Books Read 2020

  1. Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature Before Heterosexuality by R. Bach

  2. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

  3. Transformers: Unicron by Frank Barber

  4. Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II by William Blum

  5. The Fire Is Upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley, and the Debate Over Race in America by Nicholas Buccola

  6. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coontz

  7. Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges

  8. Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan Africanism by Stokely Carmichael

  9. Relentless Pursuit: My Fight For The Victims of Jeffrey Epstein by Bradley J. Edwards

  10. NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW by Guy Evans

  11. Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman

  12. A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey

  13. Dune by Frank Herbert

  14. Transformers: The Manga Volume One by Masumi Kaneda

  15. Transformers: The Manga Volume Two by Masumi Kaneda

  16. Prejudential: Black America and The Presidents by Margaret Kimberly

  17. Football Against The Enemy by Simon Kuper

  18. The State and The Revolution by Vladimir Lenin

  19. Stream Of Life by Clarice Lispector

  20. Superman: Red Son by Mark Miller

  21. I Fight For A Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood 1880-1915 by Louis Moore

  22. James Baldwin: Living In Fire by Bill V. Mullen

  23. Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over The World by Jathan Sadowski

  24. Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders

  25. A History Of Medieval Islam by John Joseph Saunders

  26. Hate Inc: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another by Matt Taibbi

  27. The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

Books Read In 2018

  1. The Conversations by Cesar Aira

  2. Culture & Anarchy by Matthew Arnold

  3. Transformers Volume 7: Combiner Wars by John Barber

  4. Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett

  5. The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason by Chapo Trape House

  6. Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates

  7. Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution by David L. Craddock

  8. Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America by Cathy Davidson

  9. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

  10. The Oxford Companion To Shakespeare by Michael Dobson

  11. White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race by Stephen Duncombe

  12. Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse by Annette Fuentes

  13. The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs by Ray Ginger

  14. The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980–1984 by Ian Glasper

  15. Classic GI Joe Volume One by Steven Grant

  16. More Than a Score: The New Uprising Against High-Stakes Testing by Jesse Hagopian

  17. Long Shot: The Triumphs and Struggles of an NBA Freedom Fighter by Craig Hodges

  18. The Odyssey by Homer (Barry Powell translation)

  19. The Odyssey by Homer (Emily Wilson translation)

  20. Going Underground: American Punk 1979-1989 by George Hurchalla

  21. Pillars of Society by Henrik Ibsen

  22. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History Of Racial Inequality In Twentieth Century America by Ira Katznelson

  23. All Labor Has Dignity by Martin Luther King Jr.

  24. Bad Girls: Young Women, Sex, and Rebellion before the Sixties by Amanda Littauer

  25. The People of the Abyss by Jack London

  26. Liberalism: A Counter History by Domenico Losurdo

  27. How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore

  28. The Mosaic of Islam by Suleiman Mourad

  29. The Law of the Father? Patriarchy in the Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism by Mary Murray

  30. Crazy Like A Fox: The Definitive Chronicle of Brian Pillman 20 Years Later by Liam O'Rourke

  31. Good Nintentions: 30 Years of NES: An Unofficial Survey of the Nintendo Entertainment System by Jeremy Parish

  32. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England by Mary Poovey

  33. Black Panther: The Complete Collection Volume One by Christopher Priest

  34. The Death of WCW (10th Anniversary Edition) by RD Deynolds

  35. Cosmos by Carl Sagan

  36. Transformers: Combiner Wars by Mairghread Scott

  37. Shakespeare's Hamlet: Manga Edition by William Shakespeare

  38. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro

  39. Nabakov's Shakespeare by Samuel Schuman

  40. Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals by Jonathan Smucker

  41. Space Is The Place: The Lives & Times Of Sun Ra by John F. Szwed

  42. Shakespeare, Dissent, and the Cold War by Alfred Thomas

  43. Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Fool's Gold by David Tipton

  44. English Novel in History, 1895-1920 (The Novel in History) by David Trotter

  45. The Illogic of Kassel by Enrique Vila-Matas

  46. Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England by Garthine Walker

  47. The New Atheist Threat: The Dangerous Rise of Secular Extremists by CJ Werleman

  48. Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

  49. Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages by Ellen Meiksins Wood

