Papers by Mikki Kressbach
Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, 2022
One of the greatest challenges in teaching media today is the emphasis on ephemeral, individual, ... more One of the greatest challenges in teaching media today is the emphasis on ephemeral, individual, and increasingly haptic experiences with emerging technologies. From the fleeting Snapchat and Instagram “stories” that disappear in twenty-four hours, to swiping, sorting, and “liking” the endless stream of content on social media, new media platforms and technologies cannot be divorced from the experiences they generate. Pinning down the “text” of these micro-encounters and interactions is particularly difficult in the space of the humanities classroom. How do you close read a #hashtag? How do you perform visual analysis on YouTube’s auto-play feature? While the sheer variety and speed of emerging technologies necessitate continued adaptation for instructors, this article offers an example of how phenomenological description can be used to ground classroom discussions of ephemeral media.
In the spring of 2019, with the support of the Film Studies program at Michigan State University, students in my “Ordinary Media” course received a Fitbit to use throughout the semester. Students used these devices over the course of fifteen weeks to complete a series of assignments on topics ranging from data privacy to technology and embodiment. This article focuses on the phenomenological description assignment and provides reflections from students that assess its learning outcomes.
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Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 2022
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Film Quarterly, 2022
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This dissertation examines the recent archive of popular media documenting the spread of emergent... more This dissertation examines the recent archive of popular media documenting the spread of emergent outbreaks. As products of globalization, emergent infectious diseases (EID) arise from the shifting environmental conditions, transportation networks and social practices of an interconnected world. In an effort to represent these complex networked phenomena, popular films, television, and video games have turned to the rhetoric of science and medicine. Coupling medium-specific analysis with historical and anthropological work on science and medicine, I track the way digital medial communicate EID outbreaks. Rather than focusing on scientific or medical content, I analyze the intersection of media forms and scientific paradigms that produce epistemological impressions—the sense of science—that help us see, hear, and feel an emergent outbreak. Each chapter interrogates a representational strategy to track the way popular media articulate the scale, presence, containment, and transmission of EIDs. The first chapter draws on scholarship on disease mapping to analyze how recent films and video games use maps to communicate the geographic distribution of an outbreak and produces the overwhelming sense of viral omnipresence. The second chapter analyzes the representational structures that surround microscopic images on screen to demonstrate how these images are used to guide the viewer across the disparate visual and geographic scales of an emergent outbreak. The third chapter turns to histories of sonar and ultrasound to interrogate how recent horror films use sound mixing and audiovisualization techniques to express the spatial confinement of quarantine and unstoppable viral dissemination. The final chapter contextualizes the reflexive style of found footage horror in the “mechanical objectivity” paradigm to demonstrate how the genre encourages viewers to engage with the film as visual evidence that in turn produces a sense of viral omnipresence. By attending to acute scientific structures, all chapter access the representational forms and scientific logic that allow us to sense the world, and indeed, make sense of the world in its contemporary networked condition.
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Television & New Media
Menstrual tracking and fertility apps have gained popularity in recent years, often sold as tools... more Menstrual tracking and fertility apps have gained popularity in recent years, often sold as tools for self-empowerment through self-knowledge. While critics tend to focus on the gendered design of these apps, this article examines the self-tracking and analytic features of the popular apps, Flo and Clue, to argue that menstrual tracking and fertility apps reinforce discourses of menstrual concealment and bodily alienation. Beginning with an analysis of the daily log interface, the author situates the humorous icons in discourses of menstrual jokes and euphemisms to show how these apps participate in the suppression of menstruation. The author then turns to the analytics features to demonstrate how these apps encourage users to understand their lives through their menstrual cycle. The article ends with a call for collaborations between humanists, scientists, and designers to revise and mobilize these apps to explore under-explored issues of sexual and reproductive health.
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New Review of Film and Television Studies
Abstract Breathing apps and wearables are designed to encourage mindfulness practice by quantifyi... more Abstract Breathing apps and wearables are designed to encourage mindfulness practice by quantifying breathing in a bid to improve mental and physical health. Consequently, they can be read as extensions of the self-quantification and the wellness discourse addressed in the ideology critique of neoliberalism. This article examines the way breathing apps and wearables illustrate changing conceptions of health with respect to mobile technology and wellness, as well as how they may encourage experiences that push back on the ideology critique of neoliberalism. Situating these technologies in histories of scientific research on mindfulness, the author traces the technological and evidentiary structures that reinforce the authority of breathing apps and wearables and, indeed, wellness discourse today. While the emphasis on quantification in ideology critique laments the loss of human experience, the article argues, by attending to the phenomenology of these apps and wearables, that self-quantification does not necessarily render abstract, or subsume under productivity imperatives, the encounter with one’s body. Through an account of Apple Watch’s Breathe app that mobilizes theories of health in Medical Phenomenology, the article contends that breathing apps and wearables illustrate how quantitative methods can facilitate the qualitative, embodied experience of health.
