Archive for 2020

The Many Books of the Future: Print-digital Literatures

I have been researching hybrid print-digital literary works for a few years now, which means I have given a fair amount of talks about them too. The discussions following these…

10 MYTHS ABOUT DIGITAL LITERARY CULTURE

Predictions have an uncanny tendency to come true, just not in the way predicted. Take the early 1990s mantra of “the death of the book” — the existentially-laden theme of…

America’s Next Top Novel

Despite the fact that there are more books published annually than ever before; despite claims that the commercial publishing industry has sacrificed all pretenses of quality to churn out marketable…

Bibliologistics: The Nature of Books Now, or A Memorable Fancy

In The Nature of the Book, his landmark study of the printing industry in early modern London, Adrian Johns delivers a rich recreation of what it would have been like…

Megativity and Miniaturization at the Frankfurt Book Fair

The Frankfurt Book Fair, or in its native German, the Frankfurter Buchmesse, restarted in the aftermath of the Second World War as a symbol of post-war reconstruction, an engine of…

Introduction to Ecologies of Neoliberal Publishing

Right about now, you might be thinking: “not more neoliberalism!” Come to think of it, you might be getting a little tired of “ecologies” too. But pulling together these two…

The Wisdom Narrative

The stories that we tell about illness are almost entirely about overcoming it, but in the event that it can’t be overcome, they are about growing wiser as a result…

Ugly Stories, Boring Pictures, Invisible Illness

What does pain look like? Often, nothing at all. Many people experience illness and pain but don’t look sick, as the phrase goes. Visibility seems an insurmountable aim. It’s not….

Pain Studies

* All pain is simple. And all pain is complex. You’re in it and you want to get out. How can the ocean be not beautiful? The ocean is not…

The Job Market is Killing Me

It was midnight on Halloween. The muffled chants of frat boys clued me in to the scene outside. I shut my computer, my second big round of job market deadlines…