Events
Registration required even by CU/BC ID holders
Cosponsors
- Brown Institute for Media Innovation
- Center for Comparative Media
- Department of History
- Department of Political Science
- Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
- Institute of Latin American Studies
Organizer
- The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
Contact
email address [email protected]
Notes
- Free and open to the public
- Registration required.
The symposium Techno-Fascism: Past and Present will explore the convergence of far-right ideologies, authoritarian politics, and digital technologies. As algorithmic governance, social media influencers, and AI-driven propaganda reshape political power, this conference examines how digital tools are used to reinforce exclusionary nationalisms, gender and racial hierarchies, and anti-democratic regimes. Bringing together scholars and media practitioners, it offers a critical space to reflect on historical precedents, contemporary resistance, and the future of media, technology, and political struggle.
Co-organized by Society of Fellows Irina Kalinka and Daniela M. Traldi.
Keynote Speaker
Fred Turner is the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, where he studies the impact of new media technologies on American culture since World War II. He is the author of half a dozen books, including most recently, with Mary Beth Meehan, Seeing Silicon Valley: Life Inside a Fraying America. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a LeBoff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University, a Beaverbrook Visiting Scholar at McGill University, and twice a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Before becoming a professor, he worked as a journalist for ten years. He continues to write regularly for newspapers and magazines in America and Europe.
Please email [email protected] to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs. This event will be recorded. By being present, you consent to the SOF/Heyman using such video for promotional purposes.
Program
time10:00am EDT
Introductory Remarks
Paula Chakravartty
James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media Studies
New York University
Daniela M. Traldi
Society of Fellows
Columbia University
Irina Kalinka
Society of Fellows
Columbia University
time10:30am EDT
Roundtable 1: Platform Politics
This roundtable seeks to discuss how digital platforms, and the tech-corporations that run them, mediate politics; specifically, we will consider how these platforms enable and disable certain kinds of political action and subjectivity together with their role in perpetuating societal inequalities. In what ways do digital platforms reinforce authoritarianism—not because they are inherently authoritarian, but because they are designed, deployed, and governed in certain ways that centralize power, diminish accountability, and intensify control? Together, we will consider emerging trends such as techno-nationalism, the weaponization of digital platforms for radicalization and disinformation, disillusionment with democratic institutions, and a possible global reconfiguration of neoliberalism towards neoilliberalism.
Marc Steinberg
Professor of Cinema
Concordia University, Montréal
Rianka Singh
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies
York University
Nathan Schneider
Associate Professor of Media Studies
University of Colorado Boulder
Olivier Sylvain
Professor of Law
Fordham University
Moderator
Irina Kalinka
Fellow
The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
time12:00pm EDT
Lunch
time1:30pm EDT
Panel: Domestic Dystopias: Tradwives, the Manosphere, and the Digital Aesthetics of Fascism
This panel examines how far-right gender politics are repackaged and circulated through digital culture. From tradwife influencers who aestheticize submission and domesticity to manosphere networks that weaponize grievance, these formations mobilize nostalgia, irony, and algorithmic amplification to normalize authoritarian ideals. The panel explores how platform economies reward hyper-visible performances of gender hierarchy and racialized nationalism, transforming intimate life into political spectacle. Situating these trends within longer histories of fascist aesthetics and propaganda, participants analyze how digital media reconfigure domesticity, masculinity, and belonging—and how these narratives might be contested.
Adrienne Massanari
Associate Professor, School of Communication
American University
Kathleen Blee
Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of Pittsburgh
Quinn Slobodian
Professor of International History
Boston University
Becca Lewis
Assistant Professor, Comparative Media Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Moderator
Elizabeth Leake
Professor of Italian
Columbia University
time3:00pm EDT
Coffee Break
time3:15pm EDT
Roundtable 2: Media, Power, and Global Politics
This roundtable brings together perspectives on Latin America, India, and Russia to examine how media and digital technologies intersect with authoritarianism and far-right politics across past and present contexts. Speakers will offer historically grounded overviews of Hindu nationalism; Colombian and Venezuelan political dynamics within a broader regional framework; and Russian governance today, highlighting how media infrastructures have shaped ideological mobilization and/ or state power. The discussion will explore how digital platforms mediate relations between states and popular sectors, enable new forms of political organization, and challenge independent journalism under conditions of censorship and democratic erosion.
Mary Roldán
Dorothy Epstein Professor of Latin American History
CUNY Graduate Center
Andreina Torres Angarita
Assistant Professor of Urban Studies
Barnard College
Ilia Venyavkin
Program Director
Kronika—Russian Independent Media Archive, a joint initiative of Bard College and PEN America
Arvind Rajagopal
Professor of Media Studies
New York University
Moderator
Daniela Traldi
Fellow
The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
time4:45pm EDT
Coffee Break
time5:00pm EDT
Keynote
Fred Turner
Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication
Stanford University
Introduction
Lydia H. Liu
Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities
Columbia University