LeBoff Visiting Scholars Program

The LeBoff Visiting Scholars Program brings annually to our department prominent scholars, writers, and creative thinkers in media, communication, and cultural studies. It is sponsored through the generous support of alumnus Gerald LeBoff and his wife Phyllis. Scholars are nominated by faculty in the department; final selection is made yearly with input from Media, Culture, and Communication PhD students.

The program engages and honors extraordinary individuals who come to NYU Steinhardt to offer special graduate courses and public lectures. 

Below is a list of recent visitors and the graduate seminars they've offered:

SPRING 2025
Karen Tongson, University of Southern California

SPRING 2024
Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto 
Seminar: Logistics in the Flesh: Circulation, Infrastructure, Coloniality

SPRING 2023
Kara Keeling, University of Southern California
Seminar: Blackness, Technology, and Racial Capitalism

SPRING 2022
Kavita Philip, University of British Columbia
Seminar: The Pirate Function

SPRING 2021
Simone Brown, University of Texas, Austin
Seminar: Surveillance: Art, Theory and Methods

SPRING 2019
Lisa Nakamura, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Seminar: Empathy, Labor, and Play: Woman of Color Critique and Digital Media

SPRING 2018
Lev Manovich, Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Seminar: Studying Culture and Media in the Age of Big Data

SPRING 2017
Fred Moten, NYU
Seminar: Hesitant Sociology: Blackness and Poetry

SPRING 2016
Fred Turner, Stanford
Seminar: Cybernetics and its Histories

SPRING 2015
Bernhard Siegert, Bauhaus University Weimar
Seminar: Cultural Techniques

SPRING 2014
Wendy Chun, Simon Fraser University
Seminar: Habitual New Media

SPRING 2013
Jonathan Sterne, McGill University
Seminar: Instruments, Instrumentalities

SPRING 2012
Lauren Berlant, University of Chicago
Seminar: Affects of the Common

Header Image: Lisa Nakamura / Jonathan Sterne / Fred Moten