Tag: MTL

MTL/Intermediations Presents: Regina Schober, “Female Algorithmic Selfhood, Literary Fiction, and the Digital Pharmakon,” March 6, 2024

The Program in Modern Thought and Literature and Intermediations invite you to attend a lunch-time talk with Professor Regina Schober (American Studies, Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf) on Female Algorithmic Selfhood, Literary Fiction, and the Digital Pharmakon. 

This event will be taking place in the Terrace Room in Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460, 4th Floor, room 426) on March 6th at 11am.

Lunch will be provided. If you are planning to intend, we invite you fill out an RSVP form for logistics and headcount. RSVPs are appreciated but not required. We ask that if you RSVP that you do so by March 1st.

If you have any questions or concerns about this event, please do not hesitate to reach out to Leah Chase at lachase@stanford.edu

Abstract:

While algorithms have increasingly come to shape the ways of writing the self, for example through data tracking and recording, personalized recommendation systems, and online identity curation, literary fiction has simultaneously negotiated such ways of being in and experiencing our algorithmically driven, digital environment. This talk will look at a selection of contemporary US American novels that critically inquire into modes of algorithmic self-writing, as they scrutinize the ways in which digital affect, automated scripts, and the dynamics of the attention economy play into the construction of selfhood. With a particular focus on female digital experiences, this talk reframes posthuman perspectives on human-/technology interactions in emphasizing affective and collective spaces of the “digital pharmakon” (Stiegler 2012). At the same time, these novels explore their own intermedial potential as counter-attentional forms in negotiating the ‘failed knowledges’ of scripting the digital female self.

About the speaker:

Regina Schober is Professor of American Studies at Heinrich-Heine-University Duesseldorf. Her research interests include literary negotiations of networks and algorithmic selfhood, theories of failure, and intermediality. She is author of ‘Spiderweb, Labyrinth, Tightrope Walk: Networks in US-American Literature and Culture’ (De Gruyter, 2023), of ‘Unexpected Chords: Musicopoetic Intermediality in Amy Lowell’s Poetry and Poetics’ (Winter, 2011), editor of ‘Data Fiction: Naturalism, Numbers, Narrative’ (special issue of Studies in American Naturalism, with James Dorson, 2017), ‘The Failed Individual: Amid Exclusion, Resistance, and the Pleasure of Non-Conformity’ (Campus, 2017, with Katharina Motyl) of ‘Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self’ (Transcript, with Ulfried Reichardt, 2020), and of ‘Network Theory and American Studies’ (Special Issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2015, with Ulfried Reichardt and Heike Schäfer. She is part of the DFG Research Network ‘The Failure of Knowledge/Knowledges of Failure’, the DFG Research Network ‘Model Aesthetics: Between Literary and Economic Knowledge’, and the interdisciplinary BMBF Project ‘AI4All’.

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Ruth Mayer, “The ‘Girl’ in Weimar Germany,” February 22

I am very excited to be hosting Ruth Mayer, Professor of American Studies at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, for a series of events at Stanford this quarter. The Program in Modern Thought & Literature nominated her as an International Visitor at the Stanford Humanities Center, where she’ll present her current research in March. First, though, there are two events in MTL:

The Program in Modern Thought and Literature invites you to a special event: On Thursday, February 22, at 4pm in the Terrace Room (4th floor, Margaret Jacks Hall), Professor Ruth Mayer will be giving a talk titled “The ‘Girl’ in Weimar Germany:  Illustrated Magazines in Trans-Atlantic Circulation.” The talk will be followed by a reception with food and drink.

Please RSVP here by Tuesday, February 20, so that we have a head-count.

The talk explores the ways in which illustrated magazines of the Weimar period act contribute to a larger gendering of transnational exchange particularly through image-text doubling and shifts. It takes the Weimar society magazine Uhu as a major reference point, investigating how it modeled itself on American lifestyle and ‘smart’ magazines and made use of the iconic figure of the ‘Girl’ to carve out a spatiotemporal continuum between ‘Amerika’ and Europe. While the Girl is a figure of the stage and screen as much as of the modern magazine, it is in the magazine that this figure comes into her own. The Girl incorporates modernity as a multimodal and multifaceted configuration much like the modern magazine itself. The talk argues that the Girl enters the illustrated magazines not only as a subject matter but also as a tool of gendered self-reflection, particularly in the work of female writers, illustrators and photographers.

