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Associate Professor of Emerging Media
Phone: 843.953.6784
E-mail: parisid@cofc.edu
Personal Website: http://cofc.academia.edu/DavidParisi
Blog: http://hapticstudies.org/
Dr. Parisi joined the Department of Communication in 2009 after a postdoctoral fellowship in New Media Literacies at the Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and also holds an M.A. in Political Theory and a B.A. in Political Science, both from the University at Albany.
Parisi’s research investigates the interfaces between bodies and media technologies, with an emphasis on touch and the tactile dimensions of interacting with digital media. As a leader in the emerging field of Haptic Media Studies, Dr. Parisi’s scholarship urges media scholars to reflect on touch’s importance to new and old media alike. Through his contributions to the fields of media archaeology, Video Game Studies, Sensory Studies, cybersex, and media history, Parisi has advanced a haptocentric account of media that brings increased attention to this long-neglected mode of experience. The Haptic Media Studies special issue of New Media & Society that he recently coedited furthers this agenda, with an accompanying research blog showcasing recent scholarship in this area.
Parisi’s forthcoming book, Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), provides a macro-historical grounding for the contemporary emergence of touch-based computer interfaces. Opening with an examination of touch’s role in apprehending the mysteries of eighteenth century electrical machines, and closing with an analysis of new computing technologies that digitally synthesize haptic sensations, Archaeologies of Touch traces the iterative development of a technoscientific haptics across four centuries. Along the way, he shows how electric shock, experimental psychology, cybernetics, aesthetics, telemanipulation robotics, and virtual reality each participated in a reconceptualization of touch necessary for its integration into contemporary computing technologies.
During Dr. Parisi’s time at the college, he has developed and taught a range of courses that address the social and cultural status of digital media, including Media, Consumption, and the Senses; Media, Communication and Technocultures; Gaming 101: An Introduction to Video Games and the Study of Play; and Media Criticism. Parisi’s courses frequently involve hands-on engagements with both digital and predigital media interfaces, facilitated by examining artifacts from the John M. Rivers Communications Museum, journeying into game worlds, and experimenting with new human-computer interfaces.
Education
PhD, New York University, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
MA, University at Albany, Political Theory
BA, University at Albany, Political Science
Research Interests
- Media Archaeology
- Sensory Studies
- Digital media interfaces
- Touch and haptics
- History of Science and Medicine
- Critical Theory
- Game Studies
Links
Video Game Studies
http://gamestudies.org/1302/articles/parisi
Media history
Media archaeology
http://anm.sagepub.com/content/9/2/228.abstract
Sensory studies
Courses Taught
COMM 214: Media in the Digital Age
COMM 410: Analysis of Communication Practice: Media, Communication, and Technocultures
COMM 410: Analysis of Communication Practice: Media Criticism
COMM 480-481: Capstone in Communication: Media Technology and the History of the Senses
COMM 480-481: Capstone in Communication: Media, Consumption, and the Senses
COMM 514: Social Media
COMM 580: Video Games and Visual Culture
FYSE 111: First Year Seminar: Gaming 101: An Introduction to Video Games and the Study of Play
Publications
Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing (University of Minnesota Press, 2018).
“Editors’ Introduction: Haptic Media Studies,” New Media & Society 19, no. 10 (2017). Coauthored with Mark Paterson and Jason Edward Archer.
“Making Touch Analog: The Prospects and Perils of a Haptic Media Studies,” New Media & Society 19, no. 10 (2017). Coauthored with Jason Edward Archer.
“This orgasm machine nearly revolutionized sex as we know it,” Vice (August 29, 2017). [originally published as “RealTouching from a Distance,” Logic 1, no. 2 (July 2017)]
“Game Interfaces as Disabling Infrastructures,” Analog Game Studies IV, no. III (2017).
“Eine Technik der Medienberührung: Kinästhetische Displays und die Suche nach Computerhaptik” [A Technics of Media Touch: Kinesthetic Displays and the Quest to Engineer Computer Haptics], in Haptisch/Optisch II, Maske und Kothurn 2-3 (2016).