networking to make for more interac-
tive—and inclusive—storytelling.
At CMS, I explored ways in which
mediated practices help people coin
their own narratives through my
thesis on urban identity and violence.
But the real learning happened at
Thursday night colloquiums (and
Shay’s afterwards) and through my
projects for MIT’s Center for Future
Civic Media (C4), then in its first year.
C4 exposed me to the work of Media
Lab students and research groups such
as New Media Literacies, The Education
Arcade, and HyperStudio. I found
myself in a world of software applica-
tions and media practices that the best
sci-fi writer couldn’t dream up: mobile
diagnostics, user-generated radio, in-
teractive timelines and more. An audio
editing and tagging software I worked
towards never quite took off, but the
struggle to make it succeed was enlight-
ening. Meanwhile, I completed a white
paper on Pakistani new media and
democracy, which is being published by
Zone Books/MIT Press in 2010.
Since graduating, I have worked as the
first features editor of Dawn, Pakistan’s
only interactive news website, complete
with blogs, a Twitter feed, YouTube
channel, and transmedia journalism.
I am also working with several NGOs
to set up community radio stations
in Pakistani conflict zones that will
incorporate user-generated content
submitted via cellphone. I continue
to advocate for free media policy and
document new media trends in South
Asia. If it hadn’t been for CMS, I may
still be writing in print alone.
Katherine Chu, SB ’09
I am a first-year master’s student in
MIT’s Technology and Policy program.
I currently work with researchers in
partnership with General Motors to
investigate new technology investment
decisions, cut costs, and reduce carbon
emissions during their manufacturing
process.
Josh Diaz, SM ’09
Entering the CMS program was a leap of
faith, I think—both for me, and for the
program. I assumed that the graduate
program with the most tantalizing op-
portunities and challenging projects
was also going to be one least likely

to appreciate my diverse background
and interests. This was not the first as-
sumption that CMS would challenge,
but it had the most impact. Soon after
arriving, I was using my curiosity as
a map for learning more about all the
treasures I’d thought of. Even the side
treks (especially the side treks?) turned
out to be through fallow fields of cool
stuff that I was encouraged to explore
with brilliant and wonderful scholars
at my side.
Now that I’m out in what is errone-
ously referred to as the real world,
I’m in tremendous debt (spiritual,
not financial) to Comparative Media
Studies. Challenging prevailing con-
vention is one handy thing; finding
out whether the challenge is working
or not is another, and it was my time
in CMS that helped find the difference.
Whether it’s being able to respond
(with evidence!) to the queries of me-
dia-studies skeptics or being able to
point out the invaluable experience of
working in the GAMBIT Game Lab to
my professional peers, CMS gave me
the tools to land not just the job I have
now, but probably whatever the future
will throw at me, and the faith to know
that I’ll be able to find something worth
stopping and asking about when I get
there, too.
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Lan Le, SM ‘09
I have been, in my time, something
of a disciplinary wanderer—a secret
humanist in search of an intellectual
home amongst the sciences. I finally
found that intellectual home at CMS
after a long flight from my first dis-
ciplines, the only institution that
regarded my meandering as a strength
rather than a crippling mental defi-
ciency. At CMS, I felt as if the program
had been especially made for me, as if
grown in a tube from my genetic in-
heritance to anticipate the possibilities
of my budding thought-forms. But even
so, there seemed to be an entire universe
of thought left outside the bounds of
the CMS curriculum—philosophy of
science and history, architecture and
visual studies, much of critical theory—
subjects that professionals of humanis-
tic studies considered foundational. I
realize now that this sort of education,
being foundational, could easily be
provided by someone else.
What we were taught at CMS, in a
way both simple and profound, was the
education that you cannot receive at
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any other program—intellectual fear-
lessness, an aggressive methodological
adaptability, and an expansive horizon
of interdisciplinary thinking. Even after
only one quarter in my Ph.D. program
at UC Santa Barbara’s Film & Media
program, I recognize the distinctness
of the CMS inflections on my thinking
and eagerly anticipate the ways it will
transform everything it touches. These
inflections, and the lifelong friendships
I have made at CMS, will be the longest
legacy of my lamentably short acquain-
tance with CMS. And so long as our
friendships persist, our sentiments and
feeling like the infrastructure between
nodes of a far-flung network, CMS too
will remain as the tissue of myth and
memory that make our histories.
Xiaochang Li, SM ‘09
It feels too soon for me to reflect CMS
with any clarity. Sometimes people still
introduce me as a CMS student, and it
won’t occur to me to correct them until
it’s too late and awkward to bring up
again. I regularly enlist members from
my cohort for various freelance gigs
and haphazard—but totally epic—plans
for great justice (in the form of overlong
