Coming in September I will be publishing an interview in Transformative Works & Culture with Dr. Angela Thomas about her work on the Virtual Macbeth project in Second Life. I am really happy about getting to work with Dr. Thomas. It has been a goal of mine for the past few years to work with her and I am very pleased to finally be able to in a great journal like TW&C.
Upcoming Monmouth Symposium
I am happy to announce my participation in this semester’s graduate symposium for our English program at Monmouth. This semester I will be taking part in a round table discussion about academic writing and publishing. It is a great privilege that Dr. Kristin Bluemel will be moderating and my thesis adviser, Dr. David Tietge (no link: ahem), will also be participating.
I will be sure to arrive early to check out Meghan Kutz’s presentation on orientalism in British travel writing. I have had the pleasure of speaking to her about her research and it is quite impressive.
Here is the complete schedule:
LITERATURE MATTERS
Graduate Student Symposium
Monmouth University Department of English
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Wilson Hall, Room 106
PROGRAM
10:00 to 11:30 Session 1: Colonial and Post-Colonial Readings
Moderator: Dr. Sejal Sutaria
Veronica Guevara “Cultural Conflict–or Synthesis? Revised Double Consciousness, Engaged Resistance, and Man’s Relationship with Nature, Time, and Humanity in Vahni Capildeo’s ‘No Traveller Returns’”
Meghan Kutz, “Orientalism in 1930s British Travel Writing on China”
Shanna Williams, “Feminism in Indian Literature”
11:30 to 12:30 Roundtable: Writing and Publishing
Moderator: Dr. Kristin Bluemel
Participants: Dr. Sue Starke, Dr. David Tietge, Sara Van Ness, William P. Wend, Kim Rogers
12:30 to 1:30 Lunch
1:30 to 3:00 Session 2: Literature and Composition Today
Moderator: Dr. Elizabeth Gilmartin
Lisa Pikaard, “Moral Ambiguity in a World in Turmoil: Harry Potter’s Global Implications”
Jenn Ernst, “The Hunter and the Hunted: Drug Use/Abuse and the Failings of the 60s in H. S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
Jana Phelps, “Amending Writing Composition Instruction to Fulfill the Needs of the Contemporary Student”
Backtype
Backtype is the kind of comment aggregating website I have been waiting for someone to develop for years. In the past, I used the recently deceased Furl to log my comments manually, but Backtype does this automatically. I am not sure how far back it will go, but users can submit comments and websites to be added.
Weekly Reader
Barth On Poe's Pym
Last year, around this time, I would have loved to have had Barth’s essay on Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym for when I was writing essays in Dr. Bluemel’s class or for general classroom discourse. I was pleasantly surprised to find Barth had written about Pym; this novel seems to have a very poor reputation. Leslie Fielder and Borges both wrote about Pym (the latter a strange essay about the use of the color white in the novel). I found the novel to be interesting, not enough to write a paper about, but my classmates more or less did not.
Amazon Kindle & The Future Of Content Delivery
Veronica’s post last month about the Kindle’s ability to hold hundreds of books contrasted with most American’s lack of reading got me thinking of how Amazon’s new device could be properly used and/or marketed. Scott writes:
And among the majority of the American reading public (as measured by the NEA), anything over 11 books per year is a lot. It doesn’t really make sense to have an ebook reader that can hold hundreds of titles at once, unless you’re planning on being the one to sell hundreds of books to fill it.
A lot of people I know who own a Kindle note that one of the most pleasurable aspects of it is the ability to have newspaper content sent to them every morning. That is fine, but why can’t someone just get that via an RSS reader? I assume if you’re on the move a lot in the morning it’s useful, but wouldn’t you have a Blackberry or IPhone or Android phone for that?
Which comes to my big concern for all of these devices: All of them only do some of the things that the other might not be able to do. The average reader, if they read at all, is not invested in reading enough to spend hundreds of dollars on a device the way they would be for a high definition television. My coworkers often share books, passing hardcovers back and forth as each reads them. I’d be surprised if many of them even own books in the way that prolific readers do. They are invested in other things. I’m not sure how to market the Kindle to the common reader, but I am interested in seeing what happens next.
War Prayer 030
After slaying that guy who is laying in a morgue, or wherever,
Theresa vanished for the summer of 2004. She was replaced by a young
lady who was a replica of Amber. Pixie like in size, hair, and makeup
application. Same stupid sorts of tattoos. They blogged, he told her
all about his referrer logs,
and they discussed Pynchon and Calvino. This only proved a temporary
solution. By the time the autopsy results were released it was clear
Drew was being quite unfair to her. Imposing your bullshit and
expectations on a replacement is totally fucked up. The model is always
slightly different and Drew knew he could tell. Theresa returned just in time for the fall semester.