Books Read In 2015

  1. The Battle for Justice in Palestine by Ali Abunimah
  2. The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi
  3. Jennifer Government by Max Barry
  4. Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature by Jorge Luis Borges
  5. Borges at Eighty: Conversations by Jorge Luis Borges
  6. Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
  7. The Darkling Child: The Defenders of Shannara by Terry Brooks
  8. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex by Judith Butler
  9. Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler
  10. Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday by Italo Calvino
  11. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  12. You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir by Felicia Day
  13. Replay: The History of Video Games by Tristan Donovan
  14. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
  15. The Peripheral by William Gibson
  16. Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by Melissa Gira Grant
  17. Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema by Boaz Hagin
  18. The Odyssey by Homer
  19. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
  20. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan
  21. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door by Brian Krebs
  22. One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin M. Kruse
  23. The Muslims Are Coming: Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror by Arun Kundnani
  24. Passing by Nella Larsen
  25. The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector
  26. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
  27. The CIA in Iran: The 1953 Coup and the Origins of the US-Iran Divide by Christopher Petherick
  28. The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov
  29. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 1 by James Roberts
  30. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 2 by James Roberts
  31. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 3 by James Roberts
  32. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 4 by James Roberts
  33. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 5 by James Roberts
  34. Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye Volume 6 by James Roberts
  35. The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero
  36. The Oxford Shakespeare: Othello: The Moor of Venice (The Oxford Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare
  37. The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling by David Shoemaker
  38. Against Interpretation: And Other Essays by Susan Sontag
  39. Automate This: How Algorithms Took Over Our Markets, Our Jobs, and the World by Christopher Steiner
  40. The Epic Struggle for the Internet of Things by Bruce Sterling
  41. Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson
  42. The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti
  43. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

PhillyDH: Literary Analysis of 19th/20th Century Texts

My day at PhillyDH began in a session on the literary analysis of 19th and 20th century texts...
• Have students look at off the beaten path 19c texts to see what else is happening during the era (so say not Eliot, Brontes, etc).
• Looking at newspapers from a certain year and connect to a text/genre.
• Using keyword search to map out main characters---victim---tropes---linguistic patterns
• How can text analysis lead to better close reading?
• Google NGraw can help, but does have limitations...could help students see cultural influences
• I had a class figure out % of characters speaking in King Lear and then write response to how this affected their close reading.
• How does students lack of curiosity about technology hurt implementing digital humanities projects?
• How does automation further injure this?
• Collaboration between liberal arts and STEM classes.
• How do we get collaborative feedback during projects?

Shakespeare Podcast

This is the podcast my LIT220 students created at the end of the semester in the fall of 2013. We recorded each student reciting some lines from their favorite play and then I asked them a few questions about why they picked that particular set of lines to read. I was really impressed by what my students did in this course. We picked some difficult plays and had very productive discussions of them.

 

Books Read In 2012

  1. Being A Green Mother by Piers Anthony
  2. The Tent by Margaret Atwood
  3. New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
  4. Racing The Beam: The Atari Video Computer System by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort
  5. Amulet by Roberto Bolano
  6. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
  7. The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
  8. The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares
  9. The Mind of Italo Calvino by Dan Cavallaro
  10. The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin
  11. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
  12. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
  13. Crossed by Ally Condie
  14. Noir by Robert Coover
  15. Down & Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
  16. The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow by Cory Doctorow
  17. The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities by Frank Donoghue
  18. Football The First Hundred Years The Untold Story by Adrian Harvey
  19. My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects & Literary Texts by N. Katherine Hayles
  20. The Map & The Territory by Michel Houllebecq
  21. Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives by Jeff Howard
  22. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
  23. Fifty Shades Darker by E. L. James
  24. Fifty Shades Freed by E. L. James
  25. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James
  26. The Life & Morals of Jesus of Nazareth by Thomas Jefferson
  27. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu
  28. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
  29. The Lost Books of The Odyssey by Zachary Mason
  30. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make us Better and How they Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
  31. Batman The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
  32. Batman Year One by Frank Miller
  33. Those Guys Have All The Fun: Inside The World of ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
  34. Paradise Lost by John Milton
  35. Batman-The Killing Joke by Alan Moore
  36. V For Vendetta by Alan Moore
  37. The Watchmen by Alan Moore
  38. Speak Memory by Vladimir Nabakov
  39. King Lear by William Shakespeare
  40. Authors In Context: Virginia Woolf by Michael Whitworth
  41. The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
  42. The Quran (Sher Ali Holy translation)
  43. Sir Gawain & The Green Knight
  44. The Tel Quel Reader