August 22
Beginnings
August 21
A Series on Archives and Digital Humanities
The Digital Archives Research Group at USM, of which I’m a Co-coordinator, will be hosting a series of events this year on Archives and Digital Humanities. We’ve been planning the events all summer, and I’m excited to share our new poster, beautifully designed by Danielle Sypher-Haley in the College of Arts and Letters. As mentioned before, the series of events and workshops are designed to introduce USM faculty and students to the possibilities of working with archival materials in Special Collections. See below for a brief description of events.
April 11
Curious George Goes to the Archive
I’ll be hosting the inaugural event of the Arts & Letters’ Digital Archives Research Group next Wednesday, April 20, from 5:30-7 p.m. in the Liberal Arts Building 101. This is the first in what will become a yearlong series of events introducing faculty and students to the possibilities of working with archives and special collections at USM.
January 22
Digital Archives Research Group
I’m pleased to announce that our proposal for a Digital Archives Research Group at USM has been awarded a small grant from the College of Arts & Letters. As Co-coordinator of the group, I look forward to working with our team to raise awareness about the scholarly and pedagogical applications of digital archives. See below for our proposal.
June 12
The Digital Antiquarian
The following are slides to my recent talk at The Digital Antiquarian conference, hosted by the American Antiquarian Society. It was an absolute pleasure participating with such an excellent gathering of librarians, archivists, book historians, digital humanists, and literary scholars. My deepest thanks to Thomas Augst and Molly Hardy for such a provocative two days.
April 14
Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood
The following are my slides for teaching Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White, two texts that I regularly teach in my World Literature course.
April 4
Fairy Tales
The following are slides introducing fairy tales, folklore, and my unit on Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White.
March 27
Broken Tablets
Gilgamesh has always been one of my favorite texts to teach. Few works of literature embody their themes so intimately and materially. With each ellipses, gap, and discontinuity in the text, we are reminded of the central brokenness of what it means to be mortal.
March 27
Procedural Shock in Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal
Here are the slides to my upcoming Pre-Performance Talk on Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal, a play inspired by the real life case of convicted and executed murderer Ruth Synder. As the slides indicate, the trial was a complete media circus and has often been described as the “O.J. Simpson trial” of the 1920s.
March 11
The Rashomon Effect
Here some more lecture slides from my Introduction to World Literature course. These cover Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “Rashomon” and “In a Bamboo Grove,” setting the stories within the context of modernism and Samurai Japan.
March 7
Kafka’s Parables
The following are slides created for my lecture on Kafka’s parables “Before the Law” and “An Imperial Message.” The lecture introduces the problem of interpretation and meaning in literature through a focus on matters of form and medium.
March 4
The Art of Storytelling
My slides on The Arabian Nights, the art and seduction of storytelling, frame narratives, and other “entertainment” related to the demonic power of stories and seduction. The first English language edition of the stories was titled The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.