blog posts). I haven’t even gotten new
business cards yet.
Perhaps my time at CMS can be
summed thus: I arrived lugging three
different copies of Proust’s Recherche,
running away full-tilt from those
wanting to mold me into a scholar
of French modernism. I left having
embraced methodological schizo-
phrenia and theoretical promiscuity,
talking about networked global medi-
ascapes and collaborative imaginaries,
transmedia intertextuality and adver-
tising. CMS taught me how to not only
recognize, but to face the political stakes
of my work head-on, to think bigger
without sacrificing rigor and specific-
ity, and that academic writing didn’t
need to be performance art (though,
sometimes it can’t be helped). Along
the way, I was able to work, play, and
get up to all sorts of shenanigans with
some of the most brilliant and generous
minds I will ever encounter. And make
up a whole slew of (really evocative!)
neologisms.
In the handful of months since then,
I’ve moved to New York, consulting
and developing research for brands and
media companies seeking that uniquely
CMS approach and working back
through all the media that I didn’t have
time to consume while in grad school.
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Colleen Kaman, ‘09
MIT has definitely been one of the
biggest challenges of my life. It has
also been a life-changing experience.
Since CMS, I have continued to work
in journalism and documentary, at the
moment as a consultant with PopTech,
a science and technology conference
and media company. I am currently
working on a multimedia initiative
focused on engaging young people in
the sciences. Working with PopTech
feels a bit like being part of the extended
CMS community, not only because
Henry brought the current CMS class
with him when he spoke at the confer-
ence in 2002, but also because it is an
environment where I grapple with the
practical implications of media and
technology on a daily basis.
I continue to be inspired by my time
at CMS and fully expect that the tools I
gained there will continue to inform my
professional life, wherever it takes me. I
am forever indebted to William, Henry,
and the rest of CMS for their patience,
vision, and wisdom. Thank you.
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Orit Kuritsky, SM ‘09
After defending my thesis I spent a
year in Tel-Aviv, where I directed a
cable network dedicated to parenting.
(I was also part of its target market;
my son Itamar was six months old
when I started.) My job was to manage
the re-launch of a linear channel, a
limited pay-per-view version, a related
parenting website (hophorim.co.il),
and make them work together in the
best possible way.
  On this job, every day I tapped my
experience at some of CMS’s hands-on
classes (One that especially comes to
mind is Henry’s Media Industries and
Systems class, in which we designed
media properties for young boys and
read, among other insightful texts, the
manuscript of Convergence Culture).
 Analyzing the rapidly changing media
landscape around me is something
that—like most CMSers—I’ve been
practicing before I started the program.
Yet, since CMS I’ve been doing it with
more deft and depth thanks to Henry’s
and William’s insistence on lucid com-
munication, their respect for popular
culture, and their insistence that we
avoid superficial analysis based on taste
judgments (not to mention eye-opening
reading suggestions and a wealth of his-
torical case-studies).
  Since September I’ve been back in
Somerville working on an adaptation
of a novel (World Cup Wishes by Eshkol
Nevo) into a prime-time drama series
for Israeli Channel Two. The core theme
of this series, like my CMS master’s
thesis, is the elusive concept of trans-
formation. I am pretty sure that my
CMS experience will keep informing
the next steps in my professional life,
whatever they may be.    
Whitney Trettien, SM ‘09
It’s only after entering a Ph.D. program
in a more traditionalist humanities dis-
cipline (English) that I came to truly
appreciate the diversity of CMS. While
at MIT, I discussed hiphop YouTube
and counterfeit luxury goods; authored
a videogame; compared television to
Victorian serial novels, and mix-tape
culture to the emergence of print; and
watched my first K-drama (about a gay
pastry chef). I even did the Soulja Boy
dance with Richard Stallman (!).
As much as I love studying early
modern literature and book history at
Duke, these are experiences that could
only happen in the ongoing experiment
that is CMS. Happy 10th.
Jason Begy, SM ‘10
The past two years in CMS have
comprised the most challenging,
exciting and fun period of my life.
Working in GAMBIT has afforded
me the chance to not only study game
design, but to engage in game research
on a level rarely possible in academia.
During my time here, I have studied
how players respond to audiovisual
feedback and how such feedback has
evolved in commercial games. I have
also worked on a study of the player
base of a new casual MMO. Design-wise
I have contributed to Tipping Point, a
cooperative board game and browser
game designed to teach project man-
agement skills. In the summer of 2009,
I was part of the GAMBIT Summer
Program where I worked on Pierre:
Insanity Inspired, a game built to study
how players respond to failure. After
this semester I am extremely fortunate
to be staying on in GAMBIT for another
year, and after that, who can say?
I will always be grateful for the op-
portunity to have met and worked
with so many fascinating people. I

