Modern Culture and Media at Brown University

Last Spring, Professor Armstrong's Digital Worlding class was visited by Heidi Erwin, cartoonist and game designer on the New York Times Games team. Heidi led design for "Connections" and "Strands," which now have millions of daily players. She is a member of Forbes 30 under 30.

Heidi spoke to our students about the process of game development at NYT and provided a behind the scenes tour of the game development office in NYC.

MCM is seeking DUGs for the 2025-2026 year!

Our Departmental Undergraduate Group (DUG) are undergraduate student volunteers who act as leaders for the department, focusing on community building. DUGs organize events, like speaker panels, film screenings, and workshops, and build community through connecting with prospective and current students and faculty.

There are two DUG positions available. DUG nominees must be an MCM concentrator. Students may self-nominate themselves.

Application for nominations or self-nominations is in the link in our bio!

Get ready to dance, sweat, and celebrate at BODY, a full-sensory love letter to ecstasy, dance music, freedom, and expression, co-produced by the students in MCM 1205I: Q***r Nightlife and MCM 700E: Introduction to DJ Culture. b2b DJ sets featuring AB x starlight x Néz / Sinergy / Trampstamp / Theo Co x nbafungboy x Jace End x KidKhuzi / A V A x Joely Thinker, plus DJ Tristen Cole and madison moore. Electric drag performances by PVD babes Ladda Nurv, Nerukessa, Brae the Fallen, and Boston’s Masc Era.

Come as you are – or who you want to be.

RSVP in the link in our bio :)

Professors Gómez-Barris and Azoulay's "Metals, Mining and Jewelry: Making the World Anew" course concluded with a final project, where students were created a sequence of annotated photographs related to metals and minerals studied throughout the course. Throughout the course, each student focused their research on a metal or mineral, as a way to investigate the genre of documentary.

MCM Professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay was recently interviewed in ArtReview ahead of the release of her newest film One Thousand and One Jewels – Unlearning Imperial Plunder III. This new film is set to premiere on May 21 at the Decolonial Film Festival in Paris.

Read more in the link in our bio!

The National Museum of African American History and Culture will be screening "Earth, I Thank You: The Garden and Legacy of Anne Spencer" on May 4. This documentary was co-directed and filmed by MCM's Media and Technical Director and Lecturer, David Udris, alongside his brother Michael Udris. "Earth, I Thank You" explores the historic sanctuary of Harlem Renaissance poet, civil rights advocate, and gardener Anne Spencer.

Tomorrow is the start of the POP-UP Show at the Carriage Playhouse! Join us 4/30 from 3-6pm and 5/1 from 4-6:30pm for a pop-up exhibition of student work produced in Professor Giardina Papa’s courses: Art Films: Q***r Time and Space & Art, Gender, and Technology. Hope you can stop by!

TOMORROW! Join us for an Evening with Midland at Symposium Books on 4/28 at 6pm.

An Evening with Midland is a deep listening session of London-based DJ/producer’s 2024 debut album Fragments of Us, which Rolling Stone described as “a record that is an ode to the club, but intended to be listened to on the bus home from it.” Cruising the terrain of British and American gay subcultures, Fragments of Us merges ambient-electro grooves with an intergenerational history of q***r dance floors, merged with testimonies of loss and hope in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, featuring the voices of q***r artists like David Wojnarowicz, Marlon Riggs and Arthur Russell. This event will also feature Midland in conversation with MCM Assistant Professor madison moore.

Hosted by Symposium Books, Symposium Records, and the Department of Modern Culture and Media. Sponsored by the Malcolm S. Forbes Center for Culture and Media Studies.

RSVP is required. Link in our bio

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"It's Just a Matter of Time." Work by MCM Professor Tony Cokes is up at through August 18, 20245. It's a part of a larger group exhibition organized by and .

Photo credit:

As the academic year comes to a close, MCM celebrates the amazing work of our honors students with the MCM Thesis Showcase. Our exhibit will include peeks at the creative process and links to longer work in full. The Showcase starts with a live program at 4:00 PM in room 101 at 135 Thayer, followed by a reception in the MCM Carriage House. This is a great opportunity for juniors to preview thesis projects and for MCM to applaud our seniors.

Professor madison moore welcomed guest speaker Alyssa Nitchun, the Executive Director of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, to their Q***r Nightlife class. Alyssa spoke on art, fashion, nightlife, and community engagement as a part of the course's unit called "It's a Look: Fashion at Night." Thank you Alyssa for engaging with our students at Brown!

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Some changes are happening to the windows at 135 Thayer St.!

Did you know? 135 Thayer St. used to be home to a retail store called Hillhouse LTD. After the building was renovated in 2003, it became MCM's production facility, equipped with an editing suite, production studios, and film production equipment.

135 Thayer still maintains its historic storefront windows, which we are slowly developing into a curated visual space. There's more to come... Keep your eyes peeled for new things in the windows at 2315 Thayer!