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MIT Comparative Media Studies celebrates 10th anniversary

With a day-long symposium, CMS marked 10 years of leading higher education's move toward applied humanities.
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Image: Andrew Whitacre

Faculty, alumni and special guests gathered on Friday, April 23, at MIT's Media Lab to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking Comparative Media Studies program.

Deborah Fitzgerald, dean of MIT's School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, opened the symposium with a statement of strong support for the program, which was using the event in particular to allow alumni to offer input on CMS's future following last year's departure of founding director Henry Jenkins.

Panelists discussed the role CMS has played in transforming humanities education, particularly through the concept of "applied humanities": ensuring that all research done at CMS has a real-world purpose and is tested outside of the walls of the academy.

Podcasts of the symposium panels are available at cms.mit.edu as well as talks by Dean Fitzgerald and CMS Director William Uricchio.

The CMS staff also took the anniversary as an opportunity to publish a lush history of the program, available both online and in print by request: CMS 10th Anniversary publication



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