The June 1888 issue of the Phonographic World magazine presented John Pynchon, an ancestor of Thomas, as “The First American Shorthand Reporter”. While most biographical criticism to date of Thomas Pynchon has focused on the cameo appearance of a thinly veiled William Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow, we here set out further historical infor…[Read more]

For close to two hundred years, the ideas of Shakespeare have inspired incredible work in the literature, fiction, theater, and cinema of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. From the novels of Lao She and Lin Shu to Lu Xun’s search for a Chinese “Shakespeare,” and from Feng Xiaogang’s martial arts films to labor camp memoirs, Soviet-Chinese theater,…[Read more]

Undergraduate syllabus for a course combining media studies with creative production practices in digital narratives and culture. Designed for delivery online, with an emphasis on individual projects.

Visual Ethnography, Stereotypes, and Photographing Algeria

The poetics and esthetics of “natural occupancy” are relevant to the ways in which settlers’ colonists artistically and discursively produce their subsequent cultural formations. I focus on the decade of the 1950s to chart specific settler ideologies of ownership that emerged in
Israel after the establishment of the state in 1948. What are the v…[Read more]

DTC 375 is an introduction to the historical relationships between technology, communication, and forms of writing or material inscription. The course gives students an appreciation of the technological history of media, including hands-on encounters with the components and signals that create various technological effects: from sound to graphics…[Read more]

Here’s a key paragraph:
“This chapter will be an exploration of the heritage function of Vikings in America. It will look at their presumptive whiteness, from the early nineteenth century, through the real mania for all things Viking in the mid to late nineteenth century, and on to present day fascinations with the Norse in popular music,…[Read more]

This paper analyzes Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and how it relates to a new paradigm of trans-national blockbusters. I analyze the film using a cultural materialist lens with respect to the filmmaker’s previous films and their outward (international) trajectory. This methodology highlights a larger trend that we are now seeing with large-scale…[Read more]

This paper analyzes Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and how it relates to a new paradigm of trans-national blockbusters. I analyze the film using a cultural materialist lens with respect to the filmmaker’s previous films and their outward (international) trajectory. This methodology highlights a larger trend that we are now seeing with large-scale…[Read more]

attempt to bring the horrors of the indo-china war to the most intimate part of women, 1967, xuan loc, rvn

This syllabus was my third version of a course aimed at introducing the digital humanities at an undergraduate level. The course was organized around four projects, each of which was oriented by a theoretical reading: mapping a novel; text analysis with archival sources; reading a novel collaboratively with courses at other colleges and…[Read more]

This syllabus was my second version of a course aimed at introducing the digital humanities at an undergraduate level. The course was organized around three projects: mapping a novel; text analysis with archival sources; reading a novel collaboratively with courses at other colleges and universities while building a multimedia response; and text…[Read more]