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<p>My Centre for Postdigital Cultures colleague Lindsay Balfour will
be giving this talk later in the month.<br>
</p>
<p><span></span>
</p>
<p><span><a href="http://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Association for
Cultural Studies</a> (ACS) welcomes you to an upcoming talk in
its <strong>Virtual Lecture Series</strong>, by <strong>Lindsay
Balfour (Coventry University, UK),</strong> titled <strong>‘Intimacy,
Haunting, and the Digital Future of Hospitality’</strong> (followed
by a Q&A), which will take place on <strong>June 24th, 5:30
PM BST/ British Summer Time (GMT +1)</strong> (more
information underneath).</span></p>
<p>For more information on the Virtual Lecture Series and upcoming
talks, please visit:<span> </span><a
href="https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/virtual-lecture-series/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://www.cultstud.org/wordpress/virtual-lecture-series/</a> </p>
<p><strong>Lindsay Balfour (Coventry University, UK) – Intimacy,
Haunting, and the Digital Future of Hospitality</strong><br>
<strong>June 24th, 2024</strong><br>
<strong>5:30 PM BST/ British Summer Time (GMT +1)</strong></p>
<p><strong>Abstract:</strong> In October 2020, the online dating
platform <em>Tinder</em> released their campaign, “It’s Your
Boo,” a tongue in cheek reference to a disturbing trend, where
those who were guilty of “ghosting” prospective online-dating
partners were given opportunity to reach out to those they
abruptly disregarded months or years ago. Postdigital life remains
haunted by promised and failed forms of intimacy with strangers
and <em>Tinder</em>’s attempts to bring such ghosts back from the
dead speaks to a deep preoccupation with strange and uncanny
intimacies, and a reality of living with others, whether human or
more-than-human, virtual or material. This talk works through the
relationship between haunting, intimacy, and technology in a world
where the digital future is very much a source of both relational
anxiety and relational opportunity. Digital ghosts, of course,
also conjure a kind of intimacy that is immaterial and unseen,
reminding us of the forms of risky intimacy engendered by the
spectres of contagion, parasitism, dust, and airborne strangers.
The talk thus concludes with a move towards intimacy and the
autoimmune – represented in the digital age by the figure of the
computer virus but now also with other significant cultural
meanings, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Undoubtedly, thinking about postdigital intimacies through the
concept of spectral strangers offers a new avenue for exploring
the implications of virtual technologies on our ethical, social,
and cultural life, as well as providing a new way to think the
problem of intimacy itself.</p>
<p><strong>Bio: Dr Lindsay Balfour</strong> is Assistant Professor
of Digital Media in the Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) at
Coventry University. Her research draws on the philosophical
concept of hospitality to consider the relationship between humans
and technology, and employs an intersectional feminist and
cultural studies perspective to look at digital intimacies.
Currently, she is conducting feminist analyses of intimate
surveillance and embodied computing including the concept of
“tracking” through wearables, implantables, and ingestibles. She
is a member of the Postdigital Intimacies Research Network, the
author of <em>Hospitality in a Time of Terror</em> (Bucknell UP,
2017), as well as <em>The Digital Future of Hospitality</em> and
<em>FemTech: Intersectional Interventions in Women’s Digital
Health</em>, both published in 2023, and many other articles and
book chapters. Lindsay’s recent projects include working with
cross-sector stakeholders to develop interventions for
technologically-facilitated gender-based violence, funded by ESRC
Impact Acceleration grants.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><strong>To register for this free event, please email:</strong><span> </span><a
href="mailto:vls@cultstud.org" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">vls@cultstud.org</a> </p>
<p>Please note that email registration is an automated process. If
you do NOT receive a reply to your email with the relevant
information within an hour, please check your spam folder, as some
ISPs will treat this automated reply as spam. If the automated VLS
message is not in your spam folder, please email<span> </span><a
href="mailto:info@cultstud.org" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">info@cultstud.org</a> for
more personal assistance.</p>
<p><strong>Privacy notice:</strong><span> </span>We will use the
address you email from to send you an invitation to the talk. The
personal details (email address) of those registered are kept for
the purpose of event registration only and will not be used for
any other purposes. The records will be kept for one month after
the registration.</p>
<p>The ACS is the Data Controller of the records collected and is
committed to protecting the rights of individuals in line with
Data Protection Legislation. Please submit any data subject rights
requests or address any complaints or suspected breaches to<span> </span><a
href="mailto:info@cultstud.org" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">info@cultstud.org</a></p>
<p> <br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gary Hall
Professor of Media
Director of the Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/">https://postdigitalcultures.org/about/</a>
Website: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.garyhall.info">http://www.garyhall.info</a>
Follow on Mastodon here: @garyhall@hcommons.social
Latest:
Blog posts: 'A Brief History of Writing: From Human Meaning to Pattern Recognition and Beyond', with Joanna Zylinska, The Writing Platform: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/">https://thewritingplatform.com/2024/05/a-brief-history-of-writing-from-human-meaning-to-computational-pattern-recognition-and-beyond/</a>
'Creative AI: Thinking Outside the Black Box', Media Theory: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/">https://mediatheoryjournal.org/2024/05/24/gary-hall-creative-ai-thinking-outside-the-black-box/</a>
Interview: (open access) ‘How To Be A Pirate: An Interview with Alexandra Elbakyan and Gary Hall by Holger Briel’: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/pb-assets/OA%20chapters/Briel_9781802076622_ch5_OA-1687267442.pdf">https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/pb-assets/OA%20chapters/Briel_9781802076622_ch5_OA-1687267442.pdf</a>
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