Spring EVENTS calendar INSIDE, page 31

Comparative Media Studies|Writing In Medias Res cmsw.mit.edu spring 2014

“The Paradoxical Arts of CMS/W”

Digital Learning in the Humanities Joe Haldeman’s “Work Done for Hire” Faculty and Alumni Updates Comparative Media Studies|Writing

Spring 2014

3 TO OUR READERS “What they’re writing about science and ABOUT IN MEDIAS RES a Focus on the Arts technology is astoundingly prescient and Edward Schiappa true,” Williams says. “They could see over the Comparative Media Studies/Writing horizon.” Taking an approach Williams has Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4 FEATURES used throughout her career, “The Triumph E15-331 and 14E-303 The Paradoxical Arts of CMS/W Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 02139 of Human Empire” employs fictional works William Uricchio 617.253.3599 / [email protected] / cmsw.mit.edu as a window into the human response to rapid cmsw.mit.edu/magazine 8 Interview social transformation.” people of the Book: Whitney —Peter Dizikes on Rosalind Williams’ latest Trettien, CMS ’09 Head book, p. 12 “When I first moved to Durham, I had 28 Edward Schiappa, John E. Burchard Professor boxes of books and no furniture; I had to get of the Humanities creative.” “Although we do not meet under one umbrella called “Digital Humanities,” our 12 History and Technology projects contribute new programs, technolo- Research Managers adrift in a Sea of Change gies, and pedagogy in a wide variety of areas. Federico Casalegno, Mobile Experience Lab Literature faculty use MIT-designed tools Sasha Costanza-Chock, Center for Civic Media 16 Digital Humanities I class on Digital Humanities like Annotation Studio (digital marginalia), Kurt Fendt, HyperStudio Premieres with Tech-Savvy Locast (digital mapping), and MetaMedia Fox Harrell, ICE Lab Approaches (multimedia archives), as well as an array of Nick Montfort, The Trope Tank open-source programs in their classes.” Scot Osterweil, The Education Arcade 18 Digital Humanities II —Wyn Kelley, p. 15 Philip Tan, MIT Game Lab How MIT Is Addressing the Sarah Wolozin, Open Documentary Lab Challenges of Digital Learning in “Chelsea Barabas, Heather Craig, Alex the Humanities Gonçalves, Alexis Hope, and Jude Mwenda Staff 18 Excerpt are exploring the role citizen monitoring can Jessica Dennis “Work Done for Hire” play in holding elected leaders accountable Financial Assistant for promises they make about infrastructure. Jill Janows 19 Academic Publishing They are designing and piloting a mobile- Grants Developer and Administrator Historians Look to Preserve based tool called Promise Tracker.” Shannon Larkin “The Way Things Are in Digital Graduate Administrator —Center for Civic Media update, p. 28 Publishing” Karinthia Louis “The question is to what degree academic Administrative Assistant associations, universities, and university “In my journey as a storyteller and war Michael Rapa presses should continue to find ways to correspondent, the OpenDocLab at the Technology Support Specialist protect the logic of how they operate today MIT has been key in opening my mind to Alexandra Sear in a changing climate or how deeply they unknown technological possibilities and to Administrative Assistant, should push their profession into where the start implementing tomorrow’s interactive Writing Across the Curriculum world is headed.” and immersive techniques for my current Becky Shepardson Academic Coordinator 20 people, places, things project ‘The Enemy’.” Sarah Smith “She Became a ‘Crowd-Sourced’ —Open Documentary Lab update, p. 30 Celeb” Administrative Officer Jessica Tatlock 21 Research Group updates Events Coordinator The Latest from Our Groups Andrew Whitacre Communications Director events Cover image: The Babbling Brook, 2014. By Catherine 24 cmsw.mit.edu/people Spring 2014 Talks D'Ignazio and the Institute for Infinitely Small Things. TO OUR READERS

A Focus on the Arts By Edward Schiappa, Head of CMS/W

“This issue of In Medias Res features the role of the arts in CMS/W. Anyone spending time on the MIT campus will soon realize that in addition to being the world’s finest science and engineering school, MIT has a vibrant arts scene. By the time you finish reading this issue, you will have a good overview of the ways in which CMS/W participates and contributes to the arts.”

reetings! As the new Head of Next up is an exciting excerpt from Reader collects and comments upon classic Comparative Media Studies/ Professor Joe Haldeman’s newest novel, Work work on sound in the human sciences. Writing, I welcome you to Done for Hire. Though this book will be far Also featured in this issue of In Medias this issue of In Medias Res. from his last, it will be the last published as Res is an overview of Professor Rosalind GProfessor James Paradis stepped down this an MIT professor as Joe has decided to retire William’s fascinating new book, The Triumph past September after many years of service after spending the past thirty years teaching of Human Empire: Verne, Morris, and Stevenson that culminated in the merger of Compara- and writing in the department. Save the date! at the End of the World (University of Chicago tive Media Studies and Writing & Human- A retirement bash for Professor Haldeman Press). Professor Williams shows that for istic Studies. After I spent most of the fall as will take place on September 12, 2014. Verne, Morris, and Stevenson, and their Interim Head, Deborah Fitzgerald — Dean Associate Professor Fox Harrell’s work in readers, romance fantasy was an exception- of our School of Arts, Humanities, and Social his Imagination, Computation, and Expres- ally powerful way of grappling with the Sciences — named me as Head on December sion Lab is a brilliant example of how work political, technical, and environmental chal- 18, 2013. Professor Paradis is a hard act to being done in CMS/W contributes to the lenges of modernity. follow, but I will do my best. arts, a fact recognized last year when his work Rounding out this issue is an update on the This issue of In Medias Res features the role was included in CTheory’s “Artforum Top important role CMS/W is playing in the de- of the arts in CMS/W. Anyone spending time 10.” This accomplishment and special events velopment of the digital humanities. From a on the MIT campus will soon realize that in are regularly featured on the CMS/W website class jointly taught by Professor Paradis and addition to being the world’s finest science (cmsw.mit.edu), so if you find the articles in Principal Research Associate Kurt Fendt to and engineering school, MIT has a vibrant this issue of In Medias Res intriguing, be sure the development of platforms such as An- arts scene. By the time you finish reading this to follow us online (CMS/W events can be notation Studio, a new way for students and issue, you will have a good overview of the followed on Twitter or Facebook, as well). scholars to annotate texts collaboratively, ways in which CMS/W participates and con- Another exciting example of an ongoing MIT is leading the way to exploring the tributes to the arts. project in the arts is the MIT Open Docu- Digital Humanities. Professor William Uricchio begins our mentary Lab’s “docubase” project (docubase. As you can see, CMS/W contributes journey with his account of Comparative mit.edu), which gathers together a fascinating in important ways to the arts at MIT and Media Studies and the arts. collection of interactive, collaborative, loca- beyond. We hope you enjoy this issue of In Whitney Trettien is now a Ph.D. candidate tion-based, and community-created projects. Medias Res. in English at Duke University, and is an Later this spring, CMS/W will feature alumna of Comparative Media Studies (SM, a visit from Professor Jonathan Sterne of 2009). Here she completed a thesis titled McGill University. Professor Sterne writes “Computers, Cut-ups and Combinatory about sound and music, communication tech- Volvelles: An Archaeology of Text Generating nologies old and new, contemporary cultural Mechanisms.” She is interviewed in “People studies, and a range of other matters. He has of the Book” by Gretchen E. Henderson, two books: MP3: The Meaning of a Format who recently completed a Mellon Postdoc- considers the mp3 as an historical, cultural toral Fellowship here at MIT. and political phenomenon. The Sound Studies spring 2014 3 FEATURE The Paradoxical Arts of CMS/W William Uricchio, Professor of Comparative Media Studies

rt, like pornography in Justice Potter Stewart’s view, CMS/W encapsulates this two-sided interaction, compressing is one of those things that you know when you see. it into one department. Creative writing, especially in the hands Certainly in an era where artists, publics and markets of such luminaries as Junot Diaz, Joe Haldeman, Helen Lee, Alan have challenged traditional arbiters of taste, Justice Lightman and colleagues, speaks to artistic excellence of the known Stewart’sA logic is hard to dispute. But despite what we as individuals and widely accepted variety. Indeed, they have garnered virtually may think, the social reality of art —­ of producing and assessing it, every literary prize of any importance. But others in CMS/W are of circulating and preserving it ­— persists. It’s culture, after all, and pushing the boundaries of art through less familiar means. Consider therefore socially situated, even as it feels defined by the eye of the Nick Montfort and Fox Harrell’s work with computational media; beholder. or the courses that explore the making and expressive capacities of Scholars from Becker to Bourdieu have explored art’s social con- games, films and videos; or research projects that engage with civic tingency and institutional forms, and education invariably enters their art (The Center for Civic Media), location-based storytelling (Mobile stories. Whether as an agent of reproduction, a shaper of hierarchies, Experience Lab) and interactive documentaries (the Open Documen- or simply a microcosm of the larger order, education plays an instru- tary Lab)…. Each of these (and many more like them!) has pushed the mental role in the value chain of art. One of the great things about boundaries of art, embracing new technologies and deploying them in MIT is that, even in the arts, it manages to be an exception to the rule. unexpected ­— and unexpectedly powerful ­— ways. Yes, it hews to the patterns that sociologists of art have discerned, but Given this elegant match, it would seem that CMS/W is the place it does so with a major difference. The Center for Art, Science and to be, infused by artistic currents both traditional and emergent, and Technology (CAST) marks MIT’s latest endeavor to push the bound- blessed with an abundance of excellence in both categories. But there aries of artistic convention, drawing on micro- and nanotechnology, is a catch, and it’s not the W-word to the right of the slash…. neuroscience and anthropology (among many other disciplines) for its work. And ongoing activities in ACT (the Program in Art, Culture an excursus on media…. and Technology) and MAS (the Program in Media Arts and Sciences ­— aka, the Media Lab) offer their own variations, drawing on MIT’s Media may be central to how we experience the world, connect with rich tradition of artistic innovation rooted in engineering and science. one another and represent ourselves, but, in Jack Roy’s immortal At the same time that it pursues these ‘outside-the-box’ innovations, words, they get no respect. Photography, film, comic books, televi- the Institute has been enormously successful in its commitment to sion, games … aesthetically speaking, each has its own history of being artistic excellence in a more traditional register ­— theater, music, treated with active indifference if not outright contempt. The roots of the visual arts — and in the process assuring a dialogue between the this narrative might be traced to the Reformation, where the abstract known and the emergent, the established and the yet-to-be-defined. word trumped the visceral image. But by the end of the 19th Century, concerns grew more specific. Photography and film were initially dismissed as little more than technological tricks, mere instru- ments of mechanical reproduction. And while any film student can rehearse the theoretical volleys of Arnheim, Bazin, Balázs, Kracauer, etc. to recover the medium’s aesthetic po- tentials, Hollywood’s mass popularity and industrial mode of production introduced another set of withering critiques to the mix, including everything from (lowbrow) taste to (corporate) authorship. And then there were the social panics. Sweating palms, bad eyes, demoralization … a school in crime … these and even more lurid charges seemed to cling like bad memories to popular media. Add the Frankfurt School’s critique (as much an in- iSkyTV, 2013. By the Institute for Infinitely Small Things with Sophia Brueckner. iSkyTV is an online artwork dictment of the audience’s critical capacities that recreates Yoko Ono's video artwork "SkyTV". In iSkyTV you can point Google's StreetView cameras at the sky as the ideological agenda of media industry), anywhere in the world. Watch iSkyTV at http://turbulence.org/Works/iSkyTV/. multiply by Bourdieu’s wary stance (the con-

