We're back with a second season! This season we are inviting a series of surveillance expert guests to chat about their research, art, culture, technology, and politics. 

This week we are fortunate to chat with the lovely Heather Roberts, who tells us a bit more about found footage horror films.  If you like "Paranormal Activity", "The Blair Witch Project" and horror flicks, this episode is right for you. What a perfect way to celebrate fall and the witchy season! 

Heather Roberts is a third-year PhD student in the Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies program at Queen's University. She completed her Masters in English literature at Queen's and holds Honours degrees from both Queen's and University of Toronto. Her doctoral research explores the relationship between found footage horror films and the rise of social media culture in the mid- to late-2000s, particularly focusing on themes of surveillance. She likes stress baking, growing fruits and vegetables in her garden, and all things horror!

S2-E1 Cam-Chat with Heather Roberts

This week we are grateful to host our lovely friend and colleague Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef. Fareed gives a brief introduction to his new bookNo Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema (SUNY Press, July 2022). If you are a fan of DC, Batman, and surveillance politics, this is the episode for you!

More information can be found at our website camhunters.org.  

Dr. Fareed Ben-Youssef is an Assistant Professor in Film & Media Studies at Texas Tech University. He earned his PhD in Film and Media from the University of California, Berkeley. His book, No Jurisdiction: Legal, Political, and Aesthetic Disorder in Post-9/11 Genre Cinema (SUNY Press, July 2022), reveals genre cinema's multivalent purpose: to normalize state violence and also to critique it. His work has appeared in journals like The Journal of Popular Culture, Japanese Language and Literature, and Southwestern American Literature. As part of his efforts to teach outside the classroom, Ben-Youssef has also organized myriad university film series and hosted master classes with award-winning directors such as Ari Folman and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi.

S2 - E2 - Cam Chat with Fareed Ben-Youssef

Welcome back! This week we have a brand new episode featuring our wonderful Cruising Cam Specialist Myles Kenyon! He's with us to talk about cruising, surveillance, and his MA research that took a deep dive into the world of "Squirt".

Miles has a MA in Communications and Media Studies from Carleton University, where he studied how queer communities discuss surveillance in the context of casual sexual encounters. He reads tarot, pets dogs, and fantasizes about being stranded on a desert island.

S2-E3 Cam Chat with Miles Kenyon

This week we are pleased to share our mics with the brilliant Azadeh Akbari. In this episode she talks about her desire for a free global internet, especially in relation to Iran's morality police, and their policing of women.

About Azadeh:
My name is Azadeh Akbari, and I am Assistant Professor in Public Administration & Digital Transformation at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. I studied sociology (BA) and journalism in Iran and gender research (MSc) at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. I obtained my PhD in human geography from the University of Heidelberg. I then joined the University of Münster as a postdoctoral research associate in political geography. I have been a journalist for many years and worked as a communication manager and community outreach specialist at the UNHCR, UNICEF, and the British Council. I am a professional amateur in lindy-hop dance, documentary filmmaking, and cooking. I enjoy writing and reading a lot (obviously!) and combine all my skills and passions in being a digital editor for the journals Surveillance & Society and Territory, Politics, Governance. I have founded Surveillance in the Global South Research Network to expand the scope of surveillance studies to include non-Western discourses and practices and create a place for exchange, collaboration, and activism against the undemocratic use of surveillance technologies.

S2-E4 Cam Chat with Azadeh Akbari

Happy new year dear listeners. To welcome all of you to 2023, we are kicking off this year talking about care and healing with collaborators Drs. Susan Cahill and Mél Hogan from the University of Calgary.

Dr. Susan Cahill (she/her) is a white settler scholar who lives and works in Moh’kinsstis | Calgary on the traditional territories of the peoples of the Treaty 7 region. She is an independent filmmaker, curator, and Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Calgary.

Dr. Mél Hogan is Director of the Environmental Media Lab (EML) and Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Film, University of Calgary. Her research focuses on data centers, death in the cloud, and genomic media – each understood from within the contexts of planetary catastrophe and collective anxieties about the future. 
Website: https://www.melhogan.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mel_hogan

S2-E5 Cam-Chat with Drs. Susan Cahill and Mél Hogan

This week we are pleased to talk to our colleague Torin Monahan on the release of his new book "Crisis Vision". You can purchase it at Duke University Press for 30% off with promo code "E22MONHN". 

Torin Monahan is a Professor of Communication at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-Editor-in-Chief of Surveillance & Society, the leading academic journal on surveillance. He primarily researches the social and cultural dimensions of surveillance systems, with a specific focus on gender and racial inequalities. He has published over fifty articles or book chapters and six books, including Surveillance Studies: A Reader (with David Murakami Wood) and Surveillance in the Time of Insecurity, which won the Surveillance Studies Book Prize of the Surveillance Studies Network. His forthcoming book, Crisis Vision: Race and the Cultural Production of Surveillance (Duke University Press), investigates the racializing effects of contemporary surveillance through the lens of visual and performance art.

