July 31, 2015: Scholars on Fire: Temple Colleagues

[As we near the dog days of summer, a series on a handful of AmericanStudies scholars bringing the fire through their work and voices. I’d love to hear in comments about scholars whose work lights a fire under you!]

A trio of colleagues from the Temple University graduate program who have embarked on the next stages of their scholarly careers (as has the Temple classmate about whom I’ve written before in this space, Jeff Renye).

1)      Matt Chambers: Matt’s first book, Modernism, Periodicals, and Cultural Poetics, was just published this month by Palgrave Macmillan. He teaches at Poland’s Univesity of Lodz, as a faculty member in Transatlantic and Media Studies. I can’t wait to see where my long-ago Temple office-mate, and one of the best poets and poet-scholars I know, goes next!

2)      April Logan: Between taking part in an NEH institute, directing a Salisbury University conference on American Women Writers of Color, and working with the Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society—as well as raising twins!—April’s been plenty busy in recent years. All those interests come together in her book project on representation and late 19^th century African American women writers, which I very much look forward to reading!

3)      Gina Masucci MacKenzie: Gina’s first book, The Theatre of the Real: Yeats, Beckett, and Sondheim (Ohio State, 2008), established her immediately as a vital new voice in theater and drama studies. Since then she’s continued to develop her scholarly interests and profile, while editing a new Barnes & Noble edition of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and coordinating writing at Philadelphia’s Holy Family University. Like all of the scholars on whom I’ve focused this week, she’s clearly just getting started!

July Recap this weekend,

Ben

PS. One more time: scholars you’d share?

July 30, 2015: Scholars on Fire: Paul Edwards

[As we near the dog days of summer, a series on a handful of AmericanStudies scholars bringing the fire through their work and voices. I’d love to hear in comments about scholars whose work lights a fire under you!]

Three compelling blog posts from the BU graduate student, fellow NEASA Council member, and very talented young AmericanStudier to watch. I won’t say anything about them, as I’d rather you check out Paul’s thoughtful, interdisciplinary, engaging voice and ideas directly.

1)      Why I Watch Film

2)      Science Fiction in the Suburbs

3)      Woman in the Asylum

Great models for what interdisciplinary, online, public AmericanStudies scholarship can engage, include, and do!

Last scholar tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Scholars you’d share?

July 29, 2015: Scholars on Fire: Christine Yao

[As we near the dog days of summer, a series on a handful of AmericanStudies scholars bringing the fire through their work and voices. I’d love to hear in comments about scholars whose work lights a fire under you!]

Three exemplary scholarly projects from a Cornell graduate student who’s poised to take the next step.

1)      Her published articles: Christine’s two articles reflect two distinct but complementary sides to her scholarly interests and work. “Visualizing Race Science in Benito Cereno” models her unique connections of 19^th century science, race theory, and literary practice, using Melville’s complex story as a case study. “Gothic Monstrosity: Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly and the Trope of Bestial Indian” rethinks the genre of the gothic through those ongoing interests and concepts, and recovers a vital role for Brockden Brown’s early American novel in the process.

2)      Her HASTAC blog: I’m not sure why I haven’t written about the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) previously in this space—but I’m making amends for that oversight today! HASTAC’s website is a model scholarly and public community and conversation, and that includes the numerous unique and engaging blogs it hosts. At Christine’s HASTAC blog, she has written compellingly about Google and Sui Sin Far, indie video game developers and social justice movements, and many other 21^st century, public scholarly topics and questions.

3)      Her dissertation: I’ll let the description of this ground-breaking project on Christine’s Cornell webpage speak for itself: “Her dissertation Feeling Subjects: Science and Law in Nineteenth-Century America challenges the conventional opposition between affect and the purportedly dispassionate disciplines of American science and law. Through analyzing writing from the American Renaissance alongside literature by African American and Asian American writers, the project explores the roles of feeling and unfeeling in navigating the tension between the twin discourses of science and law as both tools of oppression and resistance.” Can’t wait to read it!

Next scholar tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Scholars you’d share?