On April 18, I’ll be part of the 23rd annual “A Company of Authors” event at Stanford, where faculty present their new books. This will be my third time! Talking about my recent book on Bride of Frankenstein.
More info about the event here: https://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/company-of-authors-spring-2026
Rounding out my trip to Canada, I’ll be giving a talk about my recent book on Bride of Frankenstein at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Culture and Technology on Nov. 10! Info and registration here.
I’m excited to announce a book launch event for my new book on Bride of Frankenstein, followed by a screening of the 1935 film, on Oct. 30, 2025 at Gray Area in San Francisco! Doors open at 6:30pm, and the event starts at 7:00. I’ll have copies of the book on hand and will be happy to sign them too! More info here!
My book on James Whale’s 1935 masterpiece Bride of Frankenstein, the inaugural volume in Lever Press’s new film|minutes book series, is out now! The book offers a minute-by-minute engagement with the film, combining close looking, philosophical speculation, historical contextualization, and a variety of other ekphrastic and experimental approaches. Print versions are available anywhere books are sold, including on the publisher’s website, where you can also read the open access version online or download a free EPUB or PDF.
In addition, I have programmed an interactive version of the book, which is available through the Stanford Digital Repository. There you can find apps for Mac and Windows that allow you to load a copy of the film and play it — on loop, one minute at a time — alongside the text corresponding to that minute. This way, you can immediately put my observations to the test and discover other details that complement or even challenge the claims that I make about the film. (Due to copyright restrictions, you will need to supply your own copy of the film, for example by ripping a copy from a DVD or BluRay [I used the 2018 Classic Monster Collection version], or grabbing a copy from Vimeo or the Internet Archive.)
The interactive book app is a dedicated “reader,” but if you’d prefer a different experience I have also prepared a packet of text files that can be loaded into the film|minutes video|graphic workstation — a platform for both reading and writing — that I released earlier this summer. The texts are available as a zip file at the same address as the interactive book (https://doi.org/10.25740/qj474bx8626), and the workstation is available here: https://doi.org/10.25740/xq320wq3449 (also for Windows and Mac). You’ll still need to supply your own copy of the film, but then you can load the text packet and not only read but also actively revise or rewrite my text, should you so choose.
Whether on paper, ebook, or interactive version, I hope you’ll check out this experimental book and revisit the film, which is iconic in its own right but perhaps newly relevant in an age of AI. Thanks to series editor Bernd Herzogenrath and senior acquiring editor Sean Guynes for their support of the project!
I am happy to have a short piece on the “Digital” among the 101 keywords in this exciting new volume, Power Shift: Keywords for a New Politics of Energy, edited by Imre Szeman and Jennifer Wenzel. The book brings together scholars, artists, and activists, and it provides a robustly multifaceted approach to questions of energy, the environment, climate change, and much, much more — including some pieces that will be of great interest to scholars of media, infrastructure, networks, etc.
Right now you can get 20% off with code SZEMAN20 at wvupress.com
This Tuesday, June 17, I’ll be giving my first talk on my forthcoming book on Bride of Frankenstein at Leibniz Universität Hannover — where I first started thinking about Frankenstein films about 20 years ago!
More info here.
Coming soon! Stay tuned for more info.
Lever Press has an exciting new book series — [film|minutes] — edited by Bernd Herzogenrath (Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main), and I am excited to be writing a book on Bride of Frankenstein for it! Stay tuned!
On May 22 (4:30pm, Bldg. 200, room 307), David W. Bates (Department of Rhetoric, UC Berkeley) will be discussing his new book An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age. Merve Tekgürler will provide a response.
The Program in Modern Thought & Literature is a proud co-sponsor of the event — along with History of Philosophy & Science, the Program in Science, Technology, & Society, Stanford Communication, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and Stanford Symbolic Systems.
I am excited to announce that Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal, by The DISCO Network, will be the sixth volume in the Sensing Media book series! See below for a description, and see here for more info.
From Munchausen by Tiktok to wellness apps to online communities to AI, the DISCO Network explores the possibilities that technoskepticism can create.
This is a book about possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies. Though refusal is an especially powerful mode—particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no—people of color and disabled people have long navigated the space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies. Technoskepticism relates some of these stories to reveal the possibilities skepticism can create.
The case for technoskepticism unfolds across three sections: the first focused on disability, the creative use of wellness apps, and the desire for diagnosis; the second on digital nostalgia and home for Black and Asian users who produced communities online before home pages gave way to profiles; and the third focused on the violence inherent in A.I.-generated Black bodies and the possibilities for Black style in the age of A.I. Acknowledging how the urge to refuse new technologies emerges from specific racialized histories, the authors also emphasize how care can look like an exuberant embrace of the new.
About the author
The DISCO Network is an intergenerational collective of researchers, artists, technologists, policymakers, and practitioners working together to challenge digital social and racial inequalities. Participants include David Adelman, André Brock, Aaron Dial, Stephanie Dinkins, Rayvon Fouché, Huan He, Jeff Nagy, Lisa Nakamura, Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott, Kevin Winstead, Remi Yergeau, and Lida Zeitlin-Wu.