S2-E6 Cam-Chat with Torin Monahan

This week we are fortunate to chat with one of the biggest names in surveillance studies, Dr. David Murakami Wood. We have known David for years, as our supervisor, committee member, and mentor. One of David's not so hidden interests is sci-fi. David talks to us about sci-fi and its connection to surveillance.

Dr. David Murakami Wood is a Faculty member at the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, and a Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies in the Department of Criminology of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Murakami Wood is an interdisciplinary specialist in surveillance, security and technology from a global urban perspective, working mainly in Canada, Japan, the UK and Brazil. He is a leading organizer in the field of surveillance studies as co-founder and now co-editor-in-chief of the international, open access, peer-reviewed journal, Surveillance & Society, co-founder and a current director of the Surveillance Studies Network, co-editor of Surveillance Studies: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2018), Big Data Surveillance and Security Intelligence (UBC Press, 2021), and the forthcoming International Handbook of Surveillance Studies (Edward Elgar). 

Educated at Oxford and Newcastle, UK, Dr. Murakami Wood joined the University of Ottawa in 2022 from Queen’s University at Kingston where he was Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, and a former Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Surveillance Studies.

S2 - E7 Cam Chat with David Murakami Wood

Julia and STÉFY introduce themselves, and give a brief introduction into the performative world of Cam Hunters. They define surveillance and introduce their new unsettling theory “disruptive exhibitionism”.

S1-PILOT "Vigilance is the new black"

Julia and STÉFY dive into the world of camming and consent during COVID-19. Julia looks at the ways survivors of digital abuse cope while being required to be on camera for employment and social purposes. STÉFY speaks about the connections between sex work and the economy, especially “camming” and cam girls during the pandemic.

S1-E1 "COVID-19: Life on Camera"

STÉFY and Julia do what all great surveillance scholars do: talk about sex, nudity, and surveillance on reality television. STÉFY speaks passionately about how “Naked Attraction” has changed her life, and the critique the show has faced because of its sexual content and nudity. For Julia, surveillance gets “Too Hot to Handle” when she explains the pervasive use of surveillance technologies in this Netflix series.

S1-E2 "Too Naked to Handle"

STÉFY and Julia go back to where the idea of Cam Hunters started - hidden cameras in Airbnbs. STÉFY shares a couple stories of guests finding hidden cameras in their Airbnb.  Julia gets super creepy when she talks about a crowdfunded surveillance lamp that will no doubt find its way into rental properties.

S1-E3 "Check the lamps!"

Julia and STÉFY reveal some of the ways that consumers use surveillance tools for their own self-pleasure and indulgence. Julia explores the sexy/scary world of internet-connected sex toys, while STÉFY gives you some beauty tips after testing a new face-cleansing tool.

S1-E4  Pleasuring Yourself with Data

In this episode the Cam Hunters talk about societies obsession with watching and photographing animals. Julia speaks about her experiences playing Kitty Collector and our interest in photographing cute and cuddly animals; while STÉFY blinds Julia with science, and explains the ways that animals have inspired contemporary surveillance technologies and drones.

S1-E5 Capturing/Collecting the Cute and Cuddly

Can surveillance confirm the existence of the ghostly or the alien? STÉFY and Julia investigate.

S1-E6 - Surveilling the Unknown

This week the Cam Hunters are joined by Queen's University PhD student Rohit Revi. Rohit discusses the history of paranoia and delves into the political and cultural implications of paranoia on conspiracies and social control.

S1-E7 "Paranoia" feat. Rohit Revi

For the season finale of Cam Hunters: the podcast Julia and STÉFY share a series of creepy stories with their listeners.

S1-FINALE Creepy Stories

CAM HUNTERS is a collaborative art and media performance between artists STÉFY and Julia Chan. Cam Hunters: the Podcast is one or our projects in which we discuss all things surveillance - from reality television to watching animals. For more information about Cam Hunters and our other projects, visit camhunters.org.

The Hunters (Hosts)

Voyeur Cam Specialist: Julia Chan
Julia Chan is a mixed-race settler, writer, artist, and academic living in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work is broadly concerned with sexualized surveillance, image-based sexual abuse, critical race and whiteness studies, and technology and culture. She holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen's University at Kingston. Recently, she was a Mitacs Postdoctoral Visitor in Cinema and Media Arts at York University and the Managing Editor of PUBLIC: Art | Culture | Ideas. In 2021, she was the inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University's Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice. She trusts no one.

Rural Cam Specialist: STÉFY
STÉFY is a white settler, queer (non-binary femme of centre) artist-scholar based in Katarokwi/Kingston. They are an Assistant Professor in the Bachelor of Media Production and Design at Carleton University. Their work explores surveillance as a contemporary form of colonialism in Canada post-9/11 through the methodology of research-creation. STÉFY is interested in the ways that citizens use surveillance cameras in rural and forested areas, white fear of terrorism, and function-creep as a creative method of producing knowledges. STÉFY's life goal is to have Julia trust them.

Cam Hunters

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