4 in medias res FEATURE

formity at the heart of all that is middle-brow), and the contours of sayers. Television, in turn, became an object of study with the coming media’s ‘image problem’ begin to emerge. of a more enticing target ­— the computer game. And games gained True, artists from Fernand Léger and Erik Satie to Samuel Beckett ground as fresh rounds of hand wringing attended the new kids on the and Andy Warhol worked with the film medium, Nam June Paik block … Facebook, Twitter and their ilk. and the Fluxus crowd with television, and nearly every -ism in 20th But while today’s computational media, with potentials for inter- Century modernism’s lexicon had its media moment. For the reso- action, widespread participation and algorithmic creation, and their lutely avant-garde, it approached something like perfection, doubly mobile, app and social media cultures, pose new challenges, they have outside the bounds of the respectably quotidian. The less popular the also entered the scene differently positioned than their mass media form, the greater its artistic potential! But something like redemp- predecessors. Tainted to some extent because of their popularity, they tion for the pleasures associated with popular media seemed out of the also enjoy the allure and productive associations of their computa- question until the arrival of British Cultural Studies and the ferment tional platforms. As a result, they have largely sidestepped the curse in the field that followed in its wake. The demystification of power, of mass media. That said, despite the convincing efforts of their art- the joys of fandom, the creativity of resistant readings, and more, ist-practitioners, they have not been deemed as sufficiently mature in all offered ways — after decades of indifference — to recover some their expression of aesthetic capacities. So they, too, remain caught in elements of value in legacy media, even if it wasn’t exactly old school something of a no-man’s land, although for different reasons than film art. Creative thinking about the cultural operations of media texts and television. ­— hierarchization, affiliation, anxieties, deployment and repurposing Like nanotechnology and neuroscience, media have rich aesthetic ­— opened the doors to long marginalized (and extremely popular) potentials; unlike them, they are burdened by their troublesome forms, even in literature, music and advertising. The Pop movement cultural histories and suspected for their popularity. So how might did its bit as well, (a Campbell’s soup can could be art when viewed we conceptualize them as objects of study? In what domains should from the right perspective). And persistence even paid off, with the we place them? And how might their framing in an academic setting film community’s long-repeated claims to their medium’s artistic bear upon our ability to see their aesthetic and expressive potentials to status finding increasing traction atabout the time that film reached move, to provoke insight, to foster affiliation? the grand old age of 100 (and the photo-chemical grain began to give way to the pixel). media, the academy … and art To the casual observer, it might almost seem as though respect- ability (and thus aesthetic potential) in popular media is a relational The disciplines that constitute the Humanities in many cases emerged affair. Film entered the university as an object of study shortly after with 19th Century models of institutionalized education, at least television appeared on the scene and attracted the attention of the nay- in the US. By mid-Century, as a wave of nationalism crystallized

Image from "Highrise/One millionth Tower," a short documentary celebrating the unique process of collaboration that brings the story of One Millionth Tower to life on the web. By Katarina Cizek. http://highrise.nfb.ca/onemillionthtower spring 2014 5 FEATURE

into invented traditions, disciplines joined in, forming professional to make comparisons across theoretical domains and to broker the societies and reifying their identities (MLA 1883; AHA 1884). The creative tensions between mens et manus is core to our mission, what social sciences followed a bit later (AAA 1902; APSA 1903; ASA could be finer? 1905). But the latecomers, the post-World War Two spate of ‘studies’ What to do with this awkward (from a disciplinary perspective) or programs (American Studies; Women’s Studies; Science, Technology perfect (from a CMS/W) fit? It poses a dilemma common to studies and Society; Film Studies…), were cut from different stuff. American areas, but one that gives ‘comparativists’ their particular dynamic. Art Studies, for example, drew on history, literature, political science and as practice and site of critical reflection and even activism is central sociology for its work; and Media Studies were equally undisciplined, to the mix. But somehow, media ­— both legacy and emergent ­— drawing on art history, literature, linguistics and sociology among keep slipping from sight in the arts agenda. Is media’s shadowy past to other areas. blame? Or should we look to their refusal to be properly disciplined as The point is simple: not only did media have a lingering whiff of part of the problem? Or might we turn the question around, get out suspicion about them, but when finally admitted into the hallowed of a defensive posture, and look at what’s really being done with media halls of higher education, they were studied in a disturbingly undis- at places like CMS/W? ciplined manner. For media, this has proven to be something of a blessing and a curse, with some universities distributing the study of art! media into different faculties: media studies (film and television) in the Humanities; mass communications (press and broadcasting) in the Is it art? Taking Howard Becker’s ‘art worlds’ perspective, one would Social Sciences; media making in the Arts; and ‘new media’ in an look to endorsements by “authorized interpretive communities” such array of locations, including Computer Science. as the National Endowment for the Arts, which supports Fox Harrell’s MIT’s constellation of perspectives as embodied in SHASS offers a media work in the Imagination, Computation, Expression (ICE) Lab great opportunity, since CMS/W courses make sense variously within and the work of the Open Documentary Lab (ODL); or MIT’s Visiting Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts frameworks. Some courses Artists Program, which supports Emmy Award-winning documentary explore the work of texts, styles, systems, meanings and contexts; maker Kat Cizek’s year-long residency with ODL. One would consider while others consider their social operations and reception patterns; the actual practices that students and faculty engage in — the games and still others are concerned with the art and design practice of and videos made, the interactive poetry programs and documentaries making and evoking. The problem is that from a disciplinary per- produced. One would look to the Civic Art program at the Center spective, where even one of these tents can seem over capacious, for Civic Media and Catherine D’Ignazio’s remarkable public space this seems somehow, well … wrong. It violates the inherently con- projects or Marisa Jahn’s activist art, including the NannyVan. And servative, tradition-steeped commitment to a particular intellectual one would look to discourse ­— from the many artists who have spoken stance. But from a CMS/W vantage point, where precisely the ability at the CMS Colloquia, to the framing of the creative work coming

Docubase from the MIT Open Documentary Lab, opendoclab.mit.edu.

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Created by REV- (lead artist: Marisa Jahn) in collaboration with The National Domestic Workers Alliance, the NannyVan is a bright orange mobile design lab and sound studio that "accelerates the movement for domestic workers' rights nationwide." With its pull-out table, colorful design, and acoustic recording booth, the NannyVan convenes domestic workers workers and employers alike to produce and provide new fair care tools. from the classroom. And of course, one would look to the program’s their power. Popularity holds the potential of broad aesthetic engage- graduates and especially those active as storytellers, creators of virtual ment, not art as a mere ornament of distinction and taste hierarchiza- worlds, filmmakers, and digital artists. Media ­— and media at CMS/W tion. As the aesthetic interest in nanotechnology attests, we inhabit ­— as art? Becker would certainly answer in the affirmative! an increasing technologized age — what better means to inscribe and Art as act, as production practice, as mode of interrogation, as a reflect upon in our artistic practice? As the pace of change acceler- means of engaging, connecting, mobilizing… defines a robust and ates, not only does technology’s relevance but also our awareness of its coherent strand of work in CMS/W. Much of that work plays out importance to the artistic practices of the past, and media in this sense with emergent media forms and in newly-enabled constellations of bring extra value to the table. And as for the challenge of the undisci- networked publics. Like the embrace of neuroscience or micro-tech- plined, can there be a stronger endorsement of radical potential? nology for aesthetic ends, this work is highly exploratory, defining The pages of In Media Res, like CMS/W research labs and class- the ever-shifting borders of artistic engagement. In the case of rooms, like the work of many of our colleagues, students and graduates, media, the legacy of inherited prejudices also happens to be a font of all attest to a deeply rooted engagement in artistic traditions … and knowledge that can inform ongoing artistic practice on the frontiers those from the humanities and social sciences … and to an ongoing of the new. And better, the triangulation of humanities, social sciences commitment to artistic practice. and arts perspectives on media enriches each, revealing developmen- tal patterns, offering context and yielding insights into the reception process. So what’s the balance? On one hand, when it comes to art, the (mass) media seem unduly burdened by their popularity, limited by their technology, and challenged by their lack of disciplinary coherence. On the other, these very elements constitute the sources of

spring 2014 7 INFETEATURVRIEWES People of the Book: Whitney Trettien, CMS ’09 Q&A with past MIT Mellon Scholar Gretchen Henderson

Reprinted, with permission and minor changes, from the Ploughsares blog (http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/people-of-the-book-whitney-tret- tien/). People of the Book is a Ploughshares interview series gathering those engaged with books, broadly defined. As participants answer the same set of questions, their varied responses chart an informal ethnogra- phy of the book, highlighting its rich history as a mutable medium and anticipating its potential future. This interview from January brings us former Mellon Scholar Gretchen Henderson and Whitney Trettien, an ’09 Comparative Media Studies graduate1 and now Ph.D. candidate at Duke University. Trettien is finishing up a dissertation on the Little Gidding Harmonies, a set of seventeenth-century cut-and-paste biblical concordances. She schemes on a variety of projects related to old books and new media. Visit her online at whitneyannetrettien.com.

