Category: Announcement

  • Call for Applicants, City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press, Deadline Mar. 1, 2020

    Benjamin Franklin printing press exhibit at City Tech.
    Benjamin Franklin printing press exhibit at City Tech.

    Mark Noonan, my colleague at City Tech, is running an NEH Summer Institute on the topic, “City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press.” I’ll be contributing to the Digital Methods Workshop on Wednesday, June 24 with my experience working on the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and using digital tools to make archival materials available to students and researchers. See the link below for all the sessions and apply to join us in Brooklyn!

    City of Print: New York and the Periodical Press

    (NEH SUMMER INSTITUTE)
    (June 21 – July 3, 2020)

    New York City College of Technology-CUNY will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for college and university faculty in the summer of 2020 (June 21 – July 3).

    For more information visit:

    http://www.citytech.cuny.edu/cityofprint/

    Applications to participate will be accepted via our online application system until March 1, 2020.

    The Institute will focus on periodicals, place, and the history of publishing in New York.  As an institute participant, you will take part in discussions led by cultural historians, archivists, and experts in the fields of American literature, art and urban history, and periodical studies; participate in hands-on sessions in the periodicals collection of the New-York Historical Society; visit sites important to the rise of New York’s periodical press, such as Newspaper Row, Gramercy Park, the New York Seaport, the East Village, and the Algonquin Hotel; and attend Digital Humanities workshops.

    You will also be asked to read a rich body of scholarship and consider new interdisciplinary approaches for researching and teaching periodicals that take into account the important site of their production, as well as relevant cultural, technological, aesthetic, and historical considerations. Sessions will be held across New York City including New York City College of Technology, the Brooklyn Historical Society, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Pace University, and the New-York Historical Society.

    We encourage applicants from any field who are interested in the subject matter. Scholars and teachers specializing in periodical studies, journalism, urban history, art history, American studies, literature, and/or cultural studies will find the Institute especially attractive.

    Independent scholars, scholars engaged in museum work or full-time graduate studies are also urged to apply.

  • Miao Miao (2005-2018)

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    Miao Miao taking a nap in 2012.

    Our little cat Miao Miao passed away on December 26, 2018 after a battle with cancer. She was 13 years and 8 months old. Y rescued Miao after her mother had abandoned her when she was only a few weeks old in 2005. She was sick and small, but Y nursed her back to health and adopted her as part of her family.  I came to know Miao beginning in 2008, after I met Y at Kent State. Soon, I became a part of the family, too. Miao was strong willed but also very loving. When we had guests over, she was an enthusiastic host. She brightened our days, which now seem diminished without her around. Even though Miao never really took to our younger cat Mose, we can tell that he grieves in his own way for her, too. She will be dearly missed.

  • My Review of Henry Wessells’ A Conversation Larger Than the Universe Book Exhibit, Published at the Science Fiction Foundation

    Maker:L,Date:2017-10-2,Ver:5,Lens:Kan03,Act:Kan02,E-Y

    The Science Fiction Foundation recently published my review of A Conversation Larger Than the Universe: Science Fiction and the Literature of the Fantastic from the Collection of Henry Wessells. The exhibit, held at The Grolier Club in New York City from Jan. 2018 through 10 Mar. 2018 offered a very interesting afternoon’s exploration of one reader’s impressive collection of books, autographs, and ephemera. While I hope that you will click through to read the full review, I include my conclusion below, which might be of interest to those folks who were unable to attend the short-lived display.

    Personal collections tend to say more about their collectors than anything else. While the totality of the items in the collection (with the exhibit being a curated selection from the larger collection) provides one kind of map and history of the fantastic, it ultimately expresses the logic and lived experience of its collector. Wessells explains: ‘I collect by synecdoche, meiosis, and metonymy, as well as by inclination, and by ties of friendship’, and ‘My interests as a reader have often led me away from the canonical to the uncertain edges of the fantastic. Along the boundaries is often where distinctions are sharpest, where science fiction is not so much a place you get to as it is the way you went’. Wessells’s exhibited collection is as admirable as it is interesting to experience, a path off the busy Manhattan streets and into other, imagined worlds.

    Read my full review here and browse photos of the exhibit here.

  • Special Issue on Star Wars: The Force Awakens Published in NANO: New American Notes Online

    starwars-collage

    Special Issue Co-Editors Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan are pleased to announce the publication of NANO: New American Notes Online issue 12 on Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event. Focusing on the transmedia aspects of the continuation of the Star Wars film saga following Lucasfilm’s acquisition by Disney, this issue’s contributors explore how transmedia storytelling is leveraged in different aspects of fanfiction, promoting ideologies of global capitalism, and reconfigures Joseph Campbell’s hero myth. Also, we are honored to present an interview with Cass R. Sunstein, author of The World According to Star Wars. Now that The Last Jedi is in theaters, there is much more to be said on the issues these contributors debate. Follow the link below to read the current issue.

    https://nanocrit.com/issues/issue12

     

    NANO Issue 12: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event

     

    image4-IMG_2693 copy– Editor’s Introduction for NANO Special Issue 12: Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Narrative, Characters, Media, and Event by Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan

     

    kylo-hux-03– Welcoming the Dark Side?: Exploring Whitelash and Actual Space Nazis in TFA Fanfiction by Cait Coker and Karen Viars

     

    KeeImageOne– Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily: How Fandom Negotiates with Transmedia Characterization by Chera Kee

     

    LR-orpana-8-Starkillerbase– Interpellation by the Force: Biopolitical Cultural Apparatuses in The Force Awakens by Simon Orpana

     

    LR-Payal-2– The Force Awakens: The Individualistic and Contemporary Heroine by Payal Doctor

     

    cass-book-cover-letterbox– An Interview with Cass R. Sunstein: Author of The World According to Star Wars by Jason W. Ellis and Sean Scanlan

     

     

    NANO: New American Notes Online is an interdisciplinary academic journal. Our goal is to invigorate humanities discourse by publishing brief peer-reviewed reports with a fast turnaround enabled by digital technologies.

     

     

    Currently open NANO calls for papers include:

    – Issue 13: Special Issue on The Anthropocene, Guest Editors: Kyle Wiggins and Brandon Krieg

    Deadline: January 12, 2018

    – Issue 14: Special Issue: Captivity Narratives Then and Now: Gender, Race, and the Captive in 20th and 21st American Literature and Culture, Guest Editors: Megan Behrent and Rebecca Devers

    Deadline: May 15, 2018

    Visit https://nanocrit.com/Submissions for details and instructions for submitting your writing.