Tag: Author features

On humanity, videogames, and resisting operationalized logic.

February 1, 2019

BY TIMOTHY WELSHLoyola University, New Orleans In October 2018, just prior to the November midterm elections, Twitter banned close to 1,500 accounts that all featured the same gray, expressionless cartoon avatar. “NPC,” a version of the Wojack or Feels Guy reaction image, is a meme generated by the right-wing internet as a representation of liberals. … More On humanity, videogames, and resisting operationalized logic.

Fashioning Feminism: On Bodies of Information.

January 25, 2019

BY ELIZABETH LOSHWilliam & Mary What does a bulletproof dress prototype have to do with the digital humanities? A lot actually, according to artist micha cárdenas. Such a garment, which was crafted from Kevlar airbags scavenged from a junkyard, could be capable of stopping a 9mm bullet. It’s one of the objects featured in the … More Fashioning Feminism: On Bodies of Information.

Frankenstein and anonymous authorship in eighteenth-century Britain.

January 18, 2019

BY MARK VARESCHIUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison Having celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2018, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is perhaps one of the most well-known novels of the early nineteenth century. While many are familiar with Shelley’s classic novel and can immediately picture some version of the work’s iconic monster, few are aware that when Frankenstein was first … More Frankenstein and anonymous authorship in eighteenth-century Britain.

Migration and global justice: North American economic migrants in Latin America

November 19, 2018

BY MATTHEW HAYESSt. Thomas University, New Brunswick What happens when North American retirement ideals of adventure and personal growth collide with the material realities of a Latin American city, going through a process of rapid urban growth spurred by rural-to-urban migration? This is a question I tried to answer in Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration under Late … More Migration and global justice: North American economic migrants in Latin America

Sonic Science Fiction: Programming the Thought Synthesizer

November 8, 2018

BY TRACE REDDELLUniversity of Denver One of the challenges I faced while researching and writing The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film concerned the terminology of the “new” and the role of “futurity.” Early drafts of the project emphasized thematic clusters that brought together films from very different … More Sonic Science Fiction: Programming the Thought Synthesizer

On Jeff VanderMeer and material monsters: Did we ever know anything about the world at all?

November 2, 2018

BY BENJAMIN J. ROBERTSONUniversity of Colorado Boulder In None of This is Normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer, I focus on the fantastic materialities VanderMeer creates in his major fiction: the Veniss milieu, in which a good portion of his early fiction takes place; the city of Ambergris, which takes shape in City of Saints … More On Jeff VanderMeer and material monsters: Did we ever know anything about the world at all?

#DeleteFacebook: Users always have the option of disconnecting—right?

October 18, 2018

BY TERO KARPPIAssistant professor, University of Toronto Want to #DeleteFacebook? You can try.Deleting Facebook is easier said than done. These are examples of headlines written after the news about Cambridge Analytica harvesting the data of 50 million Facebook profiles. These suggestions do not speak of getting rid of Facebook, Inc. – the company and its … More #DeleteFacebook: Users always have the option of disconnecting—right?

Heidegger’s thinking today is, perhaps, the possibility of the world

October 8, 2018

MICHAEL MARDERUniversity of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain In the 1957 lectures he delivered in Freiburg under the title “Basic Principles of Thinking,” Martin Heidegger speculated that “dialectics today is, perhaps … the actuality of the world [Weltwirklichkeit]” (GA 79: 88). For all its hyperbolic thrust, one should not take his statement lightly, dismissing … More Heidegger’s thinking today is, perhaps, the possibility of the world