Projects
725 Ponce
Lead Faculty: Gregory Zinman
This project is an outdoor monthly screening series of moving-image art on the façade of 725 Ponce. Screenings include a survey of contemporary Black video art; a historical selection of international dance films, films on global urbanism and public spaces; works made with GAN, AI and quantum computing methods; and a live projection-performance that makes use of the site’s state-of-the-art laser projector, projection mapping, and wireless personal audio via visitors’ smartphones.
African Studies Lecture Series
Lead Faculty: Brigitte Stepanov, Chris Ippolito
An annual speaker series has been established which centers on the African Studies Minor and focuses on inclusive pedagogy while elaborating on global issues pertaining to a diversity of peoples, languages, and cultures. The series fosters partnerships with the diverse community surrounding Georgia Tech and examines a broad set of questions concerning identity, gender, human rights, literary and cultural production through various media, health, social justice, immigration, and sustainability. Additional resources help to build a library collection of more diverse and inclusive materials.
CODE.ORG Partnership in Dual Language School
Lead Faculty: Alba Gutierrez
Description: coming soon
Global Health Humanities and Well-Being
Lead Faculty: Narin Hassan
This initiative at Georgia Tech highlights existing strengths and creates opportunities for research, curricular, and program development in this area. The four key areas of focus are:
- global medicine/health cultures and histories
- wellness, embodiment, and social justice
- arts, culture and well-being
- sustainability and global health
The initiative includes new courses and expanded program offerings for the MS Global Media and Cultures program and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication; increased research, teaching, speaker/film events and a potential conference or symposium; and stronger community and collaboration in this area for students and faculty.
Global Media Festival
Lead Faculty: Paul Alonso
An annual documentary film festival focused on sustainability across languages and cultures through film screenings, roundtables, class visits and curriculum design. This series is produced by the faculty from the School of Modern Language and various collaborators. The goals of this festival are to promote awareness of diverse viewpoints, needs, and strategies related to sustainability; create new connections with sustainability-focused community and organizations worldwide; develop K-12 and college-level educational modules; promote Georgia Tech’s strategic plan to educate “good global citizens”; promote understanding and pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals; and inspire attendees to critically engage with sustainability issues both globally and locally in order to better effect meaningful change.
The 2023 festival explores the theme “reduced inequalities within and among countries” (#10 of the UN sustainable development goals). It includes screenings of international films from Peru, France, China, Germany, Japan, and Brazil and Q&A with directors and discussants.
2023 Festival Highlights:
- “The Revolution and the Land” (Peru, 2019) — Director Gonzalo Benavente Secco
- “Making Pandemics” (France, 2021) — Director Marie-Monique Robin
- “Above the Drowning Sea” (China + Austria, 2017) — Director-Producer Rene Balcer & Producer Nicola Zavaglia
- “Ascension” (China, 2021) — Director Jessica Kingdon
- “One Day We Arrived in Japan” (Japan, 2017) — Directors Ana Paula Kojima Hirano and Aaron Litvin
- “Beyond This Backyard” (Brazil, 2021) — Director Alfredo Suppia
- “Tropic Ice” (Germany, 2010-2019) — Director Barbara Dombrowski
HIVEMIND
Lead Faculty: Amanda Weiss
A student and faculty-run digital magazine of global speculative fiction, featuring science fiction and fantasy on the themes of language, culture, and communication. Each issue centers on one unifying concept or theme of critical interest to writers of the speculative, whether it is a critique of science and technology or of culture and society. The content includes original short fiction, reprints, translations, interviews, and articles.
Current Issue: Tolkien in Asia [Nov 2023]
Past Issues: The Anthropocene, Japan x Future, The Future of Translation
Japanese Language & Culture through Manga
Lead Faculty: Kyoko Masuda
Manga is one of Japan’s best known cultural exports. Because it is a top 5 reason for learning Japanese and it shapes how the world sees Japan, it can be a good resource to learn Japanese culture and language. This initiative aims to focus on the genres aimed at girls and women to shed light on female protagonists and their language use in relation to ‘role language’. By creating manga corpora and distributing resources, frequently-used word lists can be developed so students of Japanese can learn about Japanese culture and language while enjoying reading Manga.
Kenya Study Abroad
Lead Faculty: Chris Ippolito & Michael Best
Description: coming soon
Korean Popular Media and Public Culture Wiki Project
Lead Faculty: Keung Yoon “Becky” Bae
As one of the Less Commonly Taught Languages (LCTL), the field of Korean studies is a relatively new initiative, and the Graduate program in Global Media and Culture (MS in GMC, Korean) was established in 2022 for Korean program at Georgia Tech. However, the necessary resources are extremely limited, and a curriculum is still being developed to effectively integrate cultural and media studies with language learning. With the support of the Digital Integrative Liberal Art Center (DILAC), an online curated media guide was created with information on modern Korean culture, mass media, and public discourses, which was integrated into GT Korean courses.
