Endless Curiosity: A Scholar’s Take on Streaming, Screens, and Student Insight
Inspired by classroom conversations and archival research, Assistant Professor Kaitlin Forcier brings fresh perspective to digital media studies at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Name: Kaitlin Forcier
Title: Assistant Professor
Department: English
Interview with Kaitlin Forcier
What inspired you to focus on the concept of “endlessness” in digital media? Was there a particular moment, image, or experience that sparked this line of inquiry?
I’d like to say I was endlessly scrolling on my phone and wanted to understand this, but honestly it goes back further than that. I’ve always been interested in time, and how people have experienced it differently throughout history. For example, during the period of industrialized modernity there were a whole range of new technologies that changed people’s experiences – because of things like the railroad, electric lights, and the telegraph there was this perception that the texture of daily life was really changing and speeding up. There emerged a whole set of new artforms and types of media to represent these changes. Film was one of these – for the first time we could capture and preserve a moment unfolding in time. Film–because it was in motion–was seen as a privileged way to represent the exciting rapid pace of modern life.
Today we are living through another period of rapid technological transformation, and so I’ve been very curious about what the new media forms of the twenty-first century express about our time. And as I researched what was new about moving image culture today, I noticed that really what sets it apart is its endlessness. There is just so much of it, and most of it is presented to us in these amorphous forms. You used to go to a movie theater and watch one particular ninety minute movie and then it would be done. Now you watch things on Netflix and once your movie or your series ends, you’re presented with more and more options. And of course it’s all about capitalism, and finding new ways to eke value out of our time. These are the questions I’m working with.
Your work intersects film and digital media—how do you see these fields influencing each other in contemporary scholarship?
It might seem like a lot of the digital media we use, like TikTok or ChatGPT, are totally unique to our time. But a hundred and thirty years ago film was the exciting new technology transforming pop culture. People had very similar reactions to it. In my research and in my teaching I think about what the history of film – as a technology and a form of cultural expression – can tell us about what is new, and what is not new, about our current media moment.
Describe some of your ongoing research as a faculty member at UIC, particularly your current participation in the Faculty Fellow program at the Institute for the Humanities. What has this experience been like for your scholarship?
Even though my work looks at contemporary media, I am a historian too. In internet time the 1990s or early 2000s was eons ago! So I am often excavating the recent past, which involves reading a lot of documents from the time – news reports, archived websites, recordings of talks – as well as researching what everyone else has said on the topic. This archival work is very time consuming, so being a fellow at the Institute for the Humanities gives me dedicated time for this sort of “deep work.” And just as importantly, I am in an intimate community of other humanities researchers at UIC whose work I would not otherwise be in dialogue with. It exposes me to new ideas and methodologies, and allows me to see my work through someone else’s lens.
How do you stay inspired in your work—whether teaching, researching, or writing?
I love my job so much, and am lucky to do what I do. UIC students are the best! I get a lot of inspiration from my students and our conversations. For example, the chapter I’m currently researching about Amazon Prime came out of a conversation I had with students in a class on digital culture. We had read an essay by the anthropologist Natasha Dow Schull about machine gambling in Las Vegas, and how the designers of these machines used certain principles to keep people gambling on the machines for hours on end. So we were talking about whether we saw any of these principles in the apps we use. I was thinking of videogames or maybe social media, but this one student was like “Oh, the Amazon app!” We talked it through, and it has a lot of the same intentionally addictive design choices as the gambling machines. She talked about how it does feel like a game to her sometimes, the quest for just the right fall jacket or whatever. So this got me thinking about Amazon and what essentially our “spectator” experience is towards Amazon, how it keeps us swiping and “glued” to the screen in a way that is a little bit like TV, but also a little bit like games.
What do you hope students gain through their experience in the English department at UIC?
I hope my students gain a reflex for critical thinking. For all the culture and information they take in – whether it’s a fifty-year-old movie or a social media post from last week, I want them to consider: how was this made, and when and why? How does it produce meaning? What might it be saying under the surface? I don’t necessarily mean this in a harsh or paranoid way – it can also be really empowering and exciting to peel back the layers on something.
What advice do you have for new students joining the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences?
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but no one in your future is going to care what your major was. They will care whether you are interesting and whether you can think. Getting an education in the humanities is an amazing opportunity to develop those qualities – lean into it!
Okay, and also this: any time you want to Google something for an assignment, go through the university library website instead and you will get much better results. Not all knowledge is of equal quality.
Upcoming Faculty Fellow Lecture
Dive deeper into the world of visual consumption through the lens of Amazon Prime and learn more about Dr. Forcier’s ongoing research in this area at her upcoming lecture. Join the Institute for the Humanities on October 30, 2025, for “Stream, Flow, River: The Endless Visual Pleasures of Amazon Prime.”