For Students
Theorizing “Pre-Theory” Texts
The title of this post bugs the hell out of me, but I felt I needed to use the term “pre-theory” to express some of the reticence towards theory I still see in the academy. I think there are still some professors who actually tell their students that theory cannot be used to analyze, for [...]
Intro to Reading Like a Marxist (and not a boss)
This post is specifically for my students, but hey, if you need a brush-up on marxist criticism, read on! You have to know something of Marxism in order to study how class operates in our culture. If you are using Marxism, then you need to accept the following as facts Class is one of the [...]
Minority Report: The Gaze
One of the major criticisms of Laura Mulvey’s work in spectatorship and the gaze was her insistence on the passivity of the spectator, who she characterized as under the thrall of the image. I don’t want to fully counter Mulvey’s argument regarding the power of the image to create subject-positions and agency via an ideal-ego [...]
It’s All History?
A Dahomean Elder once said to, I believe, a missionary that ‘white people educate their children in schools and use books, but we use stories to educate our children, stories are our books.’ I find the preoccupation to classify and separate knowledges endlessly frustrating since it is clear that a western worldview is peculiar to [...]
Reading the Material (culture of books, that is)
I am going to be publishing a version of my lecture notes for a theory course as blog posts, because, let’s face it, the writing style for blogs is more entertaining than academic writing and it’s vastly easier to include images and video in this space than in, for example, Word. Print culture is a [...]
Sentimental Capitalism
I watched a talk by Salvoj Zizek the other day on the RSA network (have you seen the RSA talks? They are a wonderful blend of illustration and discourse). Zizek claims that we have moved from late capitalism into cultural capitalism. This argument is an old one, and Zizek does not claim this idea as [...]
You Are Here
I am an assistant professor in American literature, culture, and digital humanitiesat Trent University. This blog is where I think through my projects and create a digital learning community with my students. I am currently writing a book about the function of literary forms and figures in video games. In short, I am slowly reaching my goal to play video games for a living.
