Jeremy Packer received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in 2001. Before coming to the University of Toronto, he was Assistant Professor at Penn State University, and both Associate Professor and Professor at North Carolina State University.
He joined the Faculty of Information and the Institute for Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology at the University of Toronto in 2016.
Dr. Packer investigates the historical and political dimensions of media technologies. In particular, his research investigates how the automation, militarization, and mobilization of media technologies are used for governance, surveillance, and political control.
He recently completed Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine (Duke 2020) with Joshua Reeves on the history of military automation and the centrality of media theory to military strategy.
He is writing a multi-authored book tentatively title Prison House of the Circuit: A Media Genealogy with Paula , Kate Maddalena, Alex Monea, Kathleen Oswald, and Joshua Reeves. The book provides six case studies to illuminate the change from analog to digital modes of governance.
Media Studies, Media History, Media and Communication Theory, Cultural Studies, Technological Automation
Books
Packer, Jeremy and Joshua Reeves. (Feb 2020) Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine, Duke University Press, Durham NC (296 p.)
Packer, Jeremy and Stephen B. Crofts Wiley, eds. (2012) Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility, and Networks. Routledge, New York. (297 p.)
Packer, Jeremy ed. (2009) Secret Agents: Popular Icons Beyond James Bond. Peter Lang, New York. (212 p.)
Packer, Jeremy. (2008) Mobility Without Mayhem: Cars, Safety and Citizenship. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. (360 p.) Winner of the 2008 Book of the Year, Critical and Cultural Division of the National Communication Association.
Packer, Jeremy and Craig Robertson, eds. (2006) Thinking With James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History. Peter Lang, New York. (234 p.)
Bratich, Jack, Jeremy Packer, and Cameron McCarthy, eds. (2003) Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. SUNY Press, Albany. (369 p.)
Selected Articles
Packer, Jeremy and Josh Reeves. (2017) “Taking People Out: Drones, Media/Weapons, and the Coming Humanectomy.” In L. Parks and C. Kaplan eds. Life in the Age of Drones. Duke University Press. (261-281)
Packer, Jeremy and Alex Monea, Special Issue Eds. (2016) “Media Genealogy.” International Journal of Communication.
Monea, Alex and Jeremy Packer. (2016) “”Media Genealogy and the Politics of Archaeology.” International Journal of Communication. Vol. 10, p 3141-3159.
Packer, Jeremy and Peter Galison. (2016) “Abstract Materialism: Peter Galison Discusses Foucault, Kittler, and the History of Science and Technology.” International Journal of Communication. Vol. 10, 3160-3173.
Maddalena, Kate and Jeremy Packer. (2014) “The Digital Body: Telegraphy as Discourse Network.” Theory Culture & Society. Winner of the 2014 James W. Carey Media Research Award competition sponsored by the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research
Reeves, Josh and Jeremy Packer. (2013) “Watching or Being Watched: What is Police Media?” Communication Currents. Vol. 8, Issue 6.
Packer, Jeremy. (2013). “The Conditions of Media’s Possibility: Foucault and Media History.” In J. Nerone, ed. Media History and the Foundations of Media Studies. Blackwell, New York. (88-121)
Reeves, Josh and Jeremy Packer. (2013) “Police Media: The Governance of Territory, Speed, and Communication.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 10. no. 4.
Packer, Jeremy. (2013) “Screens in the Sky: SAGE, surveillance, and the automation of perceptual, mnemonic, and epistemological labor.” Social Semiotics, vol. 23, no. 2, 173-195.
Packer, Jeremy. (2013) “Epistemology Not Ideology OR Why We Need New Germans.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 10, no. 2. (online July 11, 2013, 295-300).
Packer, Jeremy and Josh Reeves. (2013) “Romancing the Drone: Military Desire and Anthropophobia from SAGE to Swarm.” Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 38. no. 3, 309-331.
Packer, Jeremy and Josh Reeves. “Taking People Out: Drones, Media/Weapons, and the Coming Humanectomy.” In L. Parks and C. Kaplan eds. Life in the Age of Drone Warfare. Duke University Press, 2017
—. “The Conditions of Media’s Possibility: Foucault and Media History.” In Media History and the Foundations of Media Studies, J. Nerone, ed. Blackwell, New York, 2013: 88-121.
Oswald, Kathleen and Jeremy Packer. “Flow and Mobile Media: From Broadcast Fixity to Digital Fluidity.” In Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Networks, and Mobility, J. Packer and S. Wiley, eds. Routledge, New York, 2012: 276-287.
Packer, Jeremy and Steve Wiley. “The Materiality of Communication.” In Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Networks, and Mobility, J. Packer and S. Wiley, eds. Routledge, New York, (2012): 3-16.
—. “’What is an Archive?’: An Apparatus Model for Communications and Media History.” Reprinted in Media History and the Archive, C. Robertson, ed. Routledge, New York, 2011: 91-107.
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