Gretchen Henderson: How do you define a “book”? Whitney Trettien Whitney Trettien: In ordinary use, ‘book’ for me means ‘codex,’ a physical form in which a stack of relatively flat material is bound signifies within the history of English literature. along one edge, and can be opened or closed. It’s a media platform. In my work, I try to hold this inherited interpretive framework in ‘E-book’, then, is a bit of a misnomer: the electronic tablet is the abeyance in order to see the accreted remnants of all moments in a platform, delivering long-form (that is, “book-length”) content. book’s existence. Thus the Beowulf manuscript contains not only a text scratched on vellum near the end of the tenth century, but also the How do you engage regularly with books, beyond reading? sixteenth-century ownership mark of Laurence Nowell, damage from a fire in 1731, paper frames added in 1845, and two sets of foliation In my research, I spend a lot marks — all of which it shares with the three other manuscripts that of time examining books it was bound with in the seventeenth century. Although we tend to The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope Alexander of Works Poetical The from fore-edge top, At as artifacts, studying their think of old books as enabling time travel — literally putting us in binding, their paper, how touch with a distant past — they are in fact palimpsests that condense, they’re put together, looking remediate and reconfigure history. More than reading books, I’m for traces of readers’ interac- interested in excavating bibliograph- tions. Museums and even to ic evidence of how various owners, some extent reading rooms authors, readers, and institutions, at have taught us to gaze upon multiple points in time, saw them- old books as time capsules selves in relation to their inherited past physically embodying the past and an imagined future. — so when we hover over the glass-encased Beowulf manu- What has been your most unusual script in the gallery at the interaction with books? British Library, we marvel at how old it is, and what that age My most unusual interaction is probably also my most mundane: I use them as furniture. My coffee table is , 1863. , 1 Her CMS master’s thesis is Computers, Cut-ups and Combinatory Volvelles: An Ar- four stacks of Reader’s Digest Condensed chaeology of Text-Generating Mechanisms: http://cmsw.mit.edu/archaeology-of-text-gener- Books — a lovely set, each cover similar “Stump” ating-mechanisms/

8 in medias res INFETEATURVRIEWES

in design but differently colored — topped with an old printer’s letter- “My most unusual interaction is probably also case salvaged from a warehouse full of antique junk. The Story of Civili- my most mundane: I use them as furniture. zation makes a lovely window seat My coffee table is four stacks ofReader’s Digest topped with plants; several Funk and Wagnalls are a sturdy endtable. Condensed Books — a lovely set, each cover Old dictionary bindings frame similar in design but differently colored — woodcuts from The Faerie Queene and cover light sockets. Pages that topped with an old printer’s lettercase salvaged fell out of a paperback copy of from a warehouse full of antique junk.” Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Anatomical fugitive sheet. Bear It Away shade the bulbs in my Credit: Wellcome Library, London. chandelier. When I first moved to What material part of the book interests you most? Durham, I had 28 boxes of books and no furniture; I had to get creative. Recently, the fore-edge, opposite the spine. The fore-edge is our I’ve since started using books for art projects, too — like a tree stump entrance into the book, where our thumbs first dig in and pull open the sculpture that I built during a residency at Elsewhere in Greensboro. covers; it leads us to a world of surfaces that compose the book’s pages. Yet it’s also where the codex makes visible its own depth, showing us Do you have favorite tidbits from the history of books? the third dimension of paper. In other words, the fore-edge is where paper becomes a page, and pages turn back into paper — that magical I love moveable parts in books. The history of early European printing transformation upon which the technology of the book depends. is full of these paper mechanisms. Nested discs called volvelles were The fore-edge has also been the site of designs both functional and used as calendars and astrolabes for calculating dates and the position aesthetic. Before we began shelving printed books vertically and spine of the stars; in one particularly fascinating example, the baroque out, they were often stacked flat and spine back; as a result, some poet Georg Philipp Harsdörffer created what he called the Fünffach- early book owners wrote the title on the book’s fore-edge for easy er Denckring der Teutschen Sprache, or Five-fold Thoughtring of the filing. Fore-edges have also been gilded, gauffered, and painted with German Language, a kind of generative dictionary made from five designs, sometimes in such a way that the image is only revealed upon nested paper wheels, each inscribed with a syllable. Turning the discs opening the book. constructed new words by combining syllables. A particularly lovely seventeenth-century example of fore-edge In the sixteenth century, Vesalius, considered the founder of modern painting is a Bible and Book of Common Prayer at Harvard’s human anatomy, instructed readers to cut out his printed images of the Houghton Library. Although the closed edge is gilded, when opened, human body and reassemble them in order to learn how the different the gentle slope of the book’s large, folio-size pages reveal King parts fit together. His pedagogical use of cut-outs blossomed into Charles II, staring at you while you read. He disappears again behind the genre of flap anatomies, printed broadsheets showing the human gilt as the book closes. form pasted with printed organs — the kidneys, the uterus, the lungs. The practice of painting the fore-edge in this way reached new Readers (users?) could lift these delicate paper organs in succession, heights in the nineteenth century, when misty romantic landscapes performing a kind of “live” dissection on the body. became popular. The Boston Public Library has digitized its sizeable Moving parts had other uses, too. In a 1570 vernacular edition of collection; browsing it online gives one a good sense of how detailed Euclid’s Elements we find pasted-down flaps that allowed the reader these small paintings can be. Some books even feature a double to transform a flat printed square into a three-dimensional pyramid, painting, such that different images appear and disappear depending thereby teaching geometric principles through interaction. Eigh- on which direction the pages are fanned. This charming art lives on teenth-century flapbooks were used to instill gender identities in today in the work of Martin Frost, whose exquisite figures almost children; Jacquiline Reid-Walsh has been studying these marvelous seem to shimmy with the movement of the pages. artifacts and has secured a grant to build a digital archive of them. Other flaps were used to conceal portraits, inviting readers to engage If your house was burning and you had to take three books, in a playful revealing and concealing of authorial identity. which would you save? Why? Although these examples seem unusual, moving parts are far more prevalent in early printed books than we might think. In fact, there’s I’m really not sure I would take any! That isn’t to say they aren’t much to be learned about the history of printing and binding by precious to me. The annotations in my copies of Chaucer, Wittgen- studying them. Early books are not just pages of linear text; they’re stein, Calvino or Woolf would be missed, though not for their content assemblages of paper technologies, designed to embody and produce so much as their concretization of hard-fought Knowledge. My small different material relationships between a reader and an idea. but growing collection of pop-ups is dear to me, as are a few beautiful

spring 2014 9 INFETEATURVRIEWES

nineteenth-century children’s books I’ve picked up over the years, of the Geneva Bible — a copy that is no doubt itself variant in some mostly chromolithographs (my favorite form of book illustration). way — becomes “the Geneva Bible”; a digitized nineteenth-century And of course there are a handful of books owned for sentimen- edition of King Lear becomes, through Project Gutenberg, simply tal value, like a copy of Gustave Dore’s illustrated edition of Dante’s “King Lear,” its dense editorial history eradicated under the banner Inferno, once owned by my Great-Great Aunt Helen, a schoolteach- of open access. er who scandalously rode a big-wheel bike. Strange, I know, that Book historians and librarians are acutely aware of this tension. someone so enamored of the materiality of books wouldn’t miss any Mitch Fraas recently tweeted two very different looking pages from of her own if they were lost in a fire — but true. Most books can be two photographed books of the same edition in order to highlight why replaced, and thankfully sentiment doesn’t burn as easily as paper. we need multiple digitized copies. This kind of historical knowledge — the realm of book historians and librarians — is needed now more What about the current moment for books interests you? than ever, and should be part of the conversation about digitization practices. Our current era of mass digitization is radically reconfiguring the re- lationship between past and present. Photographs of old or rare books Where do you go to find and/or give away books? show them frozen in time by endlessly reproducing and repeating a single moment — the moment when the book was photographed. At I gravitate to those places that are “find and give away” — where our the same time, the physical object (in most cases) continues to exist media detritus is sucked up and spit back at us in all its ugly, ephemeral glory. In Maryland, near where I grew up, there’s a used bookstore (and record shop, and video rental) called Wonderbooks. It’s the kind of place that specializes in old sheet music, Christmas albums, and the odd assortment of Desktop Physicians. As a kid, I would comb its tall, disorderly stacks for cheap and curious bits of literature and poetry — inevitably in the form of a decades-old Penguin paperback, its binding glue so dry that the book would start flaking pages halfway through reading it. This desperate, greedy bid for knowledge wouldn’t have been possible without Wonderbooks’ indiscrim- inate BUY/SELL/TRADE policy. We tend to think of libraries as the storehouse of our cultural memory, but they don’t store the past so much as package and present it in a way that channels our vision of the future. Places like Wonderbooks, though, offer a much broader glimpse of our history, shoring up all the detritus excised from our more venerated institu- tions. I’ve also found many of my favorite books in dumpsters. When working in a public library, I learned just how many discarded books are tossed in the bins out back — especially books of the kind I collect, old dictionaries and encyclopedia sets. Ever in in a library somewhere, accreting history, aging. Add to this Dorian search of more shelf space, public libraries are shedding their reference Gray-ish scenario the fact that photographs of a single copy represent works like dead skin, replacing them with computers and database an entire edition, which itself may exist in variant copies, and the subscriptions. Their loss is my gain; I love these extinct dinosaurs, significance of this transformation for research begins to become clear. with their faux leather covers and absurd claims to a “universal” or We’re living in a moment that loves the idiosyncrasy of biblio- “total” printing of language and knowledge. (Websters and Ency- graphic oddities, from annotated copies and Sammelbände to books clopedia Britannica played an important role in furnishing middle that have been cut-up or otherwise bear evidence of readerly ma- class homes, displaying upwardly mobile aspirations toward erudition nipulation. Yet it’s also a moment of reproducibility, in which pages through their sheer, shelf-sagging enormity.) once viewed in person by a privileged few are accessible to a wide I’m not sad these books are being replaced by more efficient, up- audience in both facsimile and plain text form. Thus a digitized copy to-date electronic reference works; but I do like to save the ones I

10 in medias res INFETEATURVRIEWES

(perhaps already are) calcified, even more so than those of printed books, and I don’t see many interesting de- velopments in that vein (the occasional iPad “pop-up” book aside). A renewed interest in the materiality of the codex is generating some of the most experimental experi- ments in hybrid print/digital publishing. I’m thinking of Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse’s Between Page and Screen, in which the book is read by holding printed codes before a webcam, as well as Caitlin Fisher’s recent augmented reality art. If networked digital culture continues to dissolve into everyday objects — into a pair of glasses, or the heel of a shoe — then we may begin to see more printed digital books, which are read the “old-fashioned” way but experienced as something wholly different. I hope so, anyway. Reading an augmented reality printed paper e-book seems to me a far richer experience than Between Page and Screen tapping through videos embedded in longform text on an iPad.

What question do you wish that I had asked related in some way to books? Ask, then answer it.

Q: A copy of the Bay Psalm Book recently sold for a record $14.2 million. Why spend that much on a book that is available to all in digital form?