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Film Criticism
Spatialized disease management, in the form of quarantine or hospitalization, has sonic effects;2... more Spatialized disease management, in the form of quarantine or hospitalization, has sonic effects;28 Days Later references the visual, sonic, and social implications of these management strategies by phenomenologically situating the viewer in the midst of an urban quarantine [4] In these cases, breaking through the background noise is means to signify life and solidarity: a reminder of the collective efforts to preserve life in the midst of a public health crisis [9] Drawing upon this work, Tom Rice’s study of hospital soundscapes shows how the oppressive silence of the recovery wings, the crackle of the hospital intercom, and the echoing steps of doctors and nurses, all impact the individual’s perception of space, authority, and sense of patienthood King, Laura, “’Coronavirus Coup?’ As outbreak grows, authoritarians around the world seize the moment,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2020, https://www latimes com/world-nation/story/2020-03-31/as-coronavirus-tide-rises-authoritarians-around-the-world-seize-the-moment 8
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Film Criticism, 2020
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Television and New Media, 2019
Menstrual tracking and fertility apps have gained popularity in recent years, often sold as tools... more Menstrual tracking and fertility apps have gained popularity in recent years, often sold as tools for self-empowerment through self-knowledge. While critics tend to focus on the gendered design of these apps, this article examines the self-tracking and analytic features of the popular apps, Flo and Clue, to argue that menstrual tracking and fertility apps reinforce discourses of menstrual concealment and bodily alienation. Beginning with an analysis of the daily log interface, the author situates the humorous icons in discourses of menstrual jokes and euphemisms to show how these apps participate in the suppression of menstruation. The author then turns to the analytics features to demonstrate how these apps encourage users to understand their lives through their menstrual cycle. The article ends with a call for collaborations between humanists, scientists, and designers to revise and mobilize these apps to explore under-explored issues of sexual and reproductive health.
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The Cine-Files, 2019
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Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2018
This dissertation examines the recent archive of popular media documenting the spread of emergent... more This dissertation examines the recent archive of popular media documenting the spread of emergent outbreaks. As products of globalization, emergent infectious diseases (EID) arise from the shifting environmental conditions, transportation networks and social practices of an interconnected world. In an effort to represent these complex networked phenomena, popular films, television, and video games have turned to the rhetoric of science and medicine. Coupling medium-specific analysis with historical and anthropological work on science and medicine, I track the way digital medial communicate EID outbreaks. Rather than focusing on scientific or medical content, I analyze the intersection of media forms and scientific paradigms that produce epistemological impressions—the sense of science—that help us see, hear, and feel an emergent outbreak.
Each chapter interrogates a representational strategy to track the way popular media articulate the scale, presence, containment, and transmission of EIDs. The first chapter draws on scholarship on disease mapping to analyze how recent films and video games use maps to communicate the geographic distribution of an outbreak and produces the overwhelming sense of viral omnipresence. The second chapter analyzes the representational structures that surround microscopic images on screen to demonstrate how these images are used to guide the viewer across the disparate visual and geographic scales of an emergent outbreak. The third chapter turns to histories of sonar and ultrasound to interrogate how recent horror films use sound mixing and audiovisualization techniques to express the spatial confinement of quarantine and unstoppable viral dissemination. The final chapter contextualizes the reflexive style of found footage horror in the “mechanical objectivity” paradigm to demonstrate how the genre encourages viewers to engage with the film as visual evidence that in turn produces a sense of viral omnipresence. By attending to acute scientific structures, all chapter access the representational forms and scientific logic that allow us to sense the world, and indeed, make sense of the world in its contemporary networked condition.
