A Reflection: Re-collecting some emerging ideas from the Ecologies of the Inhuman Symposium

Perhaps it’s my longing for summer weather that moves me in this way, but when I think about how to offer a reflection on the recent Ecologies of the Inhuman Symposium, I remember a different kind of reflecting. I imagine myself on a boat staring into the water. It’s an experience I recollect from past boat rides on a lazy river in northern Michigan. I gaze into calm ripples, sun overhead and down below - warmth and light reflecting back, touching me. I can see myself shimmering below myself, a face on a moving surface. Reflecting is a transformative collaboration - bending light-liquid on (sur)faces. But as I write this, I’m not on a boat and I am not looking into the water.  I must turn my attention to another kind of reflecting. Transformative and collaborative in its own way, this reflecting is a re-collecting and re-membering.  And, as James Smith, Steve Mentz, and Eileen Joy all noted, it is also a bit watery; there is a flow, a floating, even a foundering involved in reflecting on our inhuman enmeshments.

Each of the ten presenters who participated in the symposium offered dazzling reflections on what it means to be a part of vast ecologies where other things exist with and not for humans. How can we think about song, for example, as something that makes an instrument of a human body - a provocative question posed by Alan Montroso. Ian Bogost, during the discussion portion of the symposium, challenged us to think beyond human-centric metaphysics and seriously consider alternatives - toast ontology and chair ontology. Thinking such inclusivity, such shared agency, can be unsettling. What becomes of the human in inhuman ecologies?

It takes creativity and even bravery to contemplate our more than human entanglements within what Valerie Allen called a “nin-human” world.  It can feel, as Steve Mentz explained, like we are going down with the ship, sinking in oceans of ontologies. Again, I imagine myself in a boat cast upon the water, though this time when I look into the moving surface, it does not offer up a shimmering face - maybe no face at all. It is all motion, all turning and churning.  And the water does not stay outside the boat - it splashes, pours, invades, engulfs. And I do not stay inside the boat. Adding splashing to splashes, my movements are barely perceptible to the watery-world. It’s a harrowing scene to imagine but this is not the shipwreck Mentz envisions.  Instead, his shipwreck - our shipwreck - is how we already live in an inhuman world, already engulfed, always submerged in more than human realities. The overall sense of the symposium was not despairing but hopeful, wonder-ful, daring.  

As I re-collect - bring together again - with notes, memories, and audio files, what emerges for me is a sense of the importance of creative and collaborative modes of thinking about and imagining diverse ecologies. Anne Harris challenged us to consider poems, prayers and songs as modes of doing carpentry – ways of exploring our always more than human entanglements, and so I’ve decided to craft a shipwreck song. It is a re-membering and reimagining of a disorienting, recreating kind of immersion, a re-collection of images and ideas that surfaced during each of the ten presentations and the question and answer period that followed.  Tangled together and not in exacting order…

Shipwreck song.

Brief trips to the surface.

Shivering woman, tattered clothes, very near a green man and lamborghini-bull in asshole-orange going down with the ship.

Antony rallies, parasite-song through dead lips. Flood-force, two-face.

Revolving-revolution, time-tide coming in again: the re/creation of tree-tree, more tree than Deleuze and Guattari.

Fathom-full form-ing, an ontology of toast.

Text/urized measurements, cut-maker. Man-keel, keeling-over.

Not despair but something like ecstasy. A shipwreck song-sung prayer: we are cloud-like, up-depths with down-air.

"For a Muse of Fire," a 449th Shakespeare's Birthday Celebration

Join the GW Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare on Monday April 22 at 7:30 pm for "For a Muse of Fire," a 449th Shakespeare's Birthday Celebration featuring Helen Hayes Award recipients and actors Rick Foucheux and Naomi Jacobson. The fun, performance demo event will be in Post Hall on the Mount Vernon campus. The event is hosted by Professor Alan Wade.

Click HERE to see a larger version of this flyer.

"Hakluyt's Witnesses," a lecture by Nandini Das

Join us on Friday, April 12, for "Hakluyt's Witnesses," a lecture by Dr. Nandini Das.

Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the University of

Liverpool, UK. She received her first degree from Jadavpur University

(India), won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and was awarded her PhD

from the University of Cambridge. Her recent publications include an

edition of Robert Greene’s Planetomachia (2007), Renaissance Romance:

The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570–1620 (2011), and

essays on Renaissance prose fiction, Shakespeare, Richard Hakluyt and

early modern travel. She is volume editor of Elizabethan Levant Trade

and South Asia in the forthcoming edition of Richard Hakluyt’s The

Principal Navigations, to be published by Oxford University Press, and

is currently working on Common Places, a book on Renaissance travel

and cultural memory.

