Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 5d

My friend @rorshock.bsky.social — CS undergrad, humanities PhD — has built a brilliant prgm @ The New School: “Code as a Liberal Art” nurtures “code + computational thinking as tools for critical + creative inquiry,” and as forces for 👍+👎 social change. His spring Software Engineering class looks 🌟

Software Engineering Applications

Software Engineering Applications Spring 2026 Code as a Liberal Art, Eugene Lang College, The New School This course gives students the opportunity to experience and critically examine the software e...

docs.google.com

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Andy K Stuhl @akstuhl.bsky.social · Aug 25

Tomorrow I start as an Asst Prof in Communication, Media and Arts at Seton Hall. Last spring, news that this opportunity would pan out coincided very closely with the passing of my advisor, Jonathan Sterne. Some overdue reflections on that, mostly on Jonathan, here: akstuhl.net/blog/2025-08...

Jonathan Sterne; romantic pragmatism; job news

When my beloved PhD advisor, Jonathan Sterne, entered hospice care this past March, waves of appreciation and then mourning rippled out from the many communi...

akstuhl.net

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ali alkhatib @ali-alkhatib.com · Aug 26

i did literally nothing to bring this together except lend them an essay that i already wrote, but i'm totally geeking out about this zine.

just go look at the collection of art in the first couple of pages, i'm so enthralled right now, i love it. i desperately want to buy a physical copy.

AI_Anxiety

AI_AnxietyProduced by Jordi Viader Guerrero, Dmitry Muravyov, Erica Gargaglione, Aarón Moreno Inglés, Mariana Fernández Mora, and Orestis KollyrisWith contributions by Dmitry Muravyov, Jord

networkcultures.org

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Burc Kostem @bkostem.bsky.social · Aug 7

When we lost Jonathan Sterne last spring I had made this list of Jonathanisms. Now that I'm sitting down to prep syllabi, I thought of him a bit this morning. Anyway, sharing it here too. bonpourlorient.tumblr.com/post/7783226...

bonpourlorient.tumblr.com

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Jul 27

‘Weren’t all Black people owed something for the dispossession that accumulated over generations? Or was the university’s primary function only to pursue knowledge about the history that gave rise to these questions?’

Vincent Brown reviews ‘Yale and Slavery’: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Vincent Brown · What Universities Owe

When challenged to justify past investment in slavery – or current investments in, say, fossil fuel extraction or arms...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Nina Metz @ninametz.bsky.social · Mar 25

“No Other Land” Co-Director Hamdan Ballal Freed, Says Yuval Abraham

Via Deadline

‘No Other Land’ Co-Director Hamdan Ballal Freed, Says Yuval Abraham

The filmmaker had reportedly been attacked by settlers and detained by Israeli police, sparking international outcry.

deadline.com

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London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Mar 24

‘No populism, right or left, has so far produced a powerful remedy for the ills it denounces. Programmatically, the contemporary opponents of neoliberalism are still for the most part whistling in the dark.’

New: Perry Anderson on neoliberalism after the crash. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Perry Anderson · Regime Change in the West?

Where amid this turmoil does neoliberalism stand? In emergency conditions it has been forced to take measures –...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Haunted Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · Mar 21

like this is how to study technology

Though Bourdieu does not focus on this technological dimension of habitus, his innovation of the concept makes it all the more useful for a social theory of technology. As I will argue, technologies are essentially subsets of habitus – they are organized forms of movement. In this way, technologies are theoretically unexceptional.They are very similar to other ways in which we organize social practice through the habitus.This alternative to approaches that exceptionalize technology allows us to do away with the yawning gap between ‘technology’ and ‘society’ that has animated so many social theories of technology.

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Ken Wissoker @kwissoker.bsky.social · Mar 21

Here's a more fulsome post from the Press. So sad.
Farewell to Jonathan Sterne dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/f...

Farewell to Jonathan Sterne

We are very sad to learn of the death of communication scholar Jonathan Sterne, after a long battle with cancer. He was 54 years old. Sterne was James McGill Professor of Culture and Technology at …

dukeupress.wordpress.com

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 21

From Carrie

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 21

Jonathan passed away quietly last night in hospice care. He left comfortably in his sleep, with Carrie by his side.

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 19

Thanks for sharing all of this Eric! it feels kinda silly in hindsight, but I think your interview in Pitchfork might be the first place I encountered Jonathan's work and read the MP3 book so many years ago. lifechanging in many quite literal ways

Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 19

Thanks Emma, exited to see you too after all these years!