Latin American Environmental Humanities Lab
Lead Faculty: Germán Vergara & Miguel Rosas Buendia
A bilingual (English-Spanish) multimedia lab that combines humanistic inquiries and digital resources to explore relevant environmental issues and raise underrepresented voices from Latin America. The lab develops multimedia pieces (including podcasts, videos, stories, and visual collections in English and Spanish) that display and examine environmental-related issues, such as extractivism, urban change, race and indigeneity, Human Rights and environmental activisms, etc. For the academic year 2022-2023, two critical topics have been identified: energy and toxicity.
Linguistics for High School Students
Lead Faculty: Hongchen Wu & Kyoko Masuda
Linguistics is a scientific study of language, combining elements of natural science, social science, and humanities. In studying linguistics, students can exercise their analytical skills and improve their knowledge of core scientific principles while learning about the diversity of language and culture. This initiative includes hosting the annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, offering linguistics workshops and professional development opportunities, and developing introductory online linguistics teaching/learning toolkits.
Media Arts
Lead Faculty: Yanni Loukissas
Description: This proposal is part of Georgia Tech's Media Arts Initiative, which aims to create new academic programs at the intersection of arts and technology. A group of faculty and staff have been investigating the potential of "media arts" as a research and education area at Georgia Tech. Media Arts encompasses any form of creative research in the visual, literary, or performing arts that explores the expressive potential of existing and emerging technologies. This research can challenge traditional categories of art and influence future relationships between technology and culture.
Lost in the Stacks: the Research Library Rock'n'Roll Radio Show
Episode 557: Under the Media Bridge
The Media Bridge is a large-scale digital screen, imagined as a “pool” which is “fed” by streams descending the facade of the bridge joining the Price Gilbert and Crosland library buildings. The physical and digital design of the Bridge media is intended to create for the Library an outward facing public “discovery” venue, showcasing Georgia Tech’s culture of research, scholarship and creativity. To that end, the Media Bridge environment is used to its best advantage in showcasing short, visually compelling motion graphics that may lead to epiphanous discovery of Georgia Tech resources - including people, places and ideas.
Rwanda Study Abroad
Lead Faculty: Valerie Thomas
Launching a study abroad program in Rwanda that is a partnership between Georgia Tech and the Africa Center of Excellence in Energy for Sustainable Development (ACE-ESD) at the University of Rwanda. Within a network of reciprocal activities, a foundation can be built for meaningful engagement, interaction, and understanding between students at both institutions. By leveraging the potential of distance technologies, Georgia Tech can make use of its substantial technological and pedagogical capabilities to engage with Rwandan students, faculty, and institutions.
Speech Learning Toolkits
Lead Faculty: Hongchen Wu
This initiative applies technology, such as speech analysis software Praat, to develop accessible materials for language instructors and learners. Speech learning toolkits are developed so second language learners can pronounce words properly to have intelligible and comprehensible speech. Toolkits may include components such as tone, rhythm, intonation, prosody, accent and emotion. A website and user manual of the toolkits will be developed and tutorial sessions on how to use the toolkits will be offered.
Urban Media Fest
Lead Faculty: Laura Bier
Urban Media Fest aims to increase Atlanta’s access to compelling visual media, cultural performances, and culture producers from the Middle East, primarily, through an annual, virtual, themed film and performance festival and series of panel discussions around the United Nations sustainability goals.
Themes:
- 2023 - Women, Life and Freedom: New Political Imaginaries in Iran, (SDG #5: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment)
- 2022 - Afghan Voices, (SDG #16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions)
- 2021 - Gender and Sustainability in MENA and Women Change-Makers, (SDG #11: Sustainable Cities and Communities)
Voice+
Lead Faculty: Andrea Jonsson, Jan Uelzmann, and Stuart Goldberg
In today's digital age, the role of technology in shaping the music industry cannot be overstated. From the advent of digital recording techniques to the rise of streaming platforms, technology has revolutionized how music is created, consumed, and distributed. It has had both positive and negative implications and exploring these effects can provide valuable insights into the evolving landscape of the industry.
The Voice+ Project will host an interdisciplinary conference on these topics and implement an initiative to grow a new research cluster on the human voice internationally at different intersections with language, media, science, humanities, medicine, engineering and other fields in our technology-driven world. The initial conference is planned to take place November 14 - 15, 2023.