Hakluyt’s Witnesses

Why does one go about capturing the experience of travel through words, and how? Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poetry had claimed that ‘it is not gnosis but praxis must be the fruit’ of literature, rhetorically moving the reader from ‘well-knowing’ to ‘well-doing’. What then was the status of travel-writing, where text constantly threatened to substitute for action, and action undermined text’s efforts to record its essential nature with any degree of accuracy? This talk will explore Richard Hakluyt’s attempts to tackle those questions in his monumental Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589 and 1598-1600), which had significant implications both for English travel writing and for English prose.

This event will be held on the campus of The George Washington University, Rome Hall, suite 204. 

The lecture will begin at 3:00 pm and will be followed by a reception at 4:30. 

This event is free and open to the public.  Hope to see you there!

Symposium: Ecologies of the Inhuman

Ecologies of the Inhuman

a MEMSI sponsored symposium at The George Washington University

Friday, April 5 at 3 p.m.
Rome Hall, suite 771 (801 22nd St NW, Foggy Bottom Metro)

This symposium will be a conversation between scholars of medieval and early modern literature, culture and art whose work engages with ecotheory and object oriented philosophy. We are very happy to be able to welcome Dr. Ian Bogost, a videogame theorist, designer, and critic whose recent book Alien Phenomenology: or What It’s Like to Be a Thing, offers a very engaging description of what he calls “tiny ontology.”

Each participant will give a short talk and then the panelists will discuss emerging questions and issues regarding OOP, ecotheory, medieval and early modern studies.

This symposium is free and open to the public.  Please contact Emily at erusse4@gwmail.gwu.edu to RSVP. 

Presentations include:

• Fluid (James Smith, University of Western Australia) Currently a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, James studies fluid dynamism as a theme of intellection and imagination in the twelfth century.

• Trees (Alfred Siewers, Bucknell University) Dr. Siewers is an Associate Professor of English and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Environmental Studies Program at Bucknell University.  His work focuses on ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and ecosemiotics, in medieval and other non-modern literatures.

• Human (Alan Montroso, George Washington University) Alan is an independent scholar who works with vital materiality, object ontology, lithic matter, ciritical animal studies, queer ecology, liminal spaces, Middle English Breton lais and 12-15^th century writers.

• Matter (Valerie Allen, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY) A Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, Dr. Allen whose recent work addresses ecomaterialism in medieval literature.

• Post/apocalyptic (Eileen A. Joy, Southern Illinois Univ.–Edwardsville) Dr. Joy is an Associate Professor of English at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Lead Ingenitor of the BABEL Working Group, and director of Punctum Books. Her current projects explore object oriented philosophy and the post-human.  

• Shipwreck (Steve Mentz, St Johns University) A Professor of English at St. John’s University, Dr. Mentz’s work focuses on ecotheory and Shakespeare studies.

• Hewn (Anne F. Harris, DePauw University) A Professor of Art History and director of the Women’s Studies Program at DePauw University, Dr. Harris works with ecotheory and medieval art. 

• Recreation (Lowell Duckert, West Virginia University) Dr. Duckert is an Assistant Professor of English at West Virginia University and a recent graduate of The George Washington University.  His research focuses primarily on early modern drama and travel writing, as well as ecocriticism and actor-network theory. 

• Green (Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University) Dr. Dinshaw is a Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, English, and Chair of the Social and Cultural Analysis Department at New York University. Her research interests include medieval literature and culture, theories of historiography and theories and experiences of temporality. 

• Inhuman (Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology) A videogame designer, theorist, and critic, Dr. Bogost is the Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and a Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His recent work engages with object oriented philosophy and “tiny ontology.”

The Fierce Urgency of Now, a lecture by Will Stockton

The Fierce Urgency of Now: Queerness, Presentism, and Romeo and Juliet
- a lecture by Will Stockton
Friday, March 1, 3 pm 
The George Washington Campus, Rome Hall, suite 771

Dr. Stockton is an Associate Professor at Clemson University where he teaches classes on Renaissance literature and queer theory.  He is the author of Playing Dirty: Sexuality and Waste in Early Modern Comedy (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and the co-editor of Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze (Ashgate, 2009).  His most recent edited book, Sex Before Sex: Figuring the Act in Early Modern England, was released earlier this year (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). 

This event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception. 

