Registration ends 07.4.2026 at 23:59 h

This seminar examines politics at the interface: the sites where social, technical, and institutional systems meet, where subjects are formed, and where sometimes contestation can erupt. While the concept of the interface originates in the discourse of human–computer interaction as a point of contact between the computer and its human operator, media theory has long generalized it into a broader analytic. Here interfaces are more than screens or GUIs, but effects of technical mediation which can be found in all forms of media. The course extends this insight beyond digital technologies and new media to argue that interfaces permeate all aspects of contemporary life. From bureaucratic procedures and classroom syllabi to checkout counters and public transportation systems, interfacial interactions structure how we move, know, and act in the world. And yet, their very ubiquity allows them to recede from view, obfuscating their existence and masking their influence.

Drawing on scholarship from science and technology studies, media theory, anthropology, and new materialist thought, the course investigates what happens at the interface. More than passive touchpoints, interfaces actively shape subjectivity and power by organizing relations between humans, technologies, institutions, and materials. Together, we develop an analytical approach to social and political interfaces which allows us to identify critical sites of mediation: where knowledge is translated, information formatted, cultural scripts are rehearsed, norms are enforced, and behaviors are elicited or constrained. In short, the course explores how power comes to matter at the political interface and how interfacial effects make (and unmake) subjects. At the same time, the course asks to what extent interfaces may become sites of contestation rather than compliance. Thus, we interrogate interfacial materiality and how it conditions political effects and causes friction, allowing for refusal of subjectivation and even opening up pathways for alternative modes of engagement.

The course is organized into two parts. Part 1, Definitions and Frameworks, introduces key concepts, readings, and analytic tools for understanding interfaces as real-worlds things and analytical lenses. We will explore the technical, social, spatial, and political dimensions of different interfaces. Part 2, Actions and Behaviors, builds on this foundation to examine what happens at interfaces and what interfaces do, exploring processes such as technical mediation, translation, boundary work, and knowledge brokering. We will conclude with theorizing what interfaces do to our sense of identity and how they might turn us into specific subjects. Each part combines close observation, theoretical engagement, and guided readings to develop students’ ability to describe and analyze interfaces. Assignments and the term paper progressively move from detailed description to interpretive analysis, culminating in a sustained, theoretically grounded argument.

The seminar trains students to recognize and critically examine the interfaces they routinely inhabit, not just the ones that are readily apparent but also those whose very invisibility structures modern political life. Alongside close engagement with core literature, students will analyze interfaces through direct observation and lived experience. Attending to the ubiquity of social and political interfaces helps to locate politics not where it announces itself, but where it quietly shapes experiences: at the interfaces that format perception, discipline bodies, and make power feel inescapable. The course ultimately asks how these sites of mediation might be remade and what alternative logics of relationality or care could take their place. How might interfaces be reimagined, and what new forms of collective life could emerge from their reconfiguration?

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