InterPlay (Interdisciplinary Playground) is a new quarterly salon series co-organized by VPA Interdisciplinary Arts Programs and the Cantor Arts Center. Designed for faculty, graduate students, and campus collaborators, the series creates a lively space to share work, spark ideas, and build community across disciplines. Each salon features fast-paced presentations alongside playful, interactive experiences that encourage creativity and connection. With time for mingling, networking, and dialogue over light refreshments, InterPlay is a gathering place to discover the diverse and innovative projects happening across campus—and a forum to imagine new ones together.

This salon will feature Professor of Film and Media Studies and, by Courtesy, of German Studies and of Communication Shane Denson; Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Michele Elam; and Core Lecturer at the d.school Charlotte McCurdy.

Bios:

Shane Denson is Professor of Film and Media Studies and, by Courtesy, of German Studies and of Communication at Stanford University, where he also serves as Director of the PhD Program in Modern Thought & Literature. His research interests span a variety of media and historical periods, including phenomenological and media-philosophical approaches to media arts, film, digital media, and serialized popular forms. He collaborates with Karin Denson on generative media art projects and is a founding member of the non/phenomenal collective. He is the author of Bride of Frankenstein [film|minutes] (Lever Press, 2025), Post-Cinematic Bodies (meson press, 2023), Discorrelated Images (Duke University Press, 2020) and Postnaturalism: Frankenstein, Film, and the Anthropotechnical Interface (Transcript-Verlag, 2014) and co-editor of several collections: Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives (Bloomsbury, 2013), Digital Seriality (special issue of Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture, 2014), and Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film (REFRAME Books, 2016). See shanedenson.com for more information.

Michele Elam is the Senior Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, with a portfolio that includes AI and education. She is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English Department at Stanford University, Former Associate Director and currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a Race & Technology Affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Former Director of African & African American Studies, Elam is also affiliated with the Clayman Institute for Gender Research and with the Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute.

Elam’s research in interdisciplinary humanities connects literature, social sciences, STEM and the arts in order to examine changing cultural interpretations of gender and race. Her work is informed by the understanding that racial perception and identification in particular impacts outcomes for health, wealth and social justice. 

Charlotte McCurdy is a Core Lecturer at Stanford's d.school who makes charismatic objects that ask what a fossil-fuel-free world might feel like. Working at the intersection of design and climate technology, she develops biogenic materials, especially carbon-negative alternatives to petroleum-based textiles, that operate as both functional artifacts and cultural propositions. Her research explores how the tangible materials shape collective imagination about environmental futures.

All public programs at the Cantor Arts Center are always free! Space for this program is limited; advance registration is recommended. Those who have registered will have priority for admission, but walk-ins are very welcome if space allows! RSVP here.

Accessibility Information or Requests

Cantor Arts Center and the VPA Interdisciplinary Arts Programs at Stanford University are committed to ensuring our programs are accessible to everyone. To request access information and/or accommodations for this event, please complete this form at least one week prior to the event: museum.stanford.edu/access. For questions, please contact disability.access@stanford.edu or Christina Linden, calinden@stanford.edu, 650-497-0340.

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