A note from the editor: As you can see, this issue of Reading Matters is rather sparse (or redundant). Hopefully, as committees become more active and the semester gets well underway, we will see more content within these pages. - Amanda
Wednesday, 25 September 2002
A note from the editor: As you can see, this issue of Reading Matters is rather sparse (or redundant). Hopefully, as committees become more active and the semester gets well underway, we will see more content within these pages. - Amanda
Announcements
Kate Hayles' Ida Beam Visiting Professorship October 9-12, 2002
Please mark your calendars for the three main events of Kate Hayles' Ida Beam Professorship, arranged in conjunction with and complementing the New Media Poetics Conference, Oct. 11-12:
1. Kate's Ida Beam lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 8:00 p.m. in Gerber Lounge, followed by a public reception. This lecture -"Why We Should Re-Think Textuality"- will examine the ways in which electronic media force us to re-think some of the fundamental assumptions of critical theory and textual scholarship, beginning with the foundational question, "What is a Text?"
2. A wide-ranging discussion of electronic textuality, new media research, and the posthuman body, for faculty, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates, Thursday, Oct. 10, 2:30-3:45 p.m. in 218 EPB. All welcome.
3. Kate's conference lecture, on Saturday, Oct. 12, 10:00 to 10:45 a.m., in 2217 Seamans:
The Time of Electronic Poetry: From Object to Event
The electronic text, in contrast to the fixed marks of print, exists as a process rather than a product. Temporality is woven into the fabric of its materiality at every level, from the screen image produced by a constantly moving electron beam, to the electronic polarities flickering in the magnetic disk, to the light flashing through optic cables. Poetry has traditionally explored the possibilities and limitations of the medium in which it is instantiated. Electronic poetry has especially charged reasons, then, to explore the temporalities of its production. This essay explores the construction of temporality in works by two of the most distinguished practitioners of poetry in networked and programmable media, Stephanie Strickland and John Cayley.
In "errand upon which we came," Strickland in collaboration with M. D. Coverley has created a Flash poem that mingles computer-enacted animation sequences with the reader's interventions to control the flow and pacing of the poem. The tension between these two modes of reading is also thematized within the poem, figuring reading as a way of experiencing and participating in the temporal flows of the world. Cayley's "riverisland" is a poetic performance of what he calls "transliteration," a mode of writing and reading that integrates the computer generation of letter forms with the temporal instabilities of electronic polarities that threaten to swamp messages with noise even as they are also the creative froth from which meaning emerges. These two works illustrate how the specificities of electronic environments can serve as resources to incorporate time at a deep level into the processes of poetic significations.
Both Stephanie Strickland and John Cayley, the new media poets whose work this talk addresses, will be at the conference. Strickland will read from her new book of poems at Prairie Lights on Wednesday, Oct. 9th, at 8:00 p.m.; Cayley will lecture Saturday morning from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in 2217 Seamans; and both will be in dialogue with Kate and other scholars and new media poets throughout the conference, sponsored by the International Writers Program, the English Department, American Studies, and POROI. For a full roster of speakers and events, see the conference Web page at http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp/newmedia/. All are invited to attend events and presentations throughout the two days of the conference.
And, finally, an opportunity: in addition to her lectures and afternoon dialogue, Kate has indicated that she's willing to visit a class and/or conduct individual conferences with students working on new media Thursday, Oct. 10th, before her seminar in the afternoon. If you are teaching material or addressing issues of relevance to her work and would like to schedule a visit to a class or an individual conference, please contact Dee Morris at dee-morris@uiowa.edu.
M. Jimmie Killingsworth, professor of English at Texas A&M University, will be at the UI on September 26 and 27. Killingsworth is the author of Whitman's Poetry of the Body: Sexuality, Politics, and the Text (1989) and The Growth of Leaves of Grass (1993), as well as co-editor of Ecospeak: Rhetoric and Environmental Politics in America (1992), co-author of Signs, Genres, and Communities in Technical Communication (1992), and author of the textbook Information in Action: A Guide to Technical Communication (1996). Professor Killingsworth will give a talk in the Gerber Lounge at 3:45 on September 26 on his latest book project, an ecocritical study of Whitman. Anyone interested in having Professor Killingsworth visit a class should contact Ed Folsom.