Upcoming MEMSI events in February and March

February 19: Anthony Bale will be discussing his new translation of Mandeville’s Travels as the guest lecturer in Jeffrey Cohen's graduate seminar Environ Body Object Veer. You are welcome to attend the seminar this evening, but please contact Professor Cohen first for the additional readings (besides Mandeville in Bale's translation).

Dr. Bale is a Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London and is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center, North Carolina. His research interests include late medieval travel literature, theories of anti-Semitism and the history of the pre-expulsion medieval English Jewish community.  He is author of the award winning monographs, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (Reaktion Books, 2010).  He is the editor of St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (York Medieval Press, 2009) and the co-editor of John Lydgate’s “Lives of SS Edmund & Fremund” and the “Extra Miracles of St. Edmund (Winter Verlag, 2009).  His most recent project is a new edition of John Mandeville’s The Book of Marvels and Travels (Oxford World’s Classics, 2012).

March 1, Friday afternoon, 3 PM: Will Stockton will present “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Queerness, Presentism, and Romeo and Juliet.”  Dr. Stockton is an Associate Professor at Clemson University where he teaches classes on Renaissance literature and queer theory.  He is the author of Playing Dirty: Sexuality and Waste in Early Modern Comedy (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and the co-editor of Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze (Ashgate, 2009).  His most recent edited book, Sex Before Sex: Figuring the Act in Early Modern England, was released earlier this year (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The lecture will be followed by a reception, and welcomes all who wish to attend.

Both of these events are free and open to the public and will take place on The George Washington University campus, Rome Hall 771. 

The Digital Humanities Symposium is next week. Don't forget to register!

GW Digital Humanities Symposium

Thursday January 24 - Saturday January 26, 2013

A Symposium at George Washington University

SATURDAY'S EVENT TIME AND LOCATION HAVE CHANGED!  SYMPOSIUM EVENTS ON SATURDAY, JAN 26, WILL NOW BE HELD IN POST HALL ON THE MT. VERNON CAMPUS.  EVENTS WILL START AT 9 AM.  PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR A LINK TO THE MT. VERNON CAMPUS WEBSITE AND TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS.

Digital humanities is a vibrant field that uses digital technologies to study the interactions between cultural artifacts and the society. In our second decade of the twenty-first century, we face a number of questions about the values, methods, and goals of humanistic inquiries at the intersection of digital media and theory.

Panel presentations are designed with a broad audience in mind and address multiple disciplines that range from computer science and media studies to gender and race studies, digital pedagogy, and literary studies.  Topics we will address in this inaugural GW Digital Humanities Symposium (initiated by Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute and Dean's Scholars in Shakespeare Program) include:

Digital and “analogue” scholarship: goals, methods, best practices

Challenges of working with and against multiple media

(In)visible histories of race, gender, and avenues of access

Disability, cultural difference, and linguistic diversity

Visual and print cultures, embodiment, archiving the ephemeral

Canon formation, close and distant reading strategies

Resistance to digital humanities and issues of legitimacy

Promise, perils, and future trends of digital humanities and pedagogy

The symposium will feature provocative 15-minute presentations; a Skype session; hands-on proof-of-concept sessions; digital pedagogy sessions; emphasis on live discussion and debates; free Wi-Fi for all - bring your own laptop, tablet, or smart phone; on-site digital humanities book display and sales; videos of the talks may be available online.

The symposium will begin on Thursday evening with a screening of the film “Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words” presented by director Yunah Hong. Lily Wong, an Assistant Professor of Literature at American University, will offer a response after the screening.  This event will be held in the Media and Public Affairs building on The George Washington University Campus, 805 21^st St. NW, room 310.  The film will begin at 6:30 pm and has a run time of about 90 minutes.

Check out the event poster!

Friday’s events will begin at 9 am in the Jack Morton Auditorium, 805 21^st NW, with opening remarks by Alex Huang and Vice Provost Paul Berman followed by the keynote presentation, “The Digital Text as Inhabited Object,” delivered by Elaine Treharne, professor of English at Stanford University.  It will be a full day of panels covering a wide range of topics. You can view a schedule of panels and presentation abstracts on the Digital Humanities website.  The symposium will conclude on Saturday with a half-day of panel presentations focusing on pedagogy and best practices.  Saturday's events will be held in Post Hall on the Mt. Vernon campus of The George Washington University.  Please click HERE for directions to the Mt Vernon campus. Post Hall is located of the main floor of the Academic Building.  The Vern Express offers free rides between the two campuses throughout the day.

The Digital Humanities Symposium is a free event and is open to the public but we do ask that you register using the link on the website if you plan to attend.