Category Archives: Artefact

Studio

Posted on by under Agential Realism, Artefact, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Dissertation League, Material, Pedagogical Documentation, Posthumanist Praxis, Scholarly Musings, Slice of Life, Spacetimemattering, Teaching, Teaching From Home

In the move online this semester during the COVID-19 event, all of us had to make do with a makeshift workspace. For many of us, this included needing a space to record videos for our students. The first video I did, I randomly sat in front of this bookshelf in my home office instead of staying at my desk, and that was that: it’s been my “studio” ever since. Throw in a lighting kit I got a while back when I fancied taking my #bookstagram game to the next level (still working on that) and you’ve got yourself a bright corner of the world. It occurs to me, in writing this post, that I desperately needed such a corner and that, considering things were just plain hard(er) in those early days, this makeshift studio’s agency in helping me get necessary work done on a consistent and timely basis was/is very real and should be acknowledged. I mean, the shelf edges are blackboard paint with fields and categories chalked on them–wouldn’t you feel like a boss sitting in front of that level of awesome?

  • Behind the magic
  • The Dissertation League
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Dissed: What’s Necessary

Posted on by under Agential Realism, Artefact, Dissed, Dissertating, Excerpts, Flashback, Material, Memories, Non-Fiction, Remembering, Spacetimemattering

Dissed are excerpts from the dissertation that have been cut, killed, excised, burned on the altar of common sense and distance before being left here to not die…

This one hurt to cut. 
I remember thinking how clever I was and how it
"Explained Everything. Duh." 
And, certainly, in looking back I can see the early versions of 
what I was just really starting to grasp. I did bring 
a good chunk of this up in the epilogue, but it took some reshaping. 
I like having an original (albeit excerpted) version of it here 
as part of this archive.  

After all, Sally and this comic were integral parts of the dissertation,
 critical actants that sat in my eye-line (tacked above the computer) 
the entire time I wrote and reminded me

--without a word, with just a glance, without even really realizing it, 
in fact I'm only really realizing it right now as I type these very words--

why I was still sitting in my office chair, still looking for answers. 
Touchstone is too mild a word for that level of presence and pull in the
 overall phenomenon.  

But my true love didn't make it into the final draft:
 the incomplete tracing of the other actants at the end. 
I read that list and that timespace snaps into place around me. 
I'm-back-there-again-here.
Sally_LookingForTheAnswers
Fig. 1.1: In this Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, Sally Brown (Charlie Brown’s little sister), attends her elementary school. Originally published March 29, 1971 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.  Reprinted on page 84 in Peanuts: A Golden Celebration (Larkin 1999).
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Flashback: Coursework

Posted on by under Academia, Artefact, As Is, Coursework, Curate, Flashback, Remembering, Scholarly Musings, Writing Through All the Things

It’s kind of sad that a lot (for me, most) of coursework doesn’t really find a second home, whether because of the direction your scholarship goes or just the structure/nature of the original writing. I was searching for a word in the hopes of finding a file I’d obviously not named well-enough to find it again years later, and this paper popped up. A throwback to Science Fiction and Posthumanism in the Anthropocene–one of my favorite classes. I enjoyed reading it again four years later (yikes!). I sound quite important 😉

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Flashback: nov·el·T Writes the Apocalypse

Posted on by under Artefact, As Is, Create, Curate, Excerpts, Flashback, Memories, Old School, Remembering, Stories Matter, Teaching, Writing Is

I fell down a rabbit hole today, combing through old computer files to curate a project I want to work on later, and found so many old writings I had forgotten about. Some are cringe-worthy, some surprisingly good, some hilariously melodramatic (I blame the genres). Then I came across this. And the nostalgia hit me hard enough that, no matter the quality of this piece, I had to share it here.

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