Darin Barney

Darin Barney (he/him) is the Grierson Chair in Communication Studies and Professor in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. From 2005-2015 he was Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship at McGill, where he has also served as Chair of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies (2005-2007) and Director of the Graduate Program in Communication Studies (2010-2013). He was President of the Canadian Communication Association (2010-2012) and served on the Advisory Council of the Law Commission of Canada (2000-2005). He has received several awards for his academic work, including the inaugural Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada's Aurora Prize (2003) for outstanding contribution to Canadian intellectual life by a new researcher. He is a member of the Petrocultures Research Group, the After Oil collective, the McGill Centre for Innovation in Storage and Conversion of Energy, Future Energy Systems at the University of Alberta and an associate member of the Bieler School of Environment. He convenes the Grierson Research Group.

Projects   

Energy Media: The Politics of Solid-Phase Bitumen investigates the emergence of non-combustion uses for Alberta bitumen, and solid-phase formats for the transportation, storage and commercialization of these materials.  The project explores: the comparative environmental and economic benefits and liabilities of these uses and formats; the political implications of the infrastructures required to produce, contain, transport and process them; the regulatory and legal implications of solid-phase bitumen; the possible effects of these products and  format on modes of political advocacy, organization and deliberation concerning the extractive economy in Canada; and how solid-phase bitumen affects relations of economic and political power in the energy sector, including relationships between the energy sector, environmentalists and in-line communities.  The project is in collaboration with Hannah Tollefson and is supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant.

Media Rurality. This project responds to a persistent bias within media studies towards urban formations and the pasts, presents, and futures they represent. Contrary to stereotypes, rural locations are media and infrastructure intensive, in ways that have dramatic impacts on human and non-human environments and relations. Urban settings rely on material relationships to rural settings, from which species, minerals and energies have been extracted for the purposes of circulation, accumulation and development in cities, and it is to rural locations that unwanted residues of this activity typically return, in forms ranging from toxic wastes to debt to climate change. An edited volume arising from the SSHRC-funded Media Rurality colloquium explores these themes across multiple global geographies. This project is in collaboration with Patrick Brodie, University College, Dublin.

Grain Media: Infrastructure and the Subjects of Prairie Agriculture investigates the transformation of the infrastructures of grain-handling and marketing in the Canadian prairies, and its relationship to dominant, residual and emergent political subjectivities in the region. It traces large-scale changes to systems of grain elevation and storage, railroads, and grain marketing as material media of shifts in political orientation, as well as resistance to these shifts. This project was funded by a SSHRC Standard Research Grant.

Publications  (access complete list and texts here)

Ayesha Vemuri and Darin Barney, eds. (2022). After Oil Collective, Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice. University of Minnesota Press.

Darin Barney. (2021). “Do Infrastructures Have Politics?” Canadian Journal of Communication. 

Imre Szeman and Darin Barney. (2021). “From Solar to Solarity,” South Atlantic Quarterly 120.1. Special issue on Solarity. Eds. Darin Barney and Imre Szeman.  

Darin Barney. (2021). “Withdrawal Symptoms: Refusal, Sabotage, Suspension.” Politics of Withdrawal: Media, Arts, Theory. Eds. Pepita Hesselberth and Joost de Bloois. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hannah Tollefson and Darin Barney. (2019). “More Liquid than Liquid: Solid- Phase Bitumen and its Forms. Grey Room. Vol. 77, Fall 2019.

Darin Barney. (2019). “Beyond Carbon Democracy: Energy, Infrastructure and Sabotage.” Energy Culture: Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond. Eds. Imre Szeman and Jeff Diamanti. West Virginia Univ. Press.

Katherine Strand and Darin Barney. (2019). “Telling Their Stories: Ideology and the Subject of Prairie Agriculture.” Political Ideology in Parties, Policy, and Civil Society. Ed. David Laycock. UBC Press.

Darin Barney. (2017). “Who we are and what we do: Canada as a pipeline nation.” Petrocultures: Oil, Energy and Culture. Eds. Imre Szeman, Dan Harvey and Sheena Wilson. McGill-Queens Univ. Press.

Darin Barney. (2017). “Pipelines.” Fueling Culture: 101 Words for Energy and Environment. Eds. Imre Szeman, Jennifer Wenzel, and Patsy Yaeger. Fordham University Press.

Darin Barney, et. al. (2016). “The Participatory Condition: An Introduction.” The Participatory Condition in the Digital Age. Darin Barney, et.al. (eds.). University of Minnesota Press.

Darin Barney. (2014). “We shall not be moved: on the politics of immobility.” Theories of the Mobile Internet: Materialities and Imaginaries. Eds. Jan Hadlaw, Thom Swiss and Andrew Herman. Routledge.

Darin Barney. (2011). “To hear the whistle blow: technology and politics on the Battle River branchline.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. 25.  
Activity 

Courses: Core Concepts in Critical Theory; Critical Theory Seminar; Communication and Environment; Special Topics in Media Studies: Infrastructure. 2020-2021.

Visiting Scholar. Energy & Ecology Arts Lab. School of Critical Studies. University of Glasgow, Scotland. 2020.

Co-convenor. Solarity: After Oil School 2. Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal QC, 23-25 May 2019.   

Anti-colonial Environmental Studies reading group (ACES). 2019-2021