have immensely enjoyed working
with the GAMBIT and CMS staff, my
fellow CMS graduate students, and the
GAMBIT undergraduate researchers.
While I only had a short time to work
with Henry, I too am sorry to see him
go. Yet, I am also glad he is spreading
his vision beyond MIT, which can only
be a good thing.
Lastly, I want to thank my wife for
putting up with me these two years. I
wouldn’t have.
Audubon Dougherty, SM ‘10
I feel so grateful to have been admitted
to CMS. Aside from the solid academic
foundation and ever-interesting course
content, what I appreciate most is the
community of scholars, professors, and
staff who were always there to support
my classmates and me. Thanks espe-
cially to William and Henry for their
unflinching optimism and inspiration.
Also to Sarah Wolozin for her assistance
with C4 projects and to Ed Barrett for
letting me TA his fun classes all year.  age for my thesis. Next: opening the
CMS has been such a unique program.
Being able to experience other aspects
of MIT has been wonderful—partic-
ularly taking pottery, attending Sloan
courses, teaching undergrads, working
on a documentary with the MIT Glass
Lab, helping the MIT@Lawrence
project in DUSP, and becoming part
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of the “Carroll Wilson Circle,” which
allowed me to embark on a fascinating
project in Peru and meet amazing en-
trepreneurial MIT alums.   plinary semesters in the CMS program.
I’m also very happy to have gone
through CMS with such great col-
leagues. I will miss our online chats
and all the supportive pep talks and
knowledge sharing on virtually any
topic. Since the future doesn’t exist yet,
I’m hesitant to talk about it—but I hope
it involves gainful employment for all
of us, and lands me in the EU. If I can
figure out a way to consistently travel
and keep doing media production and
management, I’ll be satisfied. And even
if that doesn’t work out, I wouldn’t trade
in my experience here for anything.
Florence Gallez, SM ’10
As this self-portrait for a photography
class I took in January attests, CMS
has taught me to see new facets of
myself and the world around me. Just
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as I posed in front of MIT’s entrance
for the shot, I now pose to reflect on
three thought-provoking multidisci-
I now see a world interacting in unex-
pected ways on multiple platforms and
converging into one big future filled
with connected media creators. In it, I
see a Florence more media-informed,
more focused, and with more different
spheres open to her than ever. CMS
has pushed me to re-think the ‘old,’
question assumptions, and create ‘the
new’ of tomorrow.
Trained as a journalist, I came to
CMS dreaming of “rewriting the news”
and shaping its future through open
publishing. The CMS faculty and staff
put everything into place to make
this happen, affording me a degree
of support and freedom unseen in
new media programs. Henry Jenkins’
detailed feedback and futuristic
insight, William Uricchio’s and Ian
Condry’s guidance and international
perspectives, CMS’ cooperative spirit,
its students’ talents and courses have
informed my vision of a new model
for digital news production. I am now
developing the OpenPark platform for
collaborative journalism at the Center
for Future Civic Media, and writing a
Code of Ethics for news in the digital
OP platform for citizen journalists and
communities to tell their news and
stories.
Flourish Klink, SM ‘10
Things I wouldn’t have without CMS:
•  A half-finished master’s thesis (at
the time of this writing) on fan
humor and lulz.
•  The experience of helping to design
and run a pervasive game.
•  Knowing what a pervasive game is.
•  Any interest in silent films whatso-
ever.
•  Time spent in struggling Brooklyn
schools, testing curriculum to teach
new media literacy.
•  A sense of the history of media.
•  Two years of experiencing the in-
credibly fruitful intellectual atmo-
sphere of Cambridge.
•  Not just a job, but a calling—to be
Chief Participation Officer of The
Alchemists, advocating for fans on
the highest level possible.
I’m so grateful for my time here. I’m
glad that, nearly ten years ago, Henry
managed to get my email address to
interview me for Convergence Culture,
introducing me to the idea of media
studies—and I’m glad when I was
finishing college and feeling like I
didn’t really want to take my Religion
degree and go become a minister, I had
the great good sense to look into CMS.
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Hillary Kolos, SM ‘10
I admit I came to CMS with a narrow
focus—to learn how to incorporate
the ways my students participated in
the media-rich world outside of the
classroom with how they were learning
inside the classroom. Many of my initial
questions were answered by working as
a research assistant at Project NML and
talking with colleagues, Henry, class-
mates, and the folks at GAMBIT. These
initial answers led me to new, deeper
questions that I hope to explore back in
public schools.
The best part of CMS, though, was
having my mind opened up to so much
more. William revealed the important
historical patterns of media transi-
tions, as well as the quirks of European
living. Henry helped me appreciate a
whole new world of media forms and
audiences, as well as what not to do in
a mud wrestling match. My classmates
taught me the joys of playing games (es-
pecially trivia at Characters!) in addition
to studying them and were who kept me
going. The CMS staff showed me how a
program can care about and support a
group of students with a crazy range of
interests and demands.
My time with CMS has been one of
the most challenging experiences of my
life, but I leave it equipped with a more
open mind, a powerful set of tools, and
a bunch of new friends that I hope to
keep with me for the rest of my life!
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
Michelle Moon Lee, SM ‘10
My time as a graduate student in CMS
has been exhilarating. CMS was the
only program that was able to satisfy
my demands for equal parts theory and
practice; span a wide variety of media,
including games; and recruit a diverse
and stimulating student cohort.
I have had amazing opportunities
to expand my interests in playing and
designing games of all sorts, including
educational games at The Education
Arcade under the guidance of Scot
Osterweil. I’ve become particularly in-
terested in transmedia storytelling and
pervasive games. My thesis involved
collaboratively designing a pervasive
game adaptation of The Count of Monte
Cristo to explore the role of ethics
in games. Along with Flourish and
Elliot, of whom I am forever apprecia-
tive, I completed a week-long playtest
of our game Civilité during IAP 2010.
I am grateful to Henry, William, and
Scot for their unwavering support, in
the classroom, in directed research, or
on game design projects. I am thrilled to
bring the skills and knowledge that I’ve
gained at CMS to Quilted, the design
and development cooperative where I
am a prospective member. Quilted is
expanding the services we provide to
non-profit and social justice organiza-
tions to include game design.
Nick Seaver, SM ‘10
My experience in CMS has been full of
surprises: how diverse the interests of
my classmates were; how well “media
studies” described my interests; by the
interest of faculty in my work; and that
there were so many great classes that I
wanted to take extra, even during my
thesis-writing term. CMS has been
amazing in exceeding my expectations.
The phenomenal interdisciplinarity
of the program supported my wide-
ranging thesis topics, and William
and Henry helped me to narrow my
focus. Thanks to the diverse faculty, I
have chased down interests in material
culture, sound studies, and automa-
tion. The ability to bounce ideas off my
classmates stopped me from going too
far off the deep end (right, guys?), and
learning about their work has been en-
lightening. (An added perk: they make
great bar trivia teammates.)
Writing my thesis on the history of
“re-performance” and the player piano
and applying to Ph.D. programs, I am
grateful for the strong interdisciplinary
foundation CMS helped me build. I am
glad that there was room for me, among
brilliant thinkers about industry,
culture, entertainment, and technol-
ogy, to explore and find my interests.
Sheila Murphy Seles, SM ‘10
“CMS prepares students for jobs that
don’t exist yet.” I didn’t think about it
much until I actually started looking
for a job, for that asks me to think about
the media landscape as I’ve come to see
it during my time at CMS.
The CMS point-of-view is the greatest
gift William and Henry have given us.
They’ve taught us to find connections
in unlikely places, look for antecedents,
and ultimately question the status quo.
My classmates have been wonderful
teachers, too. I’ve learned a ton from
my cohort and made some great friends
in the process. Because of our diverse
interests and backgrounds, CMS ’10 has
assembled the best trivia team ever to
grace Characters Bar and Grill.
I am writing my thesis on the televi-
sion industry’s struggle to adapt to the
digital world. As I venture out into the
world beyond MIT, I feel prepared to
tackle the challenges facing the media
industries with a critical and informed
perspective. I may not know how to fix
the television industry (yet), but after
two years at CMS, I do know how to ask
the right questions.

