Behind the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a deep substrate that includes a vast data management system, highly detailed SGML markup conventions, extensive international labor, and the enormous cultural weight of the Victorian-era DNB. In this article, I argue that it is only by investigating components of our historiographical…[Read more]

A course (MA level) I taught at the University of Pittsburgh in 2001, the research for which culminated in my book Freedom Readers (Notre Dame 2011).

Version (MA level) of a course I taught in several iterations at the University of Pittsburgh between 1995 and 2006.

Version (MA level) of a course I taught in several iterations at the University of Pittsburgh between 1995 and 2006.

Version (BA level) of a course I taught at the University of Pittsburgh over several iterations between 1995 and 2006. Team taught in 2006 with Peter Machamer, professor in HPS at Pitt.

Version (BA level) of a course I taught at the University of Pittsburgh over several iterations between 1995 and 2006. Team taught in 2006 with Peter Machamer, professor in HPS at Pitt.

Syllabus, project assignments, and milestones for HON 313, “Reading Machines” (Fall 2017), a first-year interdisciplinary experience course at NC State University. Reading Machines invites students into a historically ranging, critically intensive, and hands-on learning environment about the technologies by which humans transmit ideas. The course…[Read more]

The transfer of Saracen arms into Frankish ownership is a leitmotif of
many chansons de geste, but one whose significance for translatio imperii has yet to be
elucidated. In this essay, I focus on the Chanson d’Aspremont, a twelfth-century epic
set in Calabria that narrates the pre-history of Durendal, Roland’s sword of Song of
Roland fam…[Read more]

Reads William of Rubruck’s mission to Asia as an instance of premodern ethnographic representation and the shape of the precolonial European ethnographic gaze upon Asia.

The artist, collector, and critic Charles Ricketts (1866–1931) has often been characterised as a reactionary voice in early-twentieth-century debates about modern art. Although he responded conservatively to modern-art developments such as those embodied by the term ‘Post-Impressionism’, his work in book design and illustration exemplifies p…[Read more]

This essay reads Ivan Efremov’s “Andromeda Nebula” (1957), Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris” (1961), and Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller’s “Andymon” (1982) in order to explore the relationship between biological evolution and dialectical materialism, as it was negotiated through the trope of the alien in the context of the cultural politics of Eastern E…[Read more]

Call for Papers for Peer-Reviewed Edited Volume

Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean:
Essays in Anglophone Literature, Arts, and Culture

Co-edited by yasser elhariry, Isabelle Keller-Privat & Edwige Tamalet Talbayev

This syllabus is my fifth version of a course aimed at introducing the digital humanities at an undergraduate level. In consultation with my colleagues, I decided that this year’s version should also include a unit that looked at digital objects with a humanities perspective. The course is organized around four projects, each of which is oriented…[Read more]

Catalog Description
356 Information Structures 3 Course Prerequisite: DTC 101. Social and cultural role of information; research with electronic sources; production, validation, storage, retrieval, evaluation, use, impact of electronic information. (Crosslisted course offered as DTC 356, ENGLISH 356).

Course Description
DTC 356 explores the…[Read more]

Catalog Description
475 [DIVR] Digital Diversity 3 Course Prerequisite: Junior standing. Cultural impact of digital media in cultural contexts; issues of race, class, gender, sexuality online. (Crosslisted course offered as AMER ST 475, DTC 475, ENGLISH 475).

Course Description
DTC 475 is a continuation of the issues explored in DTC 206,…[Read more]

An examination of the cyborg potential of wearable technology as located in dress-body-technology assemblages and a call for public humanities work, such as Fashioning Circuits, that extends the Quantified Self to think instead about the Quantified Other or the Quantified Self-in-kinship.