Introduction

The goal of this volume is to explore the structures of feeling that underlie the twin registers of empowerment and discomfort that characterize our media age. The volume examines eight different contexts, an ensemble of porous and overlapping boundaries and scales that trace past and present context collapse. They focus on the city, an exemplary site of modernity. The volume includes architectural encounters juxtaposed with circulating images. Online chatting consorts with printed pamphlets and video games, social media protests with efforts to resist them in material space. In conclusion, the editors warmly extend their appreciation and thanks to a tireless and dedicated group of graduate student scholars at the Annenberg School - Emily LaDue, Corrina Laughlin, Yoel Roth, and Aaron Shapiro - who energetically invited, organized, presented, and tended to the participants in the day-long symposium that produced these papers.