T
he word faculty has a deep
history, a Latin root meaning
power, ability, opportunity,
resources, and wealth. Those early
meanings resonate and aptly describe the
colleagues who for over a decade have
given form and substance to the CMS
program. Most faculty involvement with
CMS is a labor of love carried out in
addition to other sectional demands; at
MIT where the fire hose metaphor reigns,
these demands can be intense. Despite
this, CMS-affiliated faculty, whose tes-
timonials follow, have taught, advised,
helped to administrate, and made the
operation of the program possible.
Over ten years ago, many of the
faculty still here and a few others who
have since moved on, gathered to give
form to an idea. Retreats led by Henry
Jenkins and sponsored by then-Dean
Philip Khoury drew on the faculty’s col-
lective wisdom to discuss the curricular
contours of the new CMS program, to
give shape to its research agenda, and to
identify the resources that would sustain
it. Dean Deborah Fitzgerald has gener-
ously provided resources, guidance, and
inspiration, plus the occasional nudge
when needed. And CMS has benefited
from Ian Condry, who stepped up to
the position of associate director at the
critical moment when Henry moved to
USC. In short, this faculty has enabled
CMS to fulfill its mission, forming the
core of its community and the persistent
center of its intellectual identity. –W.U.
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Faculty Testimonials
Edward Barrett
Writing and Humanistic Studies
I remember meetings with colleagues
from the School of Humanities, Arts,
and Social Sciences and other schools
across the Institute to discuss an
idea for a new program. I remember
thinking this is a great idea even though
we didn’t have a name for it at first. I
remember thinking Henry is secretly
a wizard. I remember the talented and
gifted administrative staff, how lucky
the program was to have them (then
and now).
I remember directing the graduate
workshop in the first years of the
program. I remember trying to
find space for students to work in. I
remember Chris Pomiecko taking time
out of his busy day to order sandwiches
for the workshop. I remember we tried
not to spill anything on our computers.
I remember marveling at the talent of
those workshop students. I remember
their final projects, how they always
went beyond what they had proposed.
I remember how many of those projects
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inspired masters’ theses. I remember
we’d go to Casa Mexico in Harvard
Square halfway through the semester.
I remember thinking graduate students
can eat a lot of guacamole and chips
before dinner.
Ian Condry
CMS and Foreign Languages and
Literatures
These are exciting times for Com-
parative Media Studies at MIT. As we
celebrate our ten year anniversary, we
can see the success of the program in
so many ways, from the students past
and present, to the extensive network
of scholars and media professionals
both at MIT and beyond, who together
have brought energy and insights to
the program, constantly pushing each
other and the field in new directions.
Given the storied past of CMS, it’s no
surprise that there is such passion for
its future.
MIT is a unique place for media
studies right now. Media is no longer
something that we watch or consume
or passively experience. Media is
something we do. The Institute’s ethos
of practical engagement with the world,
combined with thoughtful collabora-
tion and dialogue that transcends dis-
ciplinary boundaries, helps create an
unparalleled crucible for research and
innovation. I hope that in the years to
come we continue to build upon the core
strengths of the program, including the
commitment to being truly compara-
tive—over national borders, through
history, and across media. If today’s
media worlds are driven in part by the
energy of people who want to connect,
participate, and engage, then CMS
couldn’t be in a better position to help
shape where our understandings of
media will lead.
Beth Coleman
CMS and Writing
I came to CMS directly from graduate
school. I had met Henry Jenkins at a
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conference some time before, and we
had stayed in touch. I am incredibly
grateful to have had the CMS experience
as part of my foundational years as a
scholar and teacher. Because of the
rich conversations among colleagues,
students and friends here, my intellectu-
al world has greatly expanded. I work in
theory and practice—thinking about
new media and making things with new
media. CMS has been an exciting place
to experiment with these new worlds we
inhabit. I look forward to the next 10
years.
(Coleman’s book Hello Avatar,
published by MIT Press, is available in
fall 2010.)
Tommy DeFrantz
Music and Theater Arts
DeFranz, left
CMS continues to be a hospitable home
for my concerns with black popular
culture and mediated performance.
Work with CMS students, faculty,
and affiliated researchers expands
my understanding of performance,
presence, interactivity, and corpore-
ality as we careen through the 21st
century. My favorite episodes to date
include leading dance workshops for
Electronic Arts staffers in California
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
on a consulting trip with Henry; taking
CMS undergrad majors to dinner and
a movie to celebrate their academic
achievement, and hosting events for
grad students and affiliated faculty
to encourage exchange when I acted
as associate director for the program
while William was on leave.
CMS is also a fun place to engage the
feedback loop of media to performance.
Where else could I collaborate with
j-pop expert and CMS professor Ian
Condry, create a “live action anime”
show with giant robots and lip-synch-
ing undergraduate actors, and travel to
Tokyo to share our work to an aston-
ished audience? Nowhere! CMS rules.
Kurt Fendt
Foreign Languages and Literatures
Having been involved with CMS much
beyond the decade we are celebrating
now, makes it a challenge to single out
a few memorable moments. Neverthe-
less, I picked two that for me marked a
shift in the program as well as my own
engagement with CMS.
The first one happened in May 1997
when Henry invited me to join the
planning meetings. The first meeting I
attended took place on neutral ground
in the Charles Hotel. As it turned out,
this was a wise decision as one of the
topics on the agenda was defining the
name of the new program. Now at its
10th anniversary it’s hard to imagine
that the very core of CMS, namely its
comparative nature, was once such a
contested term that sparked heated dis-
cussions. I can’t recall what the other al-
ternatives were but I am glad Compara-
tive Media Studies was the strongest
candidate and finally prevailed.
The second moment I recall vividly
was when the first group of five CMS
graduate students moved into their
office across the hall from my own
office in building E10. Even though the
building had already been scheduled
for demolition—it was at the location
of the new Media Lab—I was happy to
be close to activity of an exciting new
initiative. One of those first students,
Christopher York, became the first
research assistant in HyperStudio and I
am glad to say that he is still working for
us as a consultant from afar. Over the
years, the CMS students have become
such a central component of HyperStu-
dio that it’s hard to imagine what the
Studio would be without them.
Mary Fuller
Literature
I first met Henry Jenkins at a Modern
Language Association cocktail party
in 1988, and since I thought we were
competitors for the same job in Re-
naissance literature it was a surprise to
see him again at MIT in the office next
door, working on fan fiction. Our con-
versations about videogames and early
modern exploration started me down a
path of thinking about how and where
older texts connect with present forms
and concerns.
The work I do now thinks about books
as much as about texts, which is to say
that I think about the physical things
that early modern books are—market-
able commodities, aesthetic objects,
blank spaces to be marked and written
on by readers, and the vehicles for texts
that may be utterly transformed without
changing a jot of their content. Playing
with 500-year-old books is one of the
coolest things I get to do, and having
interesting questions to ask about them
comes at least in part from the intel-
lectual neighborhood of Comparative
Media Studies. When the book is one

