In Mother Media, Hannah Zeavin (History) tells the complicated story of American techno-parenting, from the Greatest Generation through millennials, for an object lesson in how using technology in our most intimate relationships became a moral flash point.

Zeavin examines 20th-century pediatric, psychological, educational, industrial, and economic norms around mediated mothering and technologized parenting. She charts the crisis of the family across the 20th century and the many ingenious attempts to remediate nursemaid and mother via speculative technologies and screen media. Mother Media lays bare the contradictions of techno-parenting and how they relate to conceptions of “maternal fitness,” medical redlining, and the surveillance of children, parents, and other caregivers. 

She is joined by Ramsey McGlazer (Comparative Literature).