About

James Hay is a Professor of Media & Cinema Studies and the Institute of Communications Research at the College of Media. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas-Austin (1982), a Degree Certificate from the University of Milan, Italy (1979), and a B.A. from the University of Texas-Austin (1975). His academic specialties include theory and studies of communication, media theory, television, communication/media technology, history and historiography of communication/media, cultural studies, media and space (including geography, architecture, urban studies), media & mobility, globalism and media/communication, media & power, cultural policy, citizenship studies, and studies of modernity. His research concerns a wide variety of media and contexts—from popular media of the 20th century such as cinema, television, telephony, and radio, to new media, media convergence, and technologies not usually considered media, like cars, buildings, clothes, garage doors, and refrigerators. His interdisciplinary analysis often draws from diverse theories, with much of his recent work intersecting studies of citizenship, governmentality, media/space, science studies, and cultural studies. Although much of his research focuses on the U.S., he has also explored global media networks and has conducted research related to Italy and Europe.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Law
• Genealogy
• History

Selected publications

• Virus government – A twenty-first-century genealogy of the ‘Dusk mask’ as biopolitical technology

  Cultural Studies · 2021 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Genealogy

  This essay provides a genealogy of the recent operations of ‘virus government’ in the United States which followed the early twenty-first-century governmental discourse about and technologization of Homeland Security and a War on Terror. Through the genealogy, the essay asks what has and has not changed during the last twenty years of governmental and biopolitical response to public safety and social security as a personal responsibility. To understand and rethink that history, the essay proposes the usefulness of considering the COVID mask as a technology of virus government and as a Liberal object.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Laurie Ouellette

  3 shared

• Louis Coetzee

  1 shared

• Kim Gush

  Council for Scientific and Industrial Research

  1 shared

• Nick Couldry

  1 shared

• Laurie Butgereit

  Nelson Mandela University

  1 shared

• Mark Andrejevic

  Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute

  1 shared

• J.S. Hugo

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• James W. Carey Faculty Fellow

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• Maria T. Grosse Perdekamph-141
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• Jeffrey S. Mooreh-130
• Shuming Nieh-128