The Conference

On May 3, 2008, the first “Race and New Media” conference will occur on the campus of New York City College of Technology (CUNY) in downtown Brooklyn close to both the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. Though in an academic setting, the conference is intended to draw from the broader community as well, as both presenters and participants.

Brooklyn native (and Harvard PhD candidate/Rockefeller Fellow) Omar Wasow has agreed to provide the keynote talk. Wasow is the co-founder and ongoing strategic advisor to BlackPlanet.com and an on-air technology analyst. Under Wasow's leadership, BlackPlanet.com became the leading website for African Americans, reaching over three million people a month. Wasow also works to demystify technology issues through regular TV and radio segments on NBC's Today Show and public radio's Tavis Smiley Show.

Tentatively, Natasha Dow Schull, Assistant Professor in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, is scheduled to speak. Professor Schull has won fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Joel Rainey, from the Harvard History Department, a Cultural Historian, agreed to be another featured speaker.

City Tech physics professor Dr. Reginald Blake Assistant Professor, also a Visiting Research Scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory and director of the CUNY-wide Black Male Initiative (BMI), will provide the opening remarks.

Panel papers will deal with a range of aspect of the relationship between "race" and "new media." Included may be questions like the following: Does race work differently in the "new" media than it did in the "old" media? Network news, for instance, was widely derided as a nearly diversity-free zone. Is the blogosphere different? How do video games, blogs, chat rooms, and other forms of "new" media and "digital" or "virtual" spaces construct or reflect notions of race? What kinds of "new" identities and/or communities exist in these "new" digital spaces? How is new media being used to make connections, to empower communities, and/or to control, colonize, or dominate them? In other words, are there digital forms of "cultural" imperialism? Anyone interested in participating on a panel should sent a 250-word proposal to raceandnewmedia@gmail.com.

City Tech students will be involved in a number of ways. Not only will students in an Advanced Technical Writing course be creating and presenting one of the panels, but coverage of the conference will be provided by City Tech journalism students who will be involved in a cooperative venture with ePluribus Media to provide information about the conference to the wider world.

Visit this space often for interviews with potential participants, information on activities, and more over the months before the conference. After that, come back for news of the conference and discussion of the issues it will raise.