among many possible media—and
that’s the historical reality—a perspec-
tive on it becomes possible that may not
have been so available before.
Stefan Helmreich
Anthropology
I’ve greatly enjoyed my affiliation with
CMS since arriving at MIT. I had par-
ticular fun in fall 2009 teaching the
Media and Methods: Sound course,
one of the new core classes for the
major. Students explore how percep-
tions and technologies of sound emerge
from cultural, economic, and histori-
cal worlds. We learn how environmen-
tal, linguistic, and musical sounds are
construed cross-culturally and we listen
to the history of telephony, architectur-
al acoustics, and sound recording, as
well as to the globalized travel of these
technologies. Colleagues from CMS—
notably Beth Coleman, Ian Condry and
William Uricchio—have been essential
to getting this class off the ground.
I’ve also had a grand time working
with CMS students on their theses.
I learned about cartoon sound from
Andres Lombana, who made me hear
Looney Tunes anew. Nick Seaver, who
served as a TA for my sound class, has
been writing a thesis on the semiotics of
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the player piano that has been making
me rethink the relation of musical
agency to technology.
CMS has been a welcoming
community. As an anthropologist, I’ve
been pleased to listen in on conversa-
tions about new media and honored
to offer back my own ethnographic
work on allied topics—particularly in
a CMS colloquium I did back in 2008,
“Submarine Media: Sounding the Sea
with Cyborg Anthropology,” which
detailed my dive to the sea floor in
the submersible Alvin, an experience
that pressed me to think freshly about
the medium of water through media
theory. Anthropology and CMS share
a commitment to thinking compara-
tively, across cultures and examples,
and I’m looking and listening forward
to long and continuing collaboration.
Diana Henderson
Literature
Photo by Richard Howard
Whether teaching Major Media Texts,
serving on the Admissions Committee,
or supervising theses, from the
program’s first year onward I’ve greatly
enjoyed the cross-disciplinary learning
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that the CMS graduate program en- Wyn Kelly
courages.   Not least among those Literature
pleasures has been the opportunity for
us all to venture far beyond our home
fields, and learn from MIT colleagues.
I especially recall the fun in seminar
when George Ruckert had us attempt-
ing to clap complex rhythms as he in-
troduced Indian classical music theory
(better to understand Satyajit Ray’s
The Music Room); the seriousness of
students’ presentations on media rep-
resentations of Turkish hunger strikes
and South African visual art after
apartheid; and, of course, lively debates
about the merits of various artistic
genres, the contemporary relevance of
traditional media, and the protocols of
reading. Plus the chance to teach every- Who would have imagined a project
thing from Shakespeare to Pullman’s that brought together MIT’s CMS and
Dark Materials, from Aristotle to Literature faculty, researchers and
Omkara: what’s not to celebrate?  students, New Bedford schoolteach-
My research on contemporary perfor- ers, a whaling museum, a community
mances of Shakespeare across media theater, and Melville’s Moby-Dick?
has also benefited from working with Project New Media Literacies stood at
students such as Clara Fernandez and the fulcrum of all these constituencies
colleagues like Pete Donaldson, while in one of the most meaningful conver-
the group projects we pursued with the gences of my career, and I have Henry
Royal Shakespeare Company opened up Jenkins and all the CMS community to
new horizons of possibility.   Working thank for an unforgettable experience.
now with Pete, Janet Sonenberg, What I learned about appropriation
Shankar Raman, and Jay Scheib on a and remixing, participatory culture,
Global Shakespeare project, I’m eager reading and literacy, performance and
to see where the next years take us and identity, creative and critical work,
the program more generally—especial- and fan practices through the particu-
ly as we benefit from the participation lar lens of Moby-Dick has shifted the
of newer colleagues, strengthen our un- ground under my scholarly and peda-
dergraduate curriculum, and reach out gogical work in tremendously produc-
within and across units to enlarge the tive ways—spawning a book, articles,
circle of participating faculty. lectures, and half a dozen new courses.
In every contact with CMS faculty
and students—going back to the first
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days of MetaMedia and digital archives,
continuing through years of innova-
tive thesis projects and colloquia, up
through the extended period of weekly
writing sessions that produced the
Teachers’ Strategy Guide for Reading in
a Participatory Culture—I have learned
enormously from the CMS culture. One
significant lesson: going off balance.
The creative energy of CMS continues
to unsettle my assumptions and send
me in new directions. What the writer
of a Soundings (the School of Humani-
ties, Arts, and Social Sciences news-
letter) profile called “Wyn’s Excellent
Adventure” would have been impossi-
ble without the intellectual stimulation
and support of CMS. I owe the program
my deepest gratitude and look forward
to the next leg of the great adventure.
Eric Klopfer
Scheller Teacher Education Program
Whenever anyone asks me what The
Education Arcade is, I describe it as
the intersection of the Scheller Teacher
Education Program (STEP—of which I
am the director) and CMS. CMS lends
both credibility and expertise in this
endeavor. It means that we’re not just
producing educational games based on
good pedagogy; it means that we are
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
making them in the context of under-
standing games and their role in enter-
tainment, industry and people’s lives.
On a practical level, the creativity of
the CMS students who have worked
on projects with us is invaluable. Their
input has shaped our work and brought
it life that would just not be possible
without them. Many of these are CMS
master’s students, but my affiliation
with CMS has also meant attracting
students with media talents, creativ-
ity and ingenuity as undergraduate re-
searchers and students in classes as well.
The umbrella of The Education Arcade
that sits across STEP and CMS creates a
unique space that is nearly impossible
to replicate anywhere else.
Martin Marks
Theater and Music Arts
What CMS has meant to me...
First, a CineMusic Space of support
and intellectual enrichment. I first
started doing my research into film
music in the mid 1970s, and at that
time when I described the work to
other scholars I was mostly met with
curious or blank looks. True, some were
enthused; but others, deep into approved
archival research, became wary or a bit
envious; not a few were coolly dismis-
sive. But here at MIT, professors in Lit-
erature and Foreign Languages & Liter-
atures were among the very first to get
really excited when I talked about my
work. Then, after the Film and Media
Studies program morphed into CMS,
two things happened: my teaching of
Film Music, Musicals, The Film Experi-
ence, and Film Analysis served broader
purposes; and my silent-film scoring
projects and performances found
engaged audiences whose feedback was
of tremendous help. In short, the work
had a space in which to exist.
And second, a Contrapuntal Mind
Stretcher. When other faculty and
graduate students talk and write about
media, my language skills are put to the
test; when they describe their work on
digital media projects, my IQ seems
to shed degrees by the minute; when
they theorize, I get skeptical or cranky.
(I become one of those old-timers like
the people I described above.) It’s all so
. . . new. And yet that’s the point, isn’t
it? A wonderful group of scholars and
entrepreneurs and pioneers who are
hacking their ways through cyberfor-
ests, mapping a universe that just keeps
expanding, finding dark and light
matter of immediate import. No one
can keep up, but, even the small per-
centage of things I am able to absorb,
has made my life considerably sweeter. I
am beholden to them all and thank my
lucky stars.
Nick Montfort
Writing and Humanistic Studies
I was lucky to have a few CMS memories
from before I started teaching in
the program in 2007. I got to take
one of Henry’s classes when I was a
graduate student at MIT, around when
he and William were establishing CMS.
In the years after that, I met and heard
from CMSers at conferences and
read some amazing CMS theses and
faculty writing. When I joined the MIT
faculty, teaching the graduate
workshop class, with its eclectic
collection of media projects and an
eclectic, dynamic group of students,
it was my first teaching experience here.
I’ve enjoyed working with students
as they write their theses, continuing
to teach workshop, and having CMS
graduate and undergraduate students
as part of the class in my other
subjects.
Already, we’ve had students join us
from around the world, some with
international research interests
and some ready to understand how
computing connects to culture. We
now have the chance to build on these
strengths—to lead the way in taking