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James Hodges @jameshodges.net · Mar 17

🗣️ Great news! The panel I co-organized with @robarcand.bsky.social, Marie Lecuyer, Owen Stewart-Robinson, and @hnnht.bsky.social has been accepted to 4S 2025 in Seattle 🥳

🗣️ Catch us this September, speaking on "Oceans of Data: Knowledge Production in Aquatic Environments" 🐬

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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · Mar 13

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jonathan for the past 15 years or so, and I’ve admired + aimed to emulate his creativity, kindness, and generosity for my entire career. i was honored to be asked to extol his virtues in recommendation letters over the past several years. Jonathan deserves all the 🏆

Pennsylvania. Since my days as a junior faculty member, Jonathan Sterne has been widely known as both a scholarly giant and a mensch: for decades he's produced field-changing research; taught innovative, provocative classes and widely shared their syllabi; and mentored colleagues and students around the world through the professional development materials on his website. Our shared interests in sound and the materiality of media have given us many opportunities, particularly over the past decade, to engage with and support one another's work and to serve together on conference panels and advisory boards. I have benefitted, on numerous occasions, from his intellectual creativity and generosity - and I know countless others whose can say the same. Jonathan Sterne truly embodies the spirit of "fellowship," and I'm honored to offer my heartiest, most enthusiastic endorsement of his application.
Professor Sterne's The Audible Past: The Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (2003) "rescored" sound studies. It's tuned the way scholars and practitioners in media and communication studies, science and technology studies, musicology, art history, creative technology, and myriad other fields, think about and create sound. Translated into multiple languages and honored with the National Communication Association's Book of the Year Award, the book has resonated globally. His edited collection, The Sound Studies Reader, then pulled together a vibrant ensemble of scholars whose work builds upon the disciplinary foundations he helped to create. MP3: The Meaning of a Format (2012) proved similarly germinal in format studies - a field that again bridges multiple disciplines, from information science to engineering to literary studies - and was celebrated by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. His most recent Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment, winner of the Gertrude J.
Robinson Book Prize, integrates media studies and critical disability studies, the…

practice. He's (co-)edited several collections that draw together the work of senior and junior scholars representing diverse identities and abilities. His current book project, which addresses pressing concerns regarding sound and artificial intelligence, and which will soon be under contract with Duke University Press, is co-authored with several advisees and students. He's organized conference panels that are similarly inclusive. He's co-authored countless articles with junior colleagues. And he's served on over 100 dissertation committees across the disciplines. Through his work as co-editor of Duke University Press's highly regarded Sign, Storage, Transmission book series, Professor Sterne has helped to shape several award-winning books and launched the careers of junior scholars. He's served on awards committees and program reviews, supporting colleagues and students at institutions far beyond his own. And for decades he's freely shared dozens of inventive syllabi on his website; these courses have certainly informed curriculum development in countless communication and media studies programs around the world - including my own.
Professor Sterne's mentorship and pedagogy have made invaluable contributions to communication studies, sound studies, science and technology studies, musicology, and to the range of additional disciplines his work engages. Yet Jonathan's contribution is more than intellectual and creative; it's also ethical. Jonathan has both formally and informally advised hundreds, if not thousands, of students and colleagues around the world. I offer myself as one example: when I, as a junior scholar who spent much of her early career carrying a heavy administrative load, enjoyed a research fellowship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Jonathan and his partner, Professor Carrie Rentschler, invited me over for dinner on a few occasions and later attended my public lecture at the Centre.
These two senior scholars, who had no obligat…

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 13

Thanks Shannon for the kind words❤️

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Mar 13

Earlier today, a group of students received word that Jonathan Sterne entered hospice care yesterday following his ongoing battle with cancer. I think there's a few of his colleagues and former students that follow me on here (he's also currently my phd advisor), more info will be coming soon

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Feb 20

what began as essentially a hostile takeover in its most debased form is now deploying state power to ostensibly force advertisers to continue to pay, true sign of the times www.wsj.com/business/med...

Exclusive | X Hinted at Possible Deal Trouble in Talks With Ad Giant to Increase Spending

Interpublic Group recently signed an advertising agreement with the social-media platform; other agencies are also in negotiations.

www.wsj.com

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Rob @robarcand.bsky.social · Apr 13

never a better time to reconnect with posting

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