Mar 10, 2023

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. The concept of “smart cities” promises better living through data and the software that can use it in real time to control urban systems. Law and Public Policy professor SHEILA FOSTER argues that, among the diverse populations that live in cities, which lives are actually improved by this...

Feb 24, 2023

Interviewer: RAFAEL KHACHATURIAN. As with all aspects of American life, Black people were part of the digital revolution from the beginning. CHARLTON MCILWAIN’s work explores multiple strands of this history, in which African Americans appear as both creative subjects and objects of social control. In his discussion...

Feb 10, 2023

Interviewer: ZACHARY LOEB. In the original formulation of urban theorist Jane Jacobs, “eyes on the street” linked public safety to the inadvertent effect of people going about their business and, in the process, monitoring their shared surroundings. In her recent work, media studies professor SHANNON MATTERN has...

Jan 20, 2023

Interviewer: MATTHEW BERKMAN. In the tradition of C. Wright Mill’s The Power Elite, author AARON GOOD argues that political science needs to bring power back in and seriously consider the links between social elites and the continuity of U.S. policy from one administration to the next. In his discussion with political...

Dec 13, 2022

Interviewer: MELISSA TEIXEIRA. Author, journalist, and 2022-23 Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies MARILENE FILENTO reflects on the recent national election in Brazil that brought former president Lula da Silva back into power. In her...