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Breathing apps and wearables are designed to encourage mindfulness practice by quantifying breath... more Breathing apps and wearables are designed to encourage mindfulness practice by quantifying breathing in a bid to improve mental and physical health. Consequently, they can be read as extensions of the self-quantification and the
wellness discourse addressed in the ideology critique of neoliberalism. This article examines the way breathing apps and wearables illustrate changing conceptions of health with respect to mobile technology and wellness, as well as how they may encourage experiences that push back on the ideology critique of neoliberalism. Situating these technologies in histories of scientific research on mindfulness, the author traces the technological and evidentiary structures that reinforce the authority of breathing apps and wearables and, indeed, wellness discourse today. While the emphasis on quantification in ideology critique laments the loss of human experience, the article argues, by attending to the phenomenology of these apps and wearables, that self-quantification does not necessarily render abstract, or subsume under productivity imperatives, the encounter with one’s body. Through an account of Apple Watch’s Breathe app that mobilizes theories of health in Medical Phenomenology, the article contends that breathing apps and wearables illustrate how quantitative methods can facilitate the qualitative, embodied experience of health.
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Teaching Documents by Mikki Kressbach
This course examines the intersection of the horror genre and reproductive health. Since the 1970... more This course examines the intersection of the horror genre and reproductive health. Since the 1970s and 80s, feminist film scholars have drawn upon the tools of psychoanalysis and ideology critique to examine the representation of women's bodies in mainstream cinema, particularly the increasingly graphic depictions of sex and violence found in the horror genre. Out of this body of work, Barbara Creed developed the concept of the "monstrous feminine" to describe how the genre figures the sexual and reproductive body as monstrous. Since then, the term has been taken up by feminist health scholars to describe both medical and popular understandings of the reproductive body. This course will explore the intersection of these two bodies of work by focusing on how the central affects of the horror genre-disgust, abjection, the fantastic, and uncanny-become attached to critical stages of sexual and reproductive development. Moving through puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, and motherhood, the course will pair films with works of feminist health studies to examine how the genre reinforces gendered understandings of the body, health, and sexuality.
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Course Description: This course examines the depiction of women's bodies in modern horror films w... more Course Description: This course examines the depiction of women's bodies in modern horror films with a focus on the genre's intersection with issues of female sexual and reproductive health. Since the 1970s and 80s, feminist film scholars have drawn upon the tools of psychoanalysis and ideology critique to examine the representation of women's bodies in mainstream cinema, particularly the increasingly graphic depictions of sex and violence found in the horror genre. In response to the popularity of contemporaneous subgeneres, like the slasher film or possession narrative, feminist film scholars have theorized how horror articulates and subverts dominant codes of femininity, power, and spectatorship. Our course beings with early canonical works on horror and gender, which will establish the central representational tropes of the genre and classic theorizations of women's bodies on screen. We will then build upon this work by turning to the viewing experience: the affects of disgust, abjection, terror, and shock, integral to the genre's namesake. With a focus on affect and experience, we will examine how women's bodies are figured at various stages of reproductive and sexual development, moving through puberty, sexual desire and promiscuity, to pregnancy, and motherhood. Throughout, we will interrogate the way horror's generic tropes and affects shape our perception of women's health and hygiene along with the broader social and moral implications of our own bodily reactions to women's bodies on screen. Films include: The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Carrie, The Hunger, Raw, It Follows, and The Babadook. Assignments: 30% Participation: Participation includes attending all of our class sessions and screenings and engaging in our class discussion. Our discussions will be central to the course, and as such students are expected to show up to class prepared to discuss the films and readings. If you have trouble speaking in class, please see me to find alternative accommodations. Attendance: Students are permitted to miss 2 classes without impacting their final grade. For every additional absence, I will deduct 1% from your overall participation grade. 10% Group Presentation (Thursday, September 27): Each group will be assigned a theoretical text on affect that has been highly influential in horror scholarship. Students will be responsible for a 15 minute presentation and 5 minute discussion on their reading. The presentation should include a summary of the text, including quotations of relevant passages, and an example from one or more of
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This course explores affinities between new media forms and technologies (e.g., digital cinema, v... more This course explores affinities between new media forms and technologies (e.g., digital cinema, video games, streamable television, fitness trackers, big data) and contemporary science and medicine (e.g., infectious disease, noninvasive surgical procedures, drug addiction treatment). How do new media represent scientific processes and expertise? What are the particular habits and patterns produces by new media technologies? And how do they affect medical research methods and practice? Readings and screenings draw from across the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and range from scholarly works to news articles, blog posts, videos, and mobile apps. Students will be asked to analyze, operate, and play with scientific new media. The variety of activities will showcase the many ways in which new media respond to and shape scientific and medical research—and vice-versa.
