Harris Kornstein is a scholar and artist whose research and practice broadly focuses on queer play through contemporary technologies and digital cultures, media art/activism, visual culture, disability, and queer and trans studies. Their current book project, Digital Enchantment: Drag, Play, and Other Queer Strategies Toward More Just and Joyful Technologies, considers what we might learn from drag performers to creatively counter many of the harms of digital technologies (related to surveillance, artificial intelligence, online harassment, disinformation, and so on), through playful techniques of misuse, obfuscation, and reinvention. They are also co-editing an anthology How to Be Disabled in a Pandemic (NYU Press, forthcoming 2025) analyzing the experiences of disabled New Yorkers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Harris's research has been published in journals like Surveillance & Society and Curriculum Inquiry, alongside several edited volumes such as Queer Data Studies, and their essays have appeared in publications like The Guardian, Wired, and Salon. Additionally, their research has been supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and they are the recipient of an Early Career Scholars Award from the University of Arizona Office of the Provost and a Helen H. Chatfield Impact Award from the College of Humanities. As a media artist, curator, and drag queen, they have presented work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, ONE Archives, and numerous universities, galleries, and festivals. They have also published two children’s books. Harris holds a PhD in Media, Culture & Communication from NYU, an MFA in Digital Arts & New Media from UC Santa Cruz, and a BA from Swarthmore College.
hkornstein
Currently Teaching
PAH 160D1 – Play: An Interactive Introduction
This course introduces students to the study of play, from ancient games of chance to cutting edge playgrounds like amusement parks, escape rooms, and even workplaces. Students will learn and practice a set of critical and practical skills designed to help them both understand how play regularly changes the world around them, and how to use play as a tool for personal, professional, and political transformation. Over the course of the semester, we will: 1) survey the origins of play, paying particular attention to how the act of play is used to change or solidify the status quo; 2) examine research-informed case studies to learn and practice techniques for theorizing about how and why play does real work in the world; and 3) experiment with a variety of tools and techniques for using play to alter how individuals, communities, and organizations interact.
PAH 160D5 – Bedtime: Exploring the Cultures and Practices of Sleep
The need for sleep is ubiquitous and part of everyday existence. Like many things that are part of our routine, however, we rarely take time to consider sleep critically: Why do we sleep? Is sleep different from culture to culture? In what ways is sleep made valuable (or not)? And what's with dreaming? These and many other questions are at the heart of this course. Over the course of the semester, we will probe modern and historical humanities archives for artifacts related to sleep. By examining the ways human beings have come to represent sleep through a wide variety of cultural practices (e.g., rituals, popular culture, art, etc.), we will explore the connections between sleep and creativity, the role sleep plays in the formation and maintenance of social and cultural institutions, and sleep's changing relationship to the human condition generally. The goal, ultimately, is to imagine what sleep's future holds.
PAH 498H – Public and Applied Humanities Honors Thesis
Students must contact the faculty member with whom they would like to pursue a thesis with well before the beginning of the semester. The student must work with the Instructor to design a thesis.