a global view of media and in
understanding the qualities of compu-
tational media. Our students can now
make contributions in emerging fields
that deal with creative computing,
such as software studies and platform
studies. And, we can continue to
bring practice together with theory,
criticism, and scholarship in
innovative ways. I’m looking forward
to continuing to be part of CMS and
to helping the program continue its
success.
James Paradis
Writing and Humanistic Studies
I feel a sense of gratitude to all those
who contributed to the rise of Com-
parative Media Studies at MIT. What
a fascinating range of inquiries has
developed under the savvy creativ-
ity of Jenkins and Uricchio, two of the
field’s most widely regarded figures. I
appreciate, too, the vision of Thorburn,
Donaldson, Barrett, and Marks who
fleshed out subject matter and gave
structure and institutional framework
when it utterly mattered. CMS has been
a transformative experience for many
of us at MIT, and it is unquestionably
the most exciting new undergraduate
major to appear in the School of Hu-
manities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
The graduate students and CMS
research initiatives have made MIT
media studies a model for institutions
around the country. Through its bold
multidisciplinarity—which for me
brings to mind the irreverent glance
of Chris Pomiecko—CMS offered
and continues to offer the chance to
transform the humanities at MIT.
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Faculty across the School have devoted
a telling amount of collective energy to
extending their curricula and teaching
into the realms of CMS, venturing out
of their comfort zones into new spaces
where historicism encounters the pro-
duction of the new, the contemporary,
the ordinary, the popular.
If MIT is an institution unapologeti-
cally devoted to the invention of the
new, CMS will be the linkage of our
critical and historical awareness to that
spirit of modernity. It is with no small
excitement that I contemplate the next
chapter in this uniquely MIT experi-
ence.
Hanna Rose Shell
Society, Technology, and Society
In this, my first year teaching at MIT,
I have enjoyed having the opportunity
to work with CMS faculty, students
and the larger community. I gave a
talk “How Not to Be Seen” as part of
the CMS Colloquium Series, and this
was a great introduction to the host of
experiences, knowledge and voices at
CMS. There, I had the opportunity to
meet a range of graduate students; their
feedback and warm welcomes from
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William, Nick, Jim and so many others
inspired me throughout the term.
In addition to teaching courses in
2009-2010 on The Rise of Modern
Science, Science and the Cinema, and
Research Methods, I am finishing a
book on camouflage called Hide and
Seek. In early 2010, I am mobilizing my
ongoing project on Haiti, media and
secondhand clothing called Second-
hand (Pepe) as part of the relief efforts
after the earthquake.
David Thorburn
Literature
I’m still trying to imagine MIT without
my visionary friend Henry Jenkins.
His impact on the civic and intel-
lectual culture of the Institute has
been remarkable, and the legacy of his
imaginative teaching and his leader-
ship as the founding director of CMS
will nourish us all for years to come.
But nothing is here for tears. Although
Henry’s now across the continent, his
inimitable voice will reach us in books
and blogs and perhaps in person, as he’s
agreed to serve on the governing board
of the Communications Forum.
Reflecting on Henry’s two decades
at MIT, I think especially of his and
Cynthia’s exemplary labors as Head-
masters of Senior House, of his always
riveting presence in the classroom, of
the way his intellectual energy inspired
his colleagues. When the Literature
faculty was considering Henry’s ap-
pointment, some professors were (rea-
sonably) uneasy, despite his glittering
credentials, because his degrees were
not in literature but in journalism and
film. Of course, his memorable work as
a teacher and scholar more than vindi-
cated the decision to hire him. I think
it’s the best decision we ever made.
Edward Baron Turk
Foreign Languages & Literatures
The wonderful three-year period during
which each fall semester I taught the
graduate pro-seminar Major Media
Texts includes some of the fondest
moments I have had in a very long
teaching career! For those students who
shared the experience, I will bet that a
simple evocation of such signifiers as
“Tristan,” “amour fou,” “BuÒuel,” and
“Richard Powers” sparks sweet remem-
55