A: The Bay Psalm Book is a perfect example of what I described earlier as our relationship to old books as time capsules of the past. It’s certainly not the rarest book one could own; eleven copies of its first edition are extant — a small number, to be sure, but hardly the smallest. (Isabella Whitney’s A sweet Nosgay (1573), considered the first secular book of original English verse written by a woman, exists in a single incom- plete copy.) Nor is the Bay Psalm Book the most The Bay Psalm Book beautiful printed book, even by a loose definition of that very subjective adjective. Rather its value lies find. A kind of secondary “dumpster” where I find books are the bins in its being the first book printed in America, in a labeled “FREE” that dot the halls of universities. A decent living culture obsessed with firsts (itself a function of our linear, progressive might be made as a kind of modern day rag-and-bone man, repurpos- conception of time). To own it is to own — in a very real way — a ing and reselling abandoned books found at the fringes of libraries “piece of history.” and colleges — only instead of saving old rags to be made into paper Given that, it makes sense that digital facsimiles couldn’t substitute for books, you’d be saving old books from destruction in the face of for the object itself. Photographs on a screen show us the content of an digital databases. artifact, but don’t put us in touch with it. Of course, now that they’re circulating, these digital images add one more layer to the dense his- How do you foresee books evolving in the future? torical, cultural, and material palimpsest that we call “the Bay Psalm Book,” reproducing and distributing it in a way that subtly transforms There was a time when I thought a more experimental brand of our experience of the $14.2 million object. In the perceived gap highly-designed digital books might emerge — books in which between these mutually constitutive mediations — the single, jaw- design bore some of the weight of the text’s argument. That thought droppingly expensive book and the worthless excess of its digital re- has evaporated, though. Digital publishing formats are becoming productions — is the state of the book right now. spring 2014 11 HistoryFEATURES and Technology Adrift in a Sea of Change In a new book, MIT historian Rosalind Williams examines the deep tension authors Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Morris felt about technology. Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

n 1890, living in Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson sent a letter to his fellow writer Henry James, explaining a momentous decision on his part: Disillusioned with a rapidly changing, technologically driven world, Stevenson intended to remain Iin “exile” on the island, never to return to his native Britain. “I was never fond of towns, houses, society or (it seems) civili- sation,” Stevenson wrote, explaining his choice. Indeed, he died in Samoa four years later. But how exactly did Stevenson, who grew up in a well-off family of Scottish civil engineers, wind up lamenting technological progress and its social effects from a remote island in the South Pacific? And how should we understand this kind of uneasy response to technologi- cal advancement more generally? Those are among the questions MIT historian Rosalind Williams addresses in her new book, The Triumph of Human Empire, just published by the University of Chicago Press. It is a study of three famous authors — Stevenson, Jules Verne, and William Morris — and their complicated responses to technological and social change: embracing some innovations while lamenting that many changes were diminishing our sense of connection with the natural world and the past, and even creating new social inequities. Much as the current day is awash in technology-based innovation, so too was the Victorian era: As Verne (1828-1905) noted in an 1891 interview, he had lived through the introduction or popularization of trains, trams, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, steamship, and commercial electricity. In the book, Williams analyzes how the works of Verne, Morris (1834-1896), and Stevenson (1850-1894) — while often remembered for their flights of enjoyable fantasy — are actually deeply grounded in this “decisive turning point in the human story,” as she writes, when they could see that “human needs, desires, works and actions would more and more dominate the planet” in the future. That also speaks to our world, she believes, as we are confronted with resource scarcity, climate change, dangerous military conflicts, and changes in behavior humously discovered) novel about life in Europe under a radically oriented around technology. changed climate. They all shared, Williams asserts, a geographic link “There is a deep belief in progress of science and technologies that around the North Sea that made them especially interested in human you can see in the 19th century, and is extremely powerful today, but exploration through water, but they thought about the impact of there is also the anxiety that comes from that belief,” says Williams, many technologies. the Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology “What they’re writing about science and technology is astound- in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). “This ingly prescient and true,” Williams says. “They could see over the book is intended to explore that paradox.” horizon.” Taking an approach Williams has used throughout her career, “The Triumph of Human Empire” employs fictional works “They could see over the horizon” as a window into the human response to rapid social transformation. “Science and technologies have [created] astonishing accomplish- Significantly, none of these writers had a lifelong, reactionary ments, and real material changes,” Williams says, “but I’m most inter- distaste for technology. Stevenson took pride in his family’s engi- ested in how they have an effect on people’s lived experiences.” neering feats, for instance, while Verne gained renown for his stories Those rapid changes form a recurring tension in Verne’s works, in about futuristic submarines, moon landings, and even penned a (post- which technology enables previously unimaginable journeys and feats

12 in medias res HistoryFEATURES and Technology

of exploration, yet traps people in its grip. After all, Pierre Arronax, the scientist narrator of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) is im- Nick Montfort New Year’s Poem for 2014 prisoned by Captain Nemo aboard the Nautilus — privy to remarkable views of life undersea, but unable to escape. In the coming year… Some will react to their Morris’ response to technology was more explicitly political: fate by making fun of it. Famous for his poetry, in the 1880s he threw himself into left-wing After discarding a baker’s politics, and founded a noted decorative arts company. As a writer, dozen of the fliers and papers The first three dumplings he suddenly started translating Icelandic sagas — as a way, Williams that were given out, one will will be boiled as usual, while thinks, of aligning himself with a more pristine society than heavily finally seem worth keeping. the next will have been prepared technologized Britain. differently — and not fried. After hearing the horseman’s “Our civilisation is passing like a blight, daily growing heavier command to halt, several people The land originally allotted and more poisonous, over the whole face of the country,” Morris will decide not to attend at all. for small yuppie dwellings will be wrote. afor use as a soup kitchen. Stevenson’s grasp of the global effects of technological change A graduate student who hasn’t seems to have emerged as he journeyed first to America by steamship showered will obsessively The railing near the bottom and then across the United States by train, in pursuit of his future elaborate his dissertation of the counter will fall off at wife, Fanny, who was then living in California. The trip appears to without adding to the main text. the height of summer. The tape have been an epiphany for Stevenson, as he realized how many of that had held this piece in place An explosive bark will resound the world’s travelers were not journeying by choice, but as migrants will have melted and unraveled. and no injuries will ensue. displaced by a rapidly globalizing economy. After a few years in The senior faculty members, California, he set forth on a sailboat cruise of the South Pacific A potbellied pig, given clad in orange vests, frustrated in search of a healthier climate, new adventures, and new income one shoe to sniff, will help at failing their search for a buck, based on travel writing. its owner locate the other. will fire on a Bambi-like creature. “All of them had to do some sort of pivot,” Williams says. “They At some point, a desire for grew up in one world and had to realize they were living in another The woman, walking past three bean curd will go unfulfilled. one.” Off-Off-Broadway venues, will The Triumph of Human Empire has been praised by colleagues; John Cowboys and ballerinas relax and notice that the ache Tresch, a historian of science at the University of Pennsylvania, has will have a coastal dance party. along her right instep is gone. called the book “engaging, highly informative, and entertaining.” Desperate for a more rustic -/- life, a resident of suburban The “rolling apocalypse” Middlesex County will draw up two thousand fourteen plans for a privy that is Williams concludes The Triumph of Human Empire by observing afternoon wed shutout detached from the main house. that Verne, Morris, and Stevenson all seemed to experience techno- draft newton outhouse logical change not as a clean break from the past, but as a long-term Having lost her house key fourth wonton sauteed “rolling apocalypse” in which their cherished worlds were erased at lunch, the bride will decide heat unwound footrest over time. to go on with the ceremony. northwest auto fondue “I think this shows two coexisting visions of history,” Williams seafront tutu hoedown In Oregon or Washington, says. “One is history as progress, but there is also this other vision snout hunted footwear a drive-through restaurant of history as rolling apocalypse. A lot of us are living with that stow handout fourteen will offer pots of melted cheese ambiguity today, which is a very ambivalent moment in history. surefooted town haunt to be eaten with long forks. You can’t just say [changes] are good or bad — but we need to un- tenured fawn shootout derstand their complexity.” theaters unwound foot In the center of the capitol, This means, Williams says, that we should not regard the tales townhouse turf atoned a textile exhibit will attract of Verne, Morris, and Stevenson as sheer escapism; that escapism is unanswered tofu tooth more praise and attention than telling us something about their times. unfortunates doth owe the newly restored architecture. “In each of their cases, their personal reinventions were as writers, unwashed footnote rut too,” Williams observes. “It just shows how important writing is. Luckless individuals will hear weft outshone rotunda Part of the subtext of the book is to take art seriously. That’s the first in archaic English of their debt. whoa softened turnout place to go to figure out what’s going on in the world.” People will love hanging out whoso taunted fortune at the homey diner, even though woof detonates unhurt Learn more about the work of Rosalind Williams at rosalindwilliams.com. the path there runs along a cliff.

spring 2014 13 DigitalFEATURES Humanities I Class on Digital Humanities Premieres with Tech- Savvy Approaches

New class offers MIT students the chance to pair technical know-how with real-world art and humanities projects at local museums.

