This syllabus describes a first-year interdisciplinary honors course undertaken in fall 2014 at NC State University. It welcomes students into a hands-on environment for thinking about and practicing with new and old platforms for reading, interpretation, and understanding. It attempts to bridge book history and digital humanities into an…[Read more]

In 2011, U.S. News & World Report indicated that online courses had been increasing for nine straight years in a row. Or, the online presence has been continuously growing since roughly the turn of the century. The Online Learning Consortium just published a report on online learning for 2015, from which we can the pervasiveness of the online…[Read more]

contribution to the 2016 MLA Convention Panel sponsored by “Connected Academics”

I used to share with my classes that ebooks are outselling books, and like the music industry, the book market is now digital. While the record business has shifted in profound ways with the rise of digital technology, the book press is still in flux. Digital book sales over the past couple of years have been fluctuating around book sales. As a…[Read more]

This panel was designed to address the convention’s featured issues of the academic profession, publishing & editing, open access, and new technologies. Using a roundtable format, the panel discussed how open access publications are transforming the kind of research that is possible and necessitating new editorial practices. The session hosted an…[Read more]

This panel was designed to address the convention’s featured issues of the academic profession, publishing & editing, open access, and new technologies. Using a roundtable format, the panel discussed how open access publications are transforming the kind of research that is possible and necessitating new editorial practices. The session hosted an…[Read more]

Open access has great potential to transform the future of scholarly communication, but its success will require a focus on values — and particularly generosity — rather than on costs.

A video essay about title sequences from films by Alfred Hitchcock and David Fincher. An exploration of motion graphic design from analog to digital.

My talk at the round table on Service Learning in Literary Studies about the necessity of failure in experiential learning.

Nearly all scholars who work on medieval or early modern texts at some point work from digital facsimiles. There are advantages and disadvantages to such objects: what they might offer in terms of convenience and availability, they lack in material information. We can adjust the nature of what questions we ask of which object, consulting digital…[Read more]

This presentation explored the implications of constraints on due process and academic freedom in light of contingent faculty hiring.

PMLA Forum piece that argues for the direct and indirect value of the scholarly enterprise to the sacred art of teaching.

This is a longer version of my conference paper, in which I provide some ideas on how to merge scholarship on 18th-c France, especially the revolutionary period, with the kinds of advocacy promoted by the MLA. I foreground exciting new work done by colleagues in the US, UK, and Italy, and provide a “sneak peek” at materials to be included in the…[Read more]

In this free workshop, children and preteens (age 8-12) creatively explore and expand their sense of self by thinking and writing about their life – past, present, and future. Group activities, games, solitary writing, and illustrating provide for a fun and productive setting. Students will receive individual attention and gradually realize how…[Read more]

“The Lore and Lure of the Academic Job Market” is an MLA 2016 special session in which panelists consider how discipline-specific “lore” continually lures graduate students and contingent and full-time faculty members into an already overcrowded job market. Instead of providing advice about getting a job, participants evaluate that advice and gen…[Read more]