brances. What I most enjoyed was the
fruitful collision of my cultural and in-
tellectual baggage with yours. Each of
you taught me so much!
My only regret is that I wasn’t able
to share with you an entirely new area
of study I’ve recently been working
in: contemporary theatre and perfor-
mance. This research has culminated
in my new book, French Theatre Today:
The View from New York, Paris, and
Avignon, to appear next year. Those of
you who read it will see that I’ve done
my best to keep alive the same spirit of
joyful exploration that characterized so
much of our work together in class.
William Uricchio
Comparative Media Studies
I’ve long been interested in the early
days of the book, photography, the
telephone, film, television, networked
computers, and games. They are as
compelling for the modes of connec-
tivity and representation they enable,
as for the paths not taken. The CMS
program fits this interest neatly, and
not just as a facilitating institutional
frame. The program is itself inevitably
a response to a moment of accelerated
media change, part and parcel of the
brokering of social interest attendant
to a reconfiguration of media practices
and meanings. And what fascinates
me about emerging media is the same
thing that fascinates me about CMS:
it offers access to ideas as they become
organizing principles, ways of knowing
the world and communicating that
knowledge. Like the media it studies,
CMS is ultimately a social process. A
community of diverse scholars, it has
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PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS
gone on to organize platforms (con-
ferences and colloquia) and institu-
tional venues (research projects) that
have transformed the field. A strong
community ethos and collective energy
have sustained the program through
tough times, and account in no small
measure for its success. It’s been a
privilege to spend a decade with such
passionate, talented and generous
students, colleagues and staff, and to be
part of a truly collaborative community.
Although our organizing concept was
clear, our timing fortunate, and our
results impressive, the real measure of
CMS is the community it fostered, and
the ongoing work of that community as
it continues to spread.
Christine Walley
Anthropology
I have taught classes on documentary/
ethnographic film at MIT for a number
of years, including to numerous CMS
graduate and undergraduate students.
At present, I am co-teaching with Chris
Boebel a new class, DV Lab: Exploring
Science Through Video and New
Media, that combines documentary
film analysis and production.
I’m an associate professor of An-
thropology and am currently working
on a documentary film, Exit Zero,
about the impact of deindustrializa-
tion in a former steel mill community
in Southeast Chicago. (The film serves
as a companion to an in-progress book
entitled, “The Struggle for Existence
from the Cradle to the Grave”: An An-
thropologist’s Memoir of Family and
Class in the United States.)
Jing Wang
Foreign Languages & Literatures
Congrats on the 10th year anniversary,
CMS!  Some of the program’s students I
worked with are now young professors
in different parts of the country. They
are message bearers.  May CMS thrive
for decades to come.   Hats off to the
founders!
Chris Weaver
Comparative Media Studies
Weaver, left, with Jenkins and Ralph Baer
I first met Henry in 1999 and was fasci-
nated by his ambitious new program at
my alma mater. I had been part of the
the Media Lab’s precursor, but Henry’s
extensive knowledge of media, its con-
sumption, and applying it in novel ways
captivated me.
Henry’s annual attempt to vanquish
Cynthia in mud-wrestling, and his
willingness to accept perennial defeat,
only further endeared him to his “fans”.
His willingness to allow others to laugh
at his expense makes his teaching all
the more real—a quality he shares
with William, another person of great
depth but precious little “attitude.” This
dream-team’s guidance added strength
to my own work, and I committed to
support their program. Having taught at
MIT under Ithiel de Sola Pool, I offered
my services, and Henry and William
were gracious enough to provide an op-
portunity to contribute. That commit-
ment has been rewarded many times
over by the quality of students with
whom I have been privileged to teach
and interact. After thirty years of as-
sociation with MIT, CMS has earned a
special place not only at the Institute,
but in my heart.
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Visiting Scholars and Postdoctal Researchers

