Dear Colleagues: I'd be grateful if you spread word of this webinar next week, particularly among colleagues, postdocs, and students who may be interested in learning more about or submitting to Grey Room in the future. We have a new editorial board and are eager to make new connections and discover new directions. --Bernie 

Nation/Culture/Infrastructure: A Grey Room Intervention

Tuesday, April 21st, 10:00 (PT) / 13:00 (ET) / 19:00 (CET) on Zoom

The editors of Grey Room announce an hour-long webinar on infrastructure as a site of political sovereignty and media-technical force, featuring Rosalind C. Morris (Columbia), Erhard Schüttpelz (Siegen), Julia Velkova (Linköping), and Lisa Parks (Santa Barbara), moderated by Bernard Geoghegan (editor, Grey Room). The conversation will reflect on twenty-first century infrastructural imperialisms, from the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” in light of Marcel Mauss’s 1920s meditations on infrastructure and the nation (published in issue 102 of Grey Room with commentaries by Morris and Schüttpelz). 

The conversation will also broach emerging questions of methodology and political critique, with particular reference to Schüttpelz’s seminal essay “The Media-Anthropological Turn of Cultural Techniques” (translated in issue 102) and the infrastructural ethnography of Velkova and Parks, “Reimagining Media Historiographies and Satellite Technologies in Bulgaria” (published in issue 103). 

For links to the webinar and optional readings, sign up at https://bit.ly/GreyRoomInfrastructure or via the QR code below.