Prof. Ruth Mayer holds the chair of American Studies, teaching American literature and culture from the 17th century to the present time, with a strong focus on theoretical and formal questions. Her research focuses on aspects of popular culture (particularly seriality and serialization), media history, globalization, science studies, and cultural contact. Her book Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Super-Villain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology appeared in 2013 with Temple University Press and in 2019 she co-edited Modernities and Modernization in the United States (Winter). She is currently directing the research projects “Contingency and Contraction: Modernity and Temporality in the United States, 1880-1920″ and “Multiplication: Modernity, Mass Culture, Gender.” The Program in Modern Thought and Literature is currently hosting Prof. Mayer as an International Visitor at the Stanford Humanities Center.

In addition to the talk on 2/22, Prof. Mayer will also be holding a workshop session for grad students on the following day, 2/23, from 11am-2pm in the Terrace Room. Lunch will be served.

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Mediation Between the Lines — January 29, 2024

On Monday, January 29, 2024 (6pm in the Terrace Room, 4th floor of Margaret Jacks Hall), four PhD students will present talks originally given at the 2023 Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) conference: Danielle Adair (Theater & Performance Studies), Hank Gerba (Film & Media Studies/Art History), Grace Han (Film & Media Studies/Art History), and Kola Heyward-Rotimi (Modern Thought & Literature).

The panel, entitled “Mediation Between the Lines,” will be accompanied by some finger food and refreshments. Please RSVP here so that we have an idea of how many to expect. 

Intermediations/MTL Presents: Celine Parreñas Shimizu on “Crafting Oneself in Community: Theory, Practice, and the Interdisciplinary PhD”

On Thursday, 1/25, from 5-7pm in the Terrace Room, MTL alumna Celine Shimizu (’01) will be returning to Stanford to give a presentation, “Crafting Oneself in Community: Theory, Practice, and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D.” Prof. Shimizu’s presentation will be followed by a conversation with Prof. Shane Denson, as well as a Q&A. Light food and refreshments will be provided. Please RSVP here if you plan to attend so that we have a rough headcount. 

Prof. Shimizu is a film scholar and filmmaker, as well as Dean of the Division of the Arts and Distinguished Professor of Film and Media at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She wrote The Proximity of Other Skins (2020), Straitjacket Sexualities (2012), and The Hypersexuality of Race (2007) and co-edited The Feminist Porn Book (2013) and The Unwatchability of Whiteness (2018). Her new book The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian / America, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. 

Her numerous peer-reviewed articles appear in top journals in the fields of cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies, and transnational popular culture in Asia and Asian America. She is formerly Associate Editor of Gay and Lesbian Quarterly (GLQ), founding USA editor of Asian Diasporas and Visual Cultures of the Americas and Associate Editor of Women Studies International Forum. Her latest film 80 Years Later (2022) screened in over 50 film festivals and won 15 awards including for best historical documentary and excellence in directing. Her previous film The Celine Archive (2020) won several festival awards and both are distributed by Women Make Movies and available on demand via wmm.com. 

Video: Mads Thomsen, “Adjusting to the Age of Automated Writing” (Intermediations, Nov. 16, 2022)

Video from the inaugural event of INTERMEDIATIONS, a new workshop and lecture series foregrounding issues of intermediality and interdisciplinarity: Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, “Adjusting to the Age of Automated Writing” from November 16, 2022.

Abstract:

Writing was for at least six to seven thousand years a humanly hand-crafted product. Now we encounter several kinds of technologies that change the production of text profoundly. Chatbots, automated translation, grammar assistants, and large language models are examples of how text generation permeates writing from many angles. In this presentation, Professor Mads Thomsen sketches out key issues of the rapid developments in text generation and the interdisciplinary collaboration needed to understand these, before turning to how GPT-3 “reads” William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

Bio:

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published in the fields of literary historiography, modernist literature, world literature, digital humanities, and posthumanism. His most recently submitted publication is a short book on the concept and history of text.