C
MS has had the great pleasure to Frank Fleerackers Qing Li Stacey Schulman
host talented researchers and to Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar
nurture brilliant young minds
just starting their academic careers. Russell Francis Yu-Ling Lu Song Shi
Here are the visiting scholars, postdocs, Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate
and research affiliates who have contrib-
uted to our work—as we hope we have Cristobal Garcia Jason Mittell Jaroslav Svelch
to theirs. Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate Visiting Student

Jörn Ahrens Cabell Gathman Peter Müller Shenja van der Graaf
Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate

Stuart Brotman Matthew Gaydos Konstantin Mitgutsch Yuichi Washida

Visiting Scholar Visiting Student Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate

Axel Bruns Joshua Green David Nieborg Chris Weaver

Postdoctoral Researcher Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar/Visiting Lecturer

Alex Chisholm Tomoyuki Iino Esteve Ollé Stefan Werning

Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar

Catherine D’Ignazio Kristine Jørgensen Ksenia Prasolova Stacy Wood

Visiting Scholar Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate

Glorianna Davenport Jesper Juul Curtiss Priest Fong-Gong Wu

Visiting Scholar/Visiting Lecturer Visiting Lecturer Research Affiliate Visiting Scholar

Martijn de Waal Mitu Khandaker Tatiani Rapatzikou Harmony Wu

Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Visiting Lecturer

Frank Espinosa Robert Kozinets Bo Reimer Christopher York

Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate Visiting Scholar Research Affiliate

Clara Fernández-Vara Kuan-Chang Kuo Alice Robison Rongting Zhou

Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar Postdoctoral Researcher Visiting Scholar

David Finkel Pilar Lacasa Doris Rusch

Visiting Scholar Visiting Scholar Postdoctoral Researcher

57
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Behind the Desks

T
he success stories behind Comparative Media Studies R.J. Bain Geoffrey Long
are many. Students go off to get Ph.D.’s, invent jobs that Jason Beene Jenna McWilliams
didn’t yet exist, and return to their former work wiser Jason Bentsman Marleigh Norton
and better prepared for a changing media landscape. But a less Justin Bland Scot Osterweil
publicized story is the talent and dedication of the staff. It’s not Clement Chau Daniel Pereira
only that they keep the students on track to graduate, find that Alex Chisholm Chris Pomiecko
$20,000 check that’s gone missing, or organize events so flaw- Katherine Clinton Douglas Purdy
lessly that you don’t even notice that the event was organized, Geeta Dayal Mike Rapa
it’s who they are and what they do as people. To give just a few Rik Eberhardt Erin Reilly
examples, they stay overtime to help students; organize and run David Edery Brad Seawell
film festivals; speak unconventional languages such as Danish; Kurt Fendt Becky Shepardson
jog to and from work every day rain or shine; volunteer at soup Generoso Fierro Susan Stapleton
kitchens. They have wide and varied interests including yoga Amanda Ford Abe Stein
and meditation, Internet radio drama, fantasy baseball, fiction Sam Ford Philip Tan
writing and, of course, every type and form of media. Have you Ximena Forero-Irizarry Jessica Tatlock
ever been over to the GAMBIT Game Lab on a Friday evening? Claudia Forero-Sloan Anna van Someren
Case in point. But most of all, they are a generous, hardworking Shari Goldin Sara Verrilli
group of people that understands the meaning of teamwork and Andrew Grant Karen Verschooren
team spirit. They believe in what they do—building and running Jason Haas Margaret Weigel
a media program that prepares students to go out and make the Evan Hinkle Matthew Weise
world just a little better. Ellen Hume Andrew Whitacre
Here is a list of staff both past and present to whom CMS Leila Kinney Kelly Leahy Whitney
would like to give its heartfelt thanks. AJ Liberto Sarah Wolozin

58
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
And to Our Supporters
M
any of us grow up with tales of the power of belief…
Tinkerbell, Ruby Red Slippers, not to mention the
more serious narratives inscribed in our civic and
religious training, all portray belief as almost magical, transfor-
mative, life-altering. It is a wonderful and fundamental thing,
hard won and easily lost. But financial backing—belief plus re-
sources—is a horse of another color. A manifestation of commit-
ment, putting money behind one’s belief, goes one step further,
combining the affective with the material—and in this case, an
all-too-rare material.
CMS has been fortunate to win the faith—and the committed
support—of a handful of friends. The customs and intricacies of
fundraising oblige us to leave them somewhat behind-the-scenes,
but without doubt the program’s early and enthusiastic backers
have allowed us to do extraordinary things.
They have helped us build an endowment that supports
students and a “technologist in residence”—a position vital to the
program’s bridging of theory and practice in a technology-inten-
sive environment. The support for students has been particularly
important since it allows us to fund talent independent of the
needs of our various sponsored research projects—and it allows
us to support new research projects during the development
stage. It enables us to orchestrate a mix of interests and skill-
sets during the admissions process, a mix vital to the program’s
success. And it helps to ensure the 100% acceptance rate on our
offers of admission that we have lately enjoyed. CMS is indebted
to these friends and their extraordinary generosity.
Despite the economic challenges that attended the program’s
birth (Y2K, 9/11, the “dot bomb”) and the latest national
economic meltdowns, these friends have played a crucial role in
CMS’s development by providing gifts and endowment so that
we could carry on with our work. CMS faces another challenge:
as a relatively young program, we lack a pool of graduates who
have been out in the world sufficiently long to consider contrib-
uting to dear old alma mater (not to mention, good ol’ CMS!).
For a new and untested program, the belief—and commit-
ment—of our supporters has made a profound impact on our
operations. It has literally changed lives, whether by enabling
us to support deserving students or allowing us to develop high-
impact research initiatives. We look forward to the day when
our alumni, following their inevitable successes, living what they
have learned, likewise find themselves in a position to sponsor
the CMS vision.
We count ourselves as extraordinarily fortunate to have friends
like these.
–William Uricchio
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10 MIT Comparative Media Studies
77 Massachusetts Avenue, E15-331, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA