Reece Peck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Culture, where he teaches courses in journalism, marketing, and political communication. His expertise lies in television/digital video news, populist rhetoric, tabloid media, and partisan identity.His new research explores the “alt-right” and “alt-left” political channels that proliferated on YouTube during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles.

Eric is Assistant Professor, Librarian for Instructional Design and Education for Queens College Library (QCL). In this role, he develops resources and training for the Library Instruction Program and assists QCL librarians in integrating new pedagogical strategies into their teaching. As liaison to the School of Education, Eric provides research consultations and library instruction to students and faculty. He also contributes to the development of the education research and juvenile collections.

Brett L. Wisniewski holds a PhD in Classical Languages, Literature and Linguistics from New York University and has spent close to two decades teaching Ancient Greek and Latin Languages, Greek and Roman History, and Ethical Philosophy for secondary, undergraduate, and graduate students at various institutions.  His interests are in cultural history and cognitive aspects of multicultural religious and magical practices as well as applications of media theory to the same.  He also holds a JD from Brooklyn Law School and is currently an attorney in private practice in Manhattan. 

Lance Strate is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and has previously served as Department Chair, Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, and Program Director for the Professional Studies in New Media major he developed for Fordham’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies.  Dr. Strate’s scholarship ranges across a wide variety of topics within the field of communication and across many different disciplines. He is well known for his work in developing the field of media ecology, with special attention to the work of Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Neil Postman, as well as for his contributions to the study of new media and digital technologies, popular culture, and symbolic communication.

Jamie Cohen holds a PhD in Cultural and Media Studies specializing in memes and digital culture. He is an Assistant Professor at CUNY Queens College where he teaches and advise undergraduate and masters students.  He is also a faculty fellow of the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change and one of the co-founders of Digital Void, an internet literacies collective. Cohen's is the author of the recently publushed  book, Critical Internet Literacies: Reconsidering Creativity, Content, and Safety Online .

Jessica Mayberry founded Video Volunteers after spending a year training rural Indian women in filmmaking as a W.J. Clinton Fellow of the American India Foundation. Jessica is a TED Fellow. In 2009 she was recognized as an Architect of the Future by the Waldzell Institute of Austria, and in 2010, as an Outstanding Young Person by the Junior Chamber International Osaka. In 2011, she was one of the top fifty people shortlisted for the Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize, out of over 1000 applicants from 66 countries

Morry Kolman (WTTDOTM) is an award-winning independent multimedia artist and developer born and raised in NYC. His work has been featured internationally in media outlets such as GQ, The Guardian, Vice, Fast Company, The Verge, and art institutions such as the Museum of the Moving Image, Rhizome, and Gray Area. He creates interactive and entertaining ways to demystify, make legible, or upend the technological and cultural forces that affect us everyday. With a background in visual theory and science and technology studies, he is especially interested in the differences of perception and processing that separate humans from machines, and the potentials for expression, meaning, or subversion come out of that gap.

Amy Herzog is a media historian whose research spans a broad range of interdisciplinary subjects, including film, philosophy, popular music, gender and sexuality, urban history, pornography, gentrification, parasites, amusement parks, and dioramas. She is Professor of Media Studies at Queens College and on the faculty of Film Studies, Music, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has also taught as Visiting Associate Professor at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.

Herzog is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) and co-editor, with Carol Vernallis and John Richardson, of The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (Oxford, 2013). Her writing has appeared in journals such as Film Quarterly, Feminist Media Histories, and Millennium Film Journal, and she has presented her work at numerous venues including the Guggenheim Museum of New York, the New Museum, Dixon Place, New York Academy of Medicine, and The Morbid Anatomy Museum.

Big brands are the gods of today's world, and the algorithm is their gospel. Using the Cult + Marketing Continuum, Professor Einstein shows how brands, influencers, and conspiracy theorists tap into the same deceptive and seductive tactics used by spiritual charlatans to sell everything from Trader Joe's to crypto and even political leaders.

Jonathan Larsen is the creator of The Fucking News.  Jonathan has been innovating news media formats for decades, from creating Anderson Cooper 360° to helping transform MSNBC both at Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Up w/ Chris Hayes. He oversaw original reporting at TYT, the world's biggest online news program. He is now an independent journalist, with strong ideas about the future of news.

Molly White researches and writes critically about the cryptocurrency industry and technology more broadly in her independent publication, Citation Needed. White regularly appears in media and speaks at major conferences including South By Southwest and Web Summit. She has guest lectured at universities including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford; and advised policymakers and regulators globally.

Ebon Fisher received a BFA from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1982 and an MS in Visual Studies from MIT in 1986. He has taught media practice and theory at MIT, The Massachusetts College of Art, the New School University and the University of Iowa. 

In 1998 Fisher created a new digital arts program at the University of Iowa called Digital Worlds and returned to New York in 2001 to help establish the digital arts at Hunter College. Fisher has instigated a variety of exhibitions and forums, including a salon for 600 emerging artists in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and an exhibit at Eastern Connecticut State University linking the rap propaganda of Public Enemy with the soundbites of Negativland and the Riot Grrrl movement.

Alissa Quart is the author of five acclaimed books of nonfiction including Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco, 2023), Squeezed (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2018), Republic of Outsiders (The New Press, 2013), Hothouse Kids (Penguin Press, 2006), and Branded (Basic Books, 2004). She is the Executive Director of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and is also the author of two books of poetry, Thoughts and Prayers and Monetized. She has written for many publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and TIME. Her honors include an Emmy, an SPJ award, and received a Nieman fellowship. 

April 30 - 5pm: Steven Jeltsch and Ashley Heard
May 7 - 4:30pm: Manuela Quiceno, Nelson Tang, and Steffany Leung Yu

May 14 - 4:30pm: Vaishali Patra, Zihan Xu, Jeita Maharjan