Event

“Mobilizing Hybrid Cities: Urban Mobilities and Mobile Locative Media"
10am – 12pm: Class
12 – 1pm: Lunch & Discussion

Mobile communication, locative media and “smart” infrastructures are changing the way we connect to other people, to information, and to places while on the move. As more people carry portable digital devices with them, and as the material infrastructures of transport, architecture, and public spaces are increasingly embedded with digital data, connectivity, and interactivity, new questions about (and possibilities for) urban space emerge. How are these mobile technologies transforming the distinction between (and relation between) private and public spaces, re-shaping urbanism and imaginaries of movement, and generating new practices and forms of life on the move? This class will examine (and experiment with) how the integration of mobile and locational technology into physical place has broadened the possibilities for the creation of new spaces of interaction, transformed diverse experiences of mobilities, and opened the disciplinary boundaries and methodologies used to understand the urban public arena.

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology and founding Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy at Drexel University. She is founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities; and Associate Editor of Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies. As co-editor, with John Urry, of Mobile Technologies of the City (Routledge, 2006), Tourism Mobilities (Routledge, 2004) and several key articles, she helped to establish the new interdisciplinary field of mobilities research. Her recent books are Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity (MIT Press, 2014); the co-edited Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (Routledge, 2014); and co-edited book Mobility and Locative Media (Routledge, 2014). She received her A.B. from Harvard University (1988), MA (1993) and PhD (1997) from the New School for Social Research. She held recent Visiting Fellowships at the Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University (2008-09); Media@McGill, Montreal, Canada (2009); Center for Mobility and Urban Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark (2009); and Penn Humanities Forum, University of Pennsylvania (2010-11).

Space is limited! mkrikorian@asc.upenn.edu mkrikorian@asc.upenn.edu.