From the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

irst offered in the spring 2013 term, and taught by Professor For the Gardner, students were challenged to design media for the James Paradis and Principal Research Associate Kurt Fendt hallways connecting the museum’s original building — which has a of MIT’s Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing, no-mobile policy — to the Gardner’s new wing, a space that welcomes CMS.633 (Digital Humanities: Topics, Techniques, new technologies and interactions. Students developed a digital Fand Technologies) gave MIT students the chance to pair technical guestbook that doubled as an interactive artwork. Employing data know-how with real-world humanities projects for such clients as visualization techniques they had learned in class, students proposed the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (ICA) and the Isabella different ways to display visitors’ tweets about the museum. In one, Stewart Gardner Museum. the letters of each message appeared to fly off the page, changing in Students were introduced to key digital humanities concepts, real time as new messages came in. In another, the tweets appeared including data representation, digital archives, user interaction, and as a succession of word clouds. “People want to see what they wrote, information visualization, and given opportunities to apply these to see their mark,” says Birkan Uzun ’15, an electrical engineering and a variety of challenges. In addition to devising solutions for the two computer science major. Boston museums, students also took on the MIT-based Comédie- Française Registers Project and the Edgerton Digital Collections, Tools for asking new questions grappling, in both cases, with a common digital-humanities problem: how to make use of vast amounts of data. Visualizing data was also a central concern for students working “Digital humanities is a fresh approach,” Paradis says. “It’s thinking on the Edgerton Digital Collections, an effort to provide the first about how new forms of representation can be used to solve problems. online access to the research notebooks of MIT pioneer Harold It’s applied humanities.” “Doc” Edgerton (1903-1990). To enable scholars to glean informa- tion quickly, the students developed a timeline spotlighting Edger- Putting ideas into action ton’s interactions as referenced in the original source materials. “You can see what kind of experiments Doc Edgerton was working on and Because this class took place at MIT, where many students are adept who he was working with,” says Chau Vu ’14, a biology major, noting at computer programming, participants were able not only to concep- that the tool also allows users to click through to view the original tualize the tools that might prove useful to their clients, but also to notebook pages. build them. Facilitating historical research was likewise the focus of the Co- “Many other schools who are prominent in the digital humanities médie-Française team, which developed a visual search engine to offer more traditional humanities courses than we do,” Fendt says. assist the ongoing effort to make the complete registers of the Co- “They simply don’t have students with the building experience that médie-Française theater troupe (1680-1800) accessible online. The MIT students have.” tool makes it possible to search the theater’s extensive records (which MIT student teams immediately put their ideas into action: until 2007 could only be seen in Paris), filter results by such catego- Those working for the Comédie Française Registers Project and the ries as date, genre, title, and playwright, and represent them through Edgerton Digital Collections developed tools to help scholars mine dynamic visualizations. rich new sources of data; those working for the museums found new Like many projects in the digital humanities, this one allows ways to use technology to enhance the visitor experience. “Students scholars to ask new questions about the material, Fendt says. “The Co- could really examine real-world problems and experience what these médie-Française usually performed two plays a night, a comedy and institutions are dealing with,” Fendt says. a tragedy. So how did they decide on those pairings? Such questions cannot be easily answered by poring over handwritten documents one Information tools for museum visitors by one, but tools like this can help us gain new insights.” All of these exploratory projects demonstrate the breadth of projects For the ICA, the challenge was to make better use of the museum’s being undertaken by those involved in digital humanities. Both Fendt large lobby. Students responded by designing “the i SEE a Portal,” and Paradis say they look forward to seeing what direction the class which employs a user interface and Python game module to engage will take next term, when a new set of students will address fresh visitors in a display intended to be installed in the lobby. “It’s dynami- challenges. cally rearrangeable, so it’s a playful, interactive service,” says Dmitri “This was our first run — and we have big hopes for this course,” Megretski ’13, an electrical engineering and computer science major. Paradis says.

14 in medias res DigitalFEATURES Humanities II How MIT Is Addressing the Challenges of Digital Learning in the Humanities Wyn Kelley, Senior Lecturer in Literature and Participating Faculty at HyperStudio

This article1, just out, has already made its way to Twitter and is Having recently generating many comments at the Chronicle of Higher Education. attended two excellent Quoting respected digital humanities scholars like Johanna Drucker conferences debating (who visited MIT in 2012), Todd Presner (with whom Drucker co- the value of (digital) authored the volume Digital Humanities), Brian Croxall, and Miriam humanities — one at Posner, Marc Parry presents a balanced assessment of debates over Hofstra University on the questions in the digital humanities, especially in relation to students’ occasion of their opening interests and needs: “Do they even need a DH program? Should it be a new Digital Research a major? A minor? A new department? How broadly do you define Center and the second at digital humanities?” Looking closely at Miriam Posner’s class, DH101 Northeastern University at UCLA, Parry follows students as they engage in critical exercises in Boston, called “New evaluating data, texts, and problems in using digital information. His Media and American main point? The humanities have traditionally allowed students to Literary History” — I read closely and to think critically about new technologies, including can say that we in Litera- writing and print. They continue to do so in the digital age: “The ture, CMS/W, Foreign humanities, he [Todd Presner] says, can ‘humanize’ digital media by Languages and Lit- Wyn Kelley helping users understand what technology can and can’t do, by posing eratures, HyperStudio, ethical questions, by providing social and historical perspective, by History, the Humani- illuminating cross-cultural differences.” As Parry concludes, “These ties Library, and all across SHASS, are doing innovative work in are ‘core values’ of the humanities, Mr. Presner says. ‘They need to be the digital humanities — much of that work initiated, I might add, core values of the digital, too.’” among our graduate students, lecturers, and other junior staff as well as by professors. Although we do not meet under one umbrella called “Digital Humanities,” our projects contribute new programs, tech- These are just a few of the efforts that reflect nologies, and pedagogy in a wide variety of areas. Literature faculty MIT’s response to the challenges of digital use MIT-designed tools like Annotation Studio (digital marginalia), Locast (digital mapping), and MetaMedia (multimedia archives), as information. But MIT has in many ways well as an array of open-source programs in their classes. CMS/W gone beyond what we might consider the now offers a class called “Digital Humanities: Topics, Techniques, and Technologies”. The HyperStudio is developing timelines and other fundamentals of digital learning. As the title forms of visualization along with Annotation Studio, for which it has of an MLA (Modern Language Association) received an NEH Implementation Grant. MIT Foreign Languages and Literatures has led the way in its uses of digital language-study session taking place in Chicago suggests, we tools, and History faculty are partnering with Hart Nautical Collec- can start thinking about whatever is “Beyond tion at the MIT Museum to digitize their maps and collections for classroom use. the Digital” — that is, going beyond big These are just a few of the efforts that reflect MIT’s response to the data, visualization, and archival storage to challenges of digital information. But MIT has in many ways gone beyond what we might consider the fundamentals of digital learning. what the session identifies as a critical next As the title of an MLA (Modern Language Association) session taking step: “Pattern Recognition and Interpretation. place in Chicago suggests, we can start thinking about whatever is “Beyond the Digital” — that is, going beyond big data, visualization, Our students, like those in the classes this and archival storage to what the session identifies as a critical next step: article describes, can not only grasp, organize, “Pattern Recognition and Interpretation.” Our students, like those in the classes this article describes, can not only grasp, organize, and and store data but also see the meaningful store data but also see the meaningful patterns and modes of interpre- patterns.” tation information can inspire. Thoughtful use of these tools can stimulate critical thinking and reading across a range of disciplines 1 “How the Humanities Compute in the Classroom”, The Chronicle and open up learning for our students in unanticipated ways. of Higher Education, Jan. 6 2014. spring 2014 15

Excerpt fromFE WorkATUR ESDone for Hire

Wounded in combat and honorably discharged nine years ago, Jack Daley can cry for Bambi or Meryl Streep, but crying in a zombie movie is a still suffers nightmares from when he served his country as a sniper, racking up symptom that something is loose in your head. sixteen confirmed kills. Now a struggling author, Jack accepts an offer to write That sounds so drama queen. I didn’t really get that bad a deal, a near-future novel about a serial killer, based on a Hollywood script outline. wounded once and out. The bullet that blew off my left pinkie also It’s an opportunity to build his writing career, and a future with his girlfriend, smashed a rib and bounced into my left lung, serious enough to get Kit Majors. me six weeks in Bethesda and an early honorable discharge. Eighty But Jack’s other talent is also in demand. A package arrives on his doorstep percent disability pays for the rent and groceries and some of the beer. containing a sniper rifle, complete with silencer and ammunition and the first For a few years the rest of the beer came out of the GI Bill, while I installment of a $100,000 payment to kill a bad man.” The twisted offer is finished college and got an easy Master’s. When that cow ran dry I did genuine. The people behind it are dangerous. They prove that they have Jack this and that, temp jobs like typing and answering phones. But I don’t under surveillance. He can’t run. He can’t hide. And if he doesn’t take the job, take orders well anymore, and tend to raise my voice. So I had lots of Kit will be in the crosshairs instead. jobs, none of them for too long. I’ve always written poetry, not a fast track to fame and fortune, and started writing stories when I was in the hospital. I actually sold one, 1 for $150, before I was out of rehab. So the idea of doing it for a living was pretty natural. How far could it be from Ellery Queen’s Mystery friend called me this morning and asked whether I Magazine to the best-seller list? could go shooting, and I said no, I couldn’t. I made up I still don’t know, but it’s more than nine years. something about work, but the fact is, I couldn’t. I wrote a novel and it did about as well as most first novels, which I was a sniper in the desert, in this war that it seems is to say my mother bought ten copies and a few thousand other noA one can really stop. I didn’t volunteer for the job, not initially, people must have thought I was a relative. It did get two or three good but I wasn’t smart enough to miss the targets in Basic Training. And reviews, and a couple of poisonous ones, notably from the Times. It “sniper” sounded cool, so I signed up for the school when they offered bothers me to know that I probably got into graduate school because I it. got reviewed in the Times. They hated the book but evidently thought I count back on all my fingers and it’s been nine years. Sometimes it it was important enough to warn potential readers away. feels like yesterday, literally. I wake up in grainy grime and shit smell, I guess every writer who’s been a soldier has to write his war novel. the slimy cold of the damned plastic suit. Cold until the sun comes up I can’t stand to read the damned thing anymore. Though I hate to and tries to kill you. That sounds too dramatic, but I’ll leave it. The think that maybe the Times was right. sun bakes you and broils you and disorients you, and it makes you a Second novels are a hard sell, especially if you don’t have cheerful target. They have rifles, too. Not so many snipers. blurbs from the first. “Puerile,” shouts the New York Times. “A worth- In sixteen months I killed maybe twenty people, sixteen confirmed. while journeyman effort,” mumbles Publishers Weekly. My hometown What kind of a prick keeps track? Besides, as often as not, you can’t newspaper called it a “good read,” but I went to high school with the tell. The recoil usually knocks you off the sight picture, and with reviewer. So my second novel has been to some of the best addresses the scope at maximum power, it takes a second or two to get back. in New York, according to my agent, but it hasn’t been invited to stay. Your spotter will say, “Good shot,” but what’s he going to say? You’re The agent, Barb Goldman, probably took me on because she’s a vet, usually shooting at someone who’s peeking out of a window or from too. Twice my age, she was in the hundred-hour war that started the behind the edge of a wall, and if an ounce and a half of lead buzzes whole thing. Before 9/11 and Gehenna. When I go up to New York by his ear at the speed of sound, he’s not about to stand up and shout, we get drunk together and remember the desert. Old sergeants whom “You missed!” we sincerely hope are dead by now. So I don’t know whether I’m going to burn in Hell sixteen times or Drinking with her, I’ve never felt the crazy urge to fight. Maybe thirty or forty, or whether they even make you burn in Hell for not because she’s older than my mother and would die of embarrassment. being smart enough to miss the god-damned target in Basic Training. Maybe because the bars we go to are a little nicer than the ones I I suspect I’ll go wherever the people I killed went. But I don’t expect frequent in Florida. Get into a fight in the Four Seasons and you might to meet them. hurt somebody who could buy your book. I had a girlfriend all those sixteen months, and she e-mailed me So she called and asked whether I’d like to make some easy money every afternoon, morning her time, and I wrote back whenever I was doing work for hire, and of course I said, “Who do you think I am?” near a hot point. We were going to get married. She knew exactly who I was, and said I could make fifty thousand But I know I’m not as nice in person as I am at the keyboard. That bucks, writing a sort of “novelization” of a movie by Ron Duquest. I must happen all the time. said it sounded like a fun way to pay for the next two thousand cases She put up with me for three or four months after I got out of the of beer, and she said that’s good, because she’d already accepted. She hospital. I think she still loved me for maybe half that time. But how knew I liked fantasy and horror, and this was going to be a horror long can you love someone who goes into bars just to beat people up? movie. To get drunk enough to start fights. And then cry in movies. You And that was not all, not by a long shot. Duquest had asked for me

