Attention Activism 101

Attention is the touchstone problem of our age. Over the last twenty years, an unprecedented concentration of technical and financial power has successfully monetized human attention. The harms of this new system — in effect, the "fracking" of our most intimate selves — are familiar to all. Less widely understood is the nature of the movement that has emerged to fight back against this historic injustice: attention activism.

We will survey the intellectual and practical foundations of the nascent attention activism movement. We'll draw on texts by William James, Natasha Dow Schull, and Anna Tsing among others. What do the extractive incursions of the Attention Economy mean for shared life in the twenty-first century — and how are communities of activists already working to resist them?

Attention Activism 101 is a three-part online series. Each session will build off the other, and we recommend attending each session. One registration covers access to all three days of scheduled events. Attendance is limited to 30 registrants. 

Date/time:
Tuesday, January 27
Tuesday, February 3
Tuesday, February 10
4 – 5:15 p.m. MST

This course is in partnership with the with The Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) and in advance of D. Graham Burnett’s Humanities Institute Distinguished Lecture. 

For a full listing of Humanities Institute events, visit our events page.