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Book Reviews by Mikki Kressbach
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Papers by Mikki Kressbach
In the spring of 2019, with the support of the Film Studies program at Michigan State University, students in my “Ordinary Media” course received a Fitbit to use throughout the semester. Students used these devices over the course of fifteen weeks to complete a series of assignments on topics ranging from data privacy to technology and embodiment. This article focuses on the phenomenological description assignment and provides reflections from students that assess its learning outcomes.
Each chapter interrogates a representational strategy to track the way popular media articulate the scale, presence, containment, and transmission of EIDs. The first chapter draws on scholarship on disease mapping to analyze how recent films and video games use maps to communicate the geographic distribution of an outbreak and produces the overwhelming sense of viral omnipresence. The second chapter analyzes the representational structures that surround microscopic images on screen to demonstrate how these images are used to guide the viewer across the disparate visual and geographic scales of an emergent outbreak. The third chapter turns to histories of sonar and ultrasound to interrogate how recent horror films use sound mixing and audiovisualization techniques to express the spatial confinement of quarantine and unstoppable viral dissemination. The final chapter contextualizes the reflexive style of found footage horror in the “mechanical objectivity” paradigm to demonstrate how the genre encourages viewers to engage with the film as visual evidence that in turn produces a sense of viral omnipresence. By attending to acute scientific structures, all chapter access the representational forms and scientific logic that allow us to sense the world, and indeed, make sense of the world in its contemporary networked condition.
wellness discourse addressed in the ideology critique of neoliberalism. This article examines the way breathing apps and wearables illustrate changing conceptions of health with respect to mobile technology and wellness, as well as how they may encourage experiences that push back on the ideology critique of neoliberalism. Situating these technologies in histories of scientific research on mindfulness, the author traces the technological and evidentiary structures that reinforce the authority of breathing apps and wearables and, indeed, wellness discourse today. While the emphasis on quantification in ideology critique laments the loss of human experience, the article argues, by attending to the phenomenology of these apps and wearables, that self-quantification does not necessarily render abstract, or subsume under productivity imperatives, the encounter with one’s body. Through an account of Apple Watch’s Breathe app that mobilizes theories of health in Medical Phenomenology, the article contends that breathing apps and wearables illustrate how quantitative methods can facilitate the qualitative, embodied experience of health.
Teaching Documents by Mikki Kressbach
Book Reviews by Mikki Kressbach
In the spring of 2019, with the support of the Film Studies program at Michigan State University, students in my “Ordinary Media” course received a Fitbit to use throughout the semester. Students used these devices over the course of fifteen weeks to complete a series of assignments on topics ranging from data privacy to technology and embodiment. This article focuses on the phenomenological description assignment and provides reflections from students that assess its learning outcomes.
Each chapter interrogates a representational strategy to track the way popular media articulate the scale, presence, containment, and transmission of EIDs. The first chapter draws on scholarship on disease mapping to analyze how recent films and video games use maps to communicate the geographic distribution of an outbreak and produces the overwhelming sense of viral omnipresence. The second chapter analyzes the representational structures that surround microscopic images on screen to demonstrate how these images are used to guide the viewer across the disparate visual and geographic scales of an emergent outbreak. The third chapter turns to histories of sonar and ultrasound to interrogate how recent horror films use sound mixing and audiovisualization techniques to express the spatial confinement of quarantine and unstoppable viral dissemination. The final chapter contextualizes the reflexive style of found footage horror in the “mechanical objectivity” paradigm to demonstrate how the genre encourages viewers to engage with the film as visual evidence that in turn produces a sense of viral omnipresence. By attending to acute scientific structures, all chapter access the representational forms and scientific logic that allow us to sense the world, and indeed, make sense of the world in its contemporary networked condition.
wellness discourse addressed in the ideology critique of neoliberalism. This article examines the way breathing apps and wearables illustrate changing conceptions of health with respect to mobile technology and wellness, as well as how they may encourage experiences that push back on the ideology critique of neoliberalism. Situating these technologies in histories of scientific research on mindfulness, the author traces the technological and evidentiary structures that reinforce the authority of breathing apps and wearables and, indeed, wellness discourse today. While the emphasis on quantification in ideology critique laments the loss of human experience, the article argues, by attending to the phenomenology of these apps and wearables, that self-quantification does not necessarily render abstract, or subsume under productivity imperatives, the encounter with one’s body. Through an account of Apple Watch’s Breathe app that mobilizes theories of health in Medical Phenomenology, the article contends that breathing apps and wearables illustrate how quantitative methods can facilitate the qualitative, embodied experience of health.