spring 2014 17 Excerpt fromFEATURESFE WorkATUR ESDone for Hire

specifically. She showed me the note that had come with the request: “You peasants may laugh, but in fact it is a real job, real money. I’m gonna be a literary prostitute for fifty large. As much as a half million Ronald Duquest down the road.” “Wow. Room in that bed for another one?” Kit was a poet as well Hollywood as a mathematician. “You wouldn’t want to do it. Novelization of a horror movie.” If you got this you know my number “Ew. People who go to those things read books?” “Big words and all. This one’s by Ron Duquest.” I really liked “High Kill,” by your client Jack Daley. “I’m supposed to know who that is?” Good natural storytelling talent. Could he write a short “He did the Bradbury remake you liked, Dandelion Wine.” book for me? We got an idea sounds right up his alley “That wasn’t horror.” — a sci-fi monster and a returned vet. I can put a little “Depends on what scares you.” The bartender brought the beer and up front: Ten grand to write the book, and he keeps all took our food order, a steak for her and a Cobb salad for me. the book rights. We’ll send another contract if we like “You’re gonna waste away.” the book for a movie: basically $50,000 for an 18-month “Not for a while.” I’ve always been what they call “big-boned,” option against $500,000 if the movie gets made. Make but had never had to watch my diet, until the past year or so. I had to that “start of principal photography.” Don’t want to admit I was getting paunchy. haggle but I have the check right here if you want it. “Your mother called.” (signed) Duke D. “What, she called you?” She gave me a look. “No, she called the bartender. I couldn’t help I wasn’t sure quite how to take that. But I’d seen several features by but overhear.” Ron Duquest, and liked his light touch. I asked her what he meant “All right. She always calls my cell. But I turn it off when I’m by a “short book,” and she said a novella, between a hundred and two working.” hundred typed pages. “She said you promised to fix the porch, once it stopped raining.” Sort of the opposite of what I normally thought of as a “noveliza- “Oh, shit. Of course I’m gonna fix the god-damn porch. It’s not tion,” which would be taking an existing movie script and cranking like I had to write a book or something.” out a novel based on that. This might actually be easier, though. I “I could come help.” could probably write a hundred pages of acceptable prose in a couple “Nothing to it, really. Replace a step and stain it. But yeah, I could of weeks. For twice what I got for the last novel. use the company. Talk to Mom, distract her.” It would be a “work done for hire” in that Duquest would own the “Tell her about our sex life?” copyright. But since I’d keep the book rights, and also make a small “No. She snores. You drive over?” fortune if a movie came out of it, what the hell. “What, you biked?” She zapped me the two-page description. Pretty good story; the “Two hundred calories. And the guy in the screenplay bikes. We main character was my age and had gone to my war. He’s a lawyer and could swing by Hawkeye’s and pick up a plank and some stain. Then a private eye but unsuccessful. I like that in a lawyer. go surprise the old lady.” “You pay for lunch?” I spent the morning not writing. I’d never done anything like this, “I’m a big Hollywood guy now. We always pay for lunch.” purely commercial stuff, but I had taken a screenwriting course in “Yeah, but you get blow jobs.” graduate school, and this was sort of the opposite. So I figured I’d do a I rolled my eyes at her. “Everything has a price in this sorry world.” diagram first, breaking down the supposed movie into acts and scenes, which I could reassemble into a book narrative. The Monster While I was immersed in that, the phone rang and it was my current pelvic pal, Kit Majors, wondering whether I’d forgotten about lunch. by I told her I was on my way out the door, and then I was. Christian Daley I really should make myself notes. It was normally a ten-minute bike ride to the Irish restaurant, but I made it in five, sweating a little Chapter One bit. When I walked in, she signaled the bartender, and he started tapping He was so big that people couldn’t help staring at him. If you me a Guinness. I was actually going to get us a nice bottle of wine, to guessed his weight, you might say four hundred pounds, but it was celebrate, but that could come later. Kit liked to be in control, which more like five. A relatively large head with small features pinched in was usually okay with me. the middle. Straggly long hair and no eyebrows. Ugly as hell. If he We kissed. “I got a job.” were on a television show he’d have a sweet disposition. In real life he “Jesus, you’re kidding. Someone put up a plaque.” was quite otherwise.

18 in medias res Excerpt fromFE WorkATUR ESDone for Hire

On police blotters in four states he was called Hunter. He was a A lot of people drink beer while they’re driving in Alabama. He monster, so far uncatchable, unobserved. decided to not take the chance. He drank both quarts sitting there, He hid his windowless van in a cul-de-sac and labored up a hill to a and finished off two bags of hot peanuts and a bag of bacon rinds. Life location he’d scouted out earlier. A jogging trail that had thick brush was good. for cover, but by moving a couple of steps to the left and right, he He put the empties and wrappers in a plastic bag and washed his could see a hundred yards or more in both directions. hands and face. He ignored the faint sounds from the back and headed He could hear for a mile. There was no one coming. for the interstate. He tied a length of monofilament fishing line to a sapling and laid it across the path. It was almost invisible. 2 He hid in the bush and quickly applied military camouflage makeup to his face and hands, matching the green camouflage suit he’d made After I finished that little chapter, I checked the e-mail and lo, there out of a tent. He snapped the wire up a couple of times, testing. It was an $8,500 PayPal deposit from my agent, Duquest’s down payment would do, catching the runner midway between ankle and knee. minus her fifteen percent. I actually clapped my hands together. The first jogger down the trail was a beautiful teenaged girl, blond Duquest sent an e-mail, too, all lower case: “good so far.” Hey, hair streaming out behind her, breasts bouncing softly, her scarlet don’t give me a swelled head. silken outfit clinging with sweat. He salivated at her beauty but let her Of course once the novella was in Duquest’s hands, he could screw pass. He was doing boy-girl-boy-girl and didn’t want to confuse the it up any way he wanted. But hell, he was paying for the privilege. police analysts. Not yet. I didn’t much like surrendering control, even if it is a work done for The next one was a boy, but he was too close behind, probably hire. But I wrote HALF A MILLION BUCKS on a three-by-five card striving to catch up with the girl. If he made a noise, she might hear. and taped it over the computer, in case I start to get depressed. If she saw the fat man at work, she would call 9-1-1. That would make I decided to go buy a nice bike, like the private eye does in the things too complicated. story. Maybe I’ll go buy a pistol, too; see how a 9-mm feels. But if They both were well out of sight, though, when the next one came somebody calls and tries to hire me to find a fat guy who kills joggers, up, clearly exhausted, almost shuffling, a man of about forty. That I’m so outta here. was all right. He yanked on the monofilament and the man fell flat I printed out the first chapter and quit to clean house. Kit said her on his face. parents wanted to meet me, and He was up on his hands and “He was so big that people couldn’t help I had ignored the voice inside, knees by the time Hunter had screaming “Ah-ooga! Ah-ooga! lumbered out to the trail. He staring at him. If you guessed his weight, you Dive! Dive!” and invited them punched him once in the back of might say four hundred pounds, but it was over for dinner. So I had to weigh the head with a fist the size of a my options: good impression bowling ball, knocking him flat. more like five. A relatively large head with or self-defense food poisoning. He picked him up like a sleeping small features pinched in the middle. Straggly I opted for the former, but took child and carried him back to the the chicken out of the fridge a tad van. long hair and no eyebrows. Ugly as hell. If he early. Let the gods decide. The rear door was open. He were on a television show he’d have a sweet Maybe it’s odd that I haven’t met laid the man out and wiped the them, since they’re only like ten blood away from his mouth, then disposition. In real life he was quite otherwise.” miles away and I’ve been seeing slapped duct tape over it. Then Kit for almost a year. The first he bound his hands and feet with couple of months you wouldn’t tape, working quickly for one so fat, and handcuffed him to an eyebolt have wanted to take me home to Mother; some asshole decked me on the side, then quietly eased the door shut. The whole process took with a Jack Daniels bottle, which broke my nose and knocked out a less than a minute. tooth under a split lip. The VA fixed me up, but it took a while. He got a gallon jug of water out of the front seat and cleaned off That was a good bar, but I don’t go there anymore. The bartender the camo makeup. Then he took off the outfit; he had regular shorts turned out to be the owner. He bitched about the damage, and I sort and a tee underneath. Then he carried the water back up to the trail, of picked up the broken bottle and offered him a colonoscopy. He made sure no one was coming, and rinsed away the spatter of blood went for the phone and I decided to go bleed somewhere else. the man’s face had left. He thumbed open the large folding knife he Kit met me about a week later at a branch of the library, where I was always carried, severed the monofilament, and wrapped it around the giving a reading from my second novel, which I think I will retitle jug as he walked back down to the van. The Fucking Albatross. It had to be the worst reading in the history From the coffin-sized cooler in the back, he took out two quart of literary indecent exposure. I sounded exactly like a guy with a bottles of Budweiser. Then he got in the driver’s seat, the van dipping nose full of cotton, and with the temporary cap on my front tooth, I to the left in spite of its custom springs. whistled every time I tried to pronounce “s” or “th.” We had a beer