He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures (2008),The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900 (2013), a co-author with Stefan Helgesson ofLiterature and the World (2019), and the editor of fourteen books, includingWorld Literature: A Reader (2012), The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges (2012),Danish Literature as World Literature (2017), Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis (2017), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism (2020). 

Intermediations: Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, “Adjusting to the Age of Automated Writing” (Nov. 16)

As the inaugural event of INTERMEDIATIONS, a new workshop and lecture series foregrounding issues of intermediality and interdisciplinarity, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen will be giving a talk titled “Adjusting to the Age of Automated Writing” on November 16, 2022 (4pm in the Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall room 426).

Abstract:

Writing was for at least six to seven thousand years a humanly hand-crafted product. Now we encounter several kinds of technologies that change the production of text profoundly. Chatbots, automated translation, grammar assistants, and large language models are examples of how text generation permeates writing from many angles. In this presentation, Professor Mads Thomsen will sketch out key issues of the rapid developments in text generation and the interdisciplinary collaboration needed to understand these, before turning to how GPT-3 “reads” William Carlos Williams’ poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.”

Bio:

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has published in the fields of literary historiography, modernist literature, world literature, digital humanities, and posthumanism. His most recently submitted publication is a short book on the concept and history of text.

He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literatures (2008),The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society after 1900 (2013), a co-author with Stefan Helgesson ofLiterature and the World (2019), and the editor of fourteen books, includingWorld Literature: A Reader (2012), The Posthuman Condition: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Biotechnological Challenges (2012),Danish Literature as World Literature (2017), Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis (2017), and The Bloomsbury Handbook of Posthumanism (2020). 

Thomsen has been director of the Digital Arts Initiative (2017-21) and the research program Human Futures (2016-22), both at Aarhus University. Thomsen was co-director of the research project Posthuman Aesthetics (2014-18), and he is the PI of the VELUX FONDEN-funded project Fabula-NET which investigates literary preferences and quality using digital methods (2021-25).

He is a co-editor of Orbis Litterarum, an advisory board member of the book series Literatures as World Literature(Bloomsbury Academic), and a member of the editorial board of Journal of World Literature. Thomsen is a member of the Academia Europaea (2010-), the advisory board of The Institute for World Literature (2010-13, 2018-22), and the general assembly of DARIAH (2022-).

Thomsen was a visiting scholar at Stanford University four times between 2001-2015. 

“Keeping It Unreal” — Darieck Scott, Monica P. Moore Lecture in Modern Thought & Literature

On November 10, 2022 (4pm in the Terrace Room, Margaret Jacks Hall), the Program in Modern Thought & Literature will be hosting Darieck Scott, Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley, for the Monica P. Moore Speaker Series. Professor Scott will be talking about Black queer fantasy and superhero comics, the topic of his recent book Keeping It Unreal (NYU Press, 2022).

There will be two respondents: Scott Bukatman, Professor of Film & Media Studies at Stanford and author of a new book on Black Panther; and Lucas Williams, Ph.D Candidate in MTL.

New Roles at Stanford

This year I am excited to have taken on a couple of new roles at Stanford, and I wanted shout about them briefly to express my gratitude and hope.

First, I am honored to have received a courtesy appointment in German Studies from the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages. While my primary appointment remains in the Department of Art & Art History, I will now be able to teach and advise graduate students in German as well, and I am excited to collaborate more closely with my colleagues there.

Second, I have joined the Committee in Charge in Modern Thought & Literature, Stanford’s premier interdisciplinary humanities program. I have been working closely and learning from students in the program over the past couple of years, including serving on several dissertation committees, and I have discovered so many affinities with students and faculty alike, so officially joining the program feels in many ways like coming home.

Finally, for the duration of the 2020-2021 academic year, I am honored to have been awarded a Faculty Research Fellowship at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, where I am learning from an amazing interdisciplinary cohort of peers while developing a new project around seriality and serialization. Taking up Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “serialities” as anonymous, alienated collectives, as well as Iris Marion Young’s re-working of the concept with respect to gender and specifically feminist purposes, the project relates these socio-political conceptions of seriality to the serialization of experience and identity in contemporary digital media.

In all, I am feeling very grateful for these new and strengthened interdisciplinary networks, which give me hope for the future of the humanities at Stanford.