IWP and the English Department Present: New Media Poetry: Aesthetics,Institutions, and Audiences, October 11-12, 2002. Participants include: N. Katherine Hayles, Marjorie Perloff, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jennifer Ley, Giselle Beiguelman, Katherine Parrish, Barrett Watten, Martin Spinelli, Loss Glazier, Alan Golding, Al Filreis,Carrie Noland, Talal Memmot, John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland,and others. For more information: http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp/newmedia/
Deadlines
Deadlines for Faculty Development Programs, Regents Award, and Ida Beam can be found at http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/deomailing/2002/05/22/deadlines.shtml
Lectures
Lecture announcement: Judith Pascoe, ãQueen Charlotteâs Hand-Copied Books.ä Thursday, September 26, in the Kirkwood Room (IMU 257), 12 pm to 1pm. The Book Culture Brown Bag series is excited to begin with the English departmentâs own Judith Pascoe, discussing work from her current research project, The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors. The Book Culture Brown Bag is a lunch-hour discussion series sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for the Book. It brings together experts from the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences to converse about the varied meanings of the book in society. Speakers will deliver short talks, which will be followed by a question-and-answer period. Please join us in the Kirkwood Room (IMU 257) Thursdays this fall for a stimulating set of speakers. For more information, contact Matthew P. Brown (English/UICB), matthew-p-brown@uiowa.edu
Sept. 26, tba Center for the Book Brown Bag Lunch Lecture: Judith Pascoe, "Queen Charlotte's Hand-Copied Books," Details TBA.
Sept. 26, 3:45 p.m. M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Texas A&M University, "Walt Whitman and American Ecopoetics," Gerber Lounge.
Oct. 4, 4:00 John Raeburn, "The Museum of Modern Art and the Cultural Establishment of Photography." American Studies, Floating Fridays, 7th Floor Lounge, Jefferson Building.
Oct. 8, 3:45 p.m. Dee Morris and Thom Swiss, Conference Preview: The New Media Poetry: Aesthetics, Institutions, and Audiences. Sponsored by IWP, English, and others. http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp/newmedia/ Shambaugh House (also a preview of the IWP's new home).
Oct. 9, 8:00 p.m. Kate Hayles, Ida Beam Lecturer, "Why We Should Re-Think Textuality," Gerber Lounge.
Oct. 11-12. Conference: The New Media Poetry: Aesthetics, Institutions, and Audiences. Sponsored by IWP, English, and others. Details at http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp/newmedia/
*Oct. 18, 4:00 Jon Wilcox, "A Medieval-Modern World: Walking the Pilgrimage Trail to Santiago de Compostella," Gerber Lounge.
Oct. 18, 8:00 p.m. Nonfiction Writing Reading: Gayle Pemberton, Wesleyan University, Reading from a book of essays on black women and film forthcoming from Norton, Gerber Lounge.
Oct. 24, 4:00 p.m. Corey Creekmur, SASP Lecture: "Bombay Boys: Projecting the Male Child in Popular Hindi Cinema," 315 Phillips Hall.
*Oct. 25, 4:00 p.m. "Opening the Book on Book Studies in the Department of English." Panel featuring Jon Wilcox, Matt Brown, Kathleen Diffley, Susie Phillips, Phil Round, 105 EPB.
*Nov. 1, 4:00 p.m. Lori Branch, "Rational Mastery, Secular Sexualities, and the Queerness of Faith in Shaftesbury's ASKHMATA," 105 EPB.
Nov. 7-10 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference, Minneapolis Executive Director: Kathleen Diffley
*Nov. 15, 4:00 p.m. Claire Fox, "Globalization and Popular Movements in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region," 105 EPB.
*Dec. 13, 4:00 p.m. Harry Stecopoulos, "South of the Color Line: James Weldon Johnson, Latin America, and New Negro Tropicalism," Gerber Lounge
READING MATTERS will appear on the web and in your mailboxes every other Wednesday as a combination of memos from the chair, announcements, deadlines, publication announcements, notices of speakers, conferences, and visitors of interest to the department. To be included in READING MATTERS, announcements should be e-mailed to Amanda at am_17@hotmail.com by Monday afternoon.
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