spring 2014 19 Excerpt fromFEATURESFE WorkATUR ESDone for Hire

afterwards and she took me home for a mercy fuck that turned out to picture of his tail, sticking out of the water.” be a yearlong hobby, maybe more. “Drowning the bird?” So now to meet her parents. Shave, clean shirt, find some socks. “That’s what they do.” Hide the porn. I left my desk a random hellhole — I probably couldn’t “Are you guys talking about the war?” Kit brought out a tray with find anything if I neatened it — but closed the office door. the pitcher of sangria. Three glasses with the wine punch and one of Kit once asked me why male writers had offices and female ones had ice water. Her father took that one. “Two vets get together — ” studios or writing rooms. Maybe it’s so we can pretend we’re working. “Not the war,” I said. “Alligators.” I clicked “random classical” on the living room pod and made a She handed me a glass. “That’s good. Some of my favorite people salad and put it in the fridge. Dumped some coals in the grill and are cold-blooded animals.” soaked them with starter fluid and waited. Normally, I’d make a drink “You even vote for one every now and then,” her father said. at five, but that might not be a good idea. Wait and offer them one. I “Morrie…” had a wild impulse to roll a joint; they’d be almost old enough to be “Sorry. No politics.” hippies. No, that was the sixties and seventies. They were probably “I’ll get the coals going.” I escaped to the lawn and squirted some just born. Besides, Kit didn’t smoke, so her parents probably didn’t fresh starter on the charcoal, then lit the pile in several places. either. The family that smokes together croaks together. Nobody said anything until I came back. I picked up the drink and They were exactly on time, and of course dressed down, for a picnic. sipped it; extra brandy. “Thanks, sweetheart.” Her father, Morrie, was wearing a T-shirt that half exposed a Marine “Kitty says you write books, Jack,” her mother said. Corps anchor tattoo on his beefy bicep. But it was a Princeton crew “I’ve written two and a half. Taking time off right now to do a shirt, a little cognitive dissonance. Her mother, Trish, was delicate and purely commercial one, a kind of novelization.” quiet. Quietly observant. To their blank look Kit said, “That’s normally when they make a Kit had brought the ingredients for sangria and took over the book out of a movie. In this case, Jack’s writing the book first.” kitchen to make a pitcher. So I dumped a bag of potato chips in a bowl Her father tilted his head. “I would’ve thought that was the usual and escorted her parents out to the patio. That made things a little way.” awkward, with no mediator. I braced myself for the usual “so you’re a “Kind of. Nobody seems eager to make a movie out of one of my writer” excruciation. books. But this isn’t actually a movie yet; just a pitch.” It was worse. “Kitty says you were a sniper in the war,” Morrie said. Her mother shook her head slightly, with a blank look. “A pitch is a “In the army, was it?” sales job,” her father supplied. “Guard unit, actually.” “My literary agent actually came up with the deal,” Jack said. “She “Same same.” Not a good sign when a civilian uses military slang. was talking with a producer/director, Duke Duquest, and my name “How long did they keep you over there?” came up. He had a vague idea about doing a horror movie with its “Sixteen months.” roots in present-day war. My war novel had just come out, with good “Not fair.” He shook his head. “Ain’t it a bitch, as we used to say.” reviews.” He glanced at his wife, and she gave him a tiny nod. “It would’ve been “It has a sort of horror angle,” Kit said. less if you’d gone RA.” “Well, I’d call it fantasy. This one is real horror, though, a monster “That was often a topic of discussion.” who hunts people.” He smiled a kind of Princeton smile. “I can well imagine.” “Like you,” her mother said. “Morrie was in the Marines,” Trish said, somewhat unnecessarily. “What?” “Just a grunt,” he said. “We didn’t get along with the snipers too “Isn’t that what you did?” She looked honest and sincere and not well.” judgmental. “Like a hunter after deer? With a rifle?” “We heard about that. They had a high opinion of themselves. “I suppose it is.” Their school was a lot harder than ours, though.” “If the deer had guns,” her father said. “Yes. No question it was a difficult job. A lot of lying in wait.” “It’s good money,” Kit said. “As much as a thousand dollars a page.” “Like an alligator,” I said. “My word. How many pages can you write a day?” “Alligator?” “Four or five, on a good day. Two or three’s more common.” “I used to spend a lot of time watching them, down in Florida. “Still damned good pay,” her father said. They lie still for hours, until all the other animals accept them as “I was lucky to get it.” I decided not to mention that it would only part of the landscape. One gets too close and they strike, fast, like a be fifty pages. Kit said nothing to disillusion them, either, so the rest rattlesnake.” of the evening passed convivially, the Majors mistakenly thinking that “Have you seen that?” Trish asked. their daughter was dating a budding millionaire rather than a starving “Once. He got a big blue heron.” artist. After they left, Kit rewarded me with a night of uncharacteristi- “I like alligators,” she said. Why was I not surprised? cally inventive sex. “Did you watch him for hours?” he said. I didn’t sleep well. Dreams about hunting. “Yes, I did. With a camera. But it happened too fast. All I got was a

20 in medias res AcademicFEATURES Publishing Historians Look to Preserve “The Way Things Are in Digital Publishing” Sam Ford, CMS ’07

Sam Ford is Director of Audience Engagement with Peppercomm, an to fight for changing “the way affiliate with both MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the things are” is heavily shaped Western Kentucky University Popular Culture Studies Program, and by their need to feed them- co-author of Spreadable Media (2013, NYU Press). He is also a con- selves and their families, and tributor to Harvard Business Review and Fast Company. their leverage as a new professor to challenge tenure processes his summer, the American Historical Association issued or the academic publishing a statement that set off deep debate in the academic industry is limited. Meanwhile, community — so much so that it produced the rare effect the institutional demands and Sam Ford of being noticed — and amplified — by the general interest wear and tear of the tenure Tpress. The request: that universities that automatically publish history process leaves many — once they find tenure — less likely to put department doctoral dissertations online should allow young scholars their energy toward changing the system that exists for those coming to embargo those tomes for up to six years. behind them. The reasoning was built on two related premises: that university To be clear, as Jacqueline Jones and others told The New York Times’ presses are less likely to publish a book if the dissertation it is based Noam Cohen, the AHA is not demanding scholars not publish their on is widely available online and, as a result, that the availabilities of work online but rather that they have the choice of whether they want these dissertations affects the ability of young scholars to seek tenure. their work to be shared online at the point they have completed their The AHA says their statement came in response to two contradic- dissertation. tory impulses in academia: the desire to engage the world with new But the question is to what degree academic associations, universi- thinking and the requirements the university’s models/logics of pro- ties, and university presses should continue to find ways to protect the fessionalization. logic of how they operate today in a changing climate or how deeply But presuming that these two must necessarily be in contradiction they should push their profession into where the world is headed. means believing the world will always be as it is today (or that it hasn’t After all, the ability for academic research to be seen more quickly changed already). After all, disruption rarely comes from within an and more widely than ever before is a good problem to have. The industry but rather from changes outside it. As communication studies purpose of academic institutions has traditionally been to conduct this scholar Amanda Lotz has researched, institutions often hang on to research for improving our culture’s understanding…thus, educating existing logic until it becomes completely untenable, rather than pro- students, educating the public, and furthering knowledge. Somewhere actively adjusting to acclimate to the world as it changes. along the way, it seems academia has lost sight of that goal and instead The AHA’s statement has driven a wide range of responses. Many acted in favor of preserving strategies that were built in response to commenters from the historian world responding directly cried out realities that are no longer the case. that the institution was bowing to institutional pressure rather than A professional logic built in a world of information scarcity no becoming powerful advocates for how academic institutions should longer makes sense, yet tenure processes at universities — and uni- change tenure review. The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen evokes the Digital versity press business models — all still operate on it. In the process, Public Library of America’s Dan Cohen and historian Adam Crymble the academy is not responding to its primary charge of engaging with in challenging the AHA’s presumption that, because “history has been and helping increase the knowledge of the world outside universi- and remains a book-based discipline,” that publishing a book will ty campuses. In particular, far too little progress has been made in always be the primary means for promotion. Trevor Owens laments helping the rest of the world, as citizens and as professionals, under- that the AHA should have put their emphasis on thanking and sup- stand what academic research has to teach them. porting doctoral students fighting to make their dissertations publicly The AHA is investing in protecting scholars from the world as it is. accessible, rather than issuing a statement based on coping strate- In doing so, it seems to be admitting to having very limited purview gies with the world as it is. And, writing in The Chronicle of Higher and impact. Rather, what if institutions like the AHA — and, of Education, David Bell asks whether the issue is a model by which an course, university presses and university administrators across the U.S. academic spends years writing a dissertation, followed by spending — put their energy toward creating systems that teach scholars how to several more years turning that dissertation into a book — instead of share their research to various publics and advocating for systems that moving on to new research. reward young scholars for such public engagement that get ideas into The problem, of course, is not merely a theoretical one, nor is par- circulation as broadly, efficiently, and effectively as possible? ticular to historians. Newly minted Ph.D.’s come out of roughly a Perhaps we’d find out what the historian of the 21st century should decade of higher education and into an over-saturated job market in look like, rather than how to protect the career path of the 20th-cen- almost every discipline, with the need to earn a living. Their ability tury historian for decades to come. spring 2014 21 PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

“People started making up their own stories. She became a ‘crowd-sourced celeb.’”

Emily Anthes’ (Science Writing, ’06) book, in Turkey at the international conference The of the Forum Network, an online video Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech’s Point Is to Change, in San Francisco. She also lecture series. Brave New Beasts, came out last March, and taught an online Media and Children’s Rights she has been traveling around the country master’s course in the Distance Learning Anita Say Chan (CMS, ’02) is currently giving lectures and talks as part of her book Center at Ankara University. During IAP, an Assistant Research Professor of Com- tour. The paperback is due out in April, and she taught Media and Ethics. She submitted munications and an Assistant Professor of she is now back to freelancing full-time and an edited book on Media, Children and Youth Media Studies in the Department of Media mulling over ideas for the next book. in Turkish. Currently, she is polishing an and Cinema Studies at the University of article on digital inequality and identity to Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research Marcia Bartusiak from the Graduate Program submit to an international refereed journal. and teaching interests since completing her in Science Writing was invited to give a talk She started to write a blog for T24, a Turkish masters with CMS continue to focus on glo- at the 27th Texas Symposium for Relativis- left wing online newspaper. She managed to balization and digital cultures, innovation tic Astrophysics in Dallas in December. The find another grant from the Turkish National networks and the “periphery”, and science only non-scientist invited to participate, she Science Academy and thus will be able to stay and technology studies in Latin America. Her was there to help celebrate the 50th anniver- at MIT until June 2015. manuscript on the competing imaginaries of sary of the conference. The premiere forum global connection and information technolo- for the field, it which meets every two years Jim Bizzocchi (CMS, ’01) reports, “It’s been gies in network-age Peru, Networking Peripher- at locations around the world (but which still a great year. Finished my sabbatical — now ies: Technological Futures and the Myth of Digital retains the name where it was first held in making good use of what I learned from my Universalism, is forthcoming with MIT Press 1963). Bartusiak’s talk was titled “Bermuda time reconnecting with CMS and with Henry in early 2014. Her research has been awarded Triangles of Space: How the Public First Met Jenkins at USC. Great to be teaching again, support from the Center for the Study of Law Black Holes.” and to continue my own research. Beginning & Culture at Columbia University’s School a three-year research grant — developing my of Law and the National Science Foundation, Taylor Beck (Science Writing, ’12) is a free- computationally generative video sequenc- and she has held postdoctoral fellowships at lancer in New York, writing mostly for Fast ing and presentation system. Very pleased to The CUNY Graduate Center’s Committee Company and occasionally for GQ, about be doing this in partnership with William on Globalization & Social Change, and at topics related to neuroscience, tech, Japan, and Uricchio and the Open Documentary Lab.” Stanford University’s Introduction to Hu- innovation. She recently finished reporting manities Program. on a documentary about sleep, for former Kristina Bjoran (Science Writing, ’11) is now HBO producer John Hoffman and his non- working for a communications firm (Forum Second-year grad student Denise Cheng has profit production company The Public Good One Communications), which works ex- been a busy bee trying to round up all of the Projects. She does book research, editing, clusively for non-profits and government knowledge — historical analysis, primary and fact-checking for authors like Susannah agencies. She works with high-profile, Se- qualitative research — around supporting Meadows of the NYTimes Magazine, D.T. Max attle-based global health non-profits. She workers who earn income through peer- of The New Yorker, and Shane Snow of Wired, manages web and communications devel- to-peer marketplaces. She’s been traveling Fast Company, and the New Yorker. (Shane also opment and designs user interactions and between economic workshops and media co-founded Contently, a free platform for marketing/fundraising campaigns. conferences, awed by the diversity of people writers which you all may find useful for ag- who are interested in the topic. Her most gregating your stories online). Taylor covers Eugenie Brinkema’s first book, The Forms of recent output is a piece for Harvard Business topics ranging from creativity in tech start-up the Affect, will be coming out in March via Review, and during IAP, she is leading focus founders to alternative medicine to Japanese Duke University Press. She will be giving group research and compiling a needs as- robotics, culture, art, and business. Her goal invited talks at the University of Rochester sessments of peer economy providers in San for 2014 is to branch out to new venues, take (on “The Human Centipede”) and Univer- Francisco. on longer feature stories, and find a book she sity at Buffalo (on rhythm, language, and wants to write. pornography) in February and April. USA Today was the latest to pick up Professor Ian Condry work on the completely virtual Visiting Fulbright Professor Mine Gencel Bek Alison Bruzek (Science Writing, ’13) started Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku. “And she gave a presentation on the alternative media working at WGBH News as Project Manager only got so popular because Crypton never

22 in medias res PPEOPLE,EOPLE, PLACPLACES,ES, THTHINGSINGS

gave the character a back story. ‘People started Parmesh Shahani, CMS ’05 making up their own stories,’ says Condry. She became a ‘crowd-sourced celeb.’” And in “Drawing inspiration from Mumbai” October, Condry discussed his latest book, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and By Vijaysree Venkatraman, MIT Technology Review Japan’s Media Success Story, with the Think podcast run by the Texas public radio station has an KERA. Every big city e t ho s of its own: Paris (romance), New York Anne-Marie Corley (Science Writing, ’09) is (ambition), and Beijing (political power). a freelance writer in Dallas, Texas. “For Mumbai, that distinguishing trait would be jugaad,” says Parmesh Shahani. Grad student Rodrigo Davies spent the He translates the Hindi term as “innova- summer as an Innovation Fellow at the San tively making do with tremendous con- Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innova- straints.” Thanks to Mumbai’s energy and tion, where he helped build Living Inno- cultural reputation, the megacity—India’s vation Zones, a new program to open up financial capital—is now bursting at the public space in the city, and designed an seams. While the physical infrastructure open data format for public notifications. demands immediate attention, the intellec- Since returning to MIT he has continued to tual architecture of the city should not take develop his research on civic crowdfunding. a back seat, he says. He has been invited to speak on the topic by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Mumbai is Shahani’s hometown and inspiration. He earned his first degree from the Library of Congress and SXSW Interac- Bombay University in finance in 1996, then a postgraduate diploma in film and televi- tive, and has been quoted by Wired, Salon sion from the Xavier Institute of Communication in the same city. He reported news for and NPR. He spent January in Kansas City the Bombay Times; founded FreshLimeSoda.com, India’s first online youth magazine; as an MIT Public Service Fellow, support- and worked in business development at Sony Entertainment Television. He got another ing the non-profit BikeWalkKC’s campaign degree, in education, in 2003, and won an award for promising teachers. And that was to build a bikeshare scheme for the city, and all before coming to MIT to pursue comparative media studies. running crowdfunding workshops for local community groups. In April Rodrigo will After graduating from MIT, Shahani returned home to set up a venture capital unit for co-host Build Peace, a conference on new the automobile manufacturing corporation Mahindra & Mahindra. Since 2010, he has technologies for peacebuilding that is being worked with the Godrej Group, an industrial conglomerate headed by Adi Godrej ’63, sponsored by the Center for Civic Media. SM ’63. The event is being held at the Media Lab on April 5 and 6. In 2011, he founded the think tank Godrej India Culture Lab to promote Mumbai’s cultural offerings through collaborations between the city’s academic, corporate, and Josh Diaz (CMS, ’09) is in Seattle, working creative spheres. The lab aims to stimulate discussions of what it means to be Indian and at ArenaNet and living with his love and modern, and it organizes both private gatherings and large public conferences on topics their three cats. He has “earned skill ranks such as youth culture, the Indian diaspora, and urbanism. He also runs public Friday in: baking, Mandarin and is collecting sci-fi Funda gatherings, featuring talks, music, or films, on the Godrej campus. and fantasy from authors of color, playing too much Puzzle and Dragons and contemplating One topic that remains close to his heart is the issue of gay rights. During his stay in woodworking.” Boston, where he was openly gay for the first time in his life, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage. Inspired, he made homosexuality the Junot Díaz’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winner subject of his graduate thesis. He returned to India and wrote Gay Bombay: Globaliza- book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tion, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India. In 2009, India decriminalized received one of its coolest endorsements, that homosexuality. Since then, Shahani has advocated for corporate diversity policies that of rock-and-art legend David Bowie. The specifically prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation. He often speaks on recommendation was part of an exhibition on LGBT-related issues at corporations including Google’s India office. Bowie in both Ontario and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in which Bowie listed his 100 must-read books. Diaz was elected to

spring 2014 23 PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

he was on the receiving end of the familiar Sonny Sidhu, CMS ’13 teasing of studying writing at an engineer- ing-focused university. “Writing at MIT?” said Colbert. “Isn’t that like teaching engi- Checking in neering at Juilliard?” from the West Coast with warm greetings and a happy update for January 17th was the first day of classes forA na the CMS/W community! Domb (CMS, ’09) at the interaction design masters program she designed and runs at After graduating from the CMS Veritas University in Costa Rica. “Sixteen master’s program in June, I people have trusted us to join the program. recently moved to Los Angeles I’m excited and nervous as can be.” In and started working as a designer October, she and CMS grad student Eduardo at the Burbank, CA-based Marisca joined forces in a board game design videogame developer Insomniac workshop for kids in Guatemala. They will Games. be writing about that experience in February.

We’re currently in production for Sunset Overdrive, an upcoming title being released In mid-September, Stephanie Dutchen exclusively for Microsoft’s new Xbox One game console. Sunset is a unique game—a (Science Writing, ’09) moved from the NIH, stylish, satirical open-world shooter in which a mutant apocalypse unfolds against a where she had been for four years since MIT, backdrop of rampant consumerism—and I’m thrilled to be working on it. to Harvard Medical School, still as a science writer-editor. “It’s been a blast returning to Insomniac itself is a unique company, too. Unlike most other developers of large-scale, Boston and getting to know the Longwood mass-market (or “AAA”) console games, Insomniac is 100% independent, which grants community.” us an unusual degree of creative freedom and artistic control over our work. Katie Edgerton (CMS, ’13) moved out to Los But unlike most other “indie” developers, we have the resources to compete in the Angeles the summer after graduating CMS AAA market, making games that reach millions of players and stand alongside the very and just finished her first semester in USC’s biggest productions the medium has to offer. Writing for Screen & TV M.F.A. program.

All of which makes Insomniac a particularly good fit for someone like me. Garret Fitzpatrick (Science Writing, ’12) had a report published in the December After all, at CMS my focus was on AAA games (my thesis was about spectacular issue of the 2013 NASA Tech Briefs magazine “setpiece” sequences in popular console-based shooter games), but I also loved reading referencing a white paper he co-wrote at and thinking about experimental gameplay forms, doing indie game development with the Johnson Space Center in 2010-2011, the MIT Game Lab, and conducting forward-looking design, narrative, and artificial titled “Advanced Hybrid Spacesuit Concept intelligence research with the ICE Lab. Featuring Integrated Open Loop and Closed Loop Ventilation Systems.” As a player and scholar, I am most interested in videogames as a mass medium of play, yet I believe that this medium is simply too young and too full of unexplored potential, CMS graduate student Sean Flynn helped unexamined theoretical possibilities, and unexpected experimental applications to yield with the launch of the Open Documentary completely to the dictates of the commercial market and the established conventions of Lab’s Docubase, started working with the existing AAA genres. video4change network on impact assess- ment research, and attended the Sundance At Insomniac, I have the chance to make big, fun games in an environment where Film Festival to represent ODL and write a creative independence, aesthetic rebelliousness, and a spirit of inquiry and experimen- series of articles about their New Frontier tation are encouraged—an attitude that not only agrees with me personally, but also, I section. Outside of MIT, he completed his believe, serves the long-term interests of this medium I love. third year as Director of the Points North Documentary Forum at Camden Interna- I’m excited and grateful for this opportunity, and humbly indebted to the CMS/W tional Film Festival, which received a grant community for preparing me for it in so many ways! from the National Endowment for the Arts in November. the Society of American Historians. And he also appeared on the Colbert Report, where

24 in medias res PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

Sam Ford (CMS, ’07) has published pieces of relativity. And the Lab’s game Movers and in October 2012 to Dawei Shen — a former with the Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier, Shakers, which looks at how players commu- Ph.D. student in MIT Media Lab. They Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, PR nicate based on conflicting perspectives, was moved to Brookline, Mass., in January. “Life News, The Firm Voice, The Public Relations nominated as a best indie game of 2013. is good!” says Liwen. Strategist, and — most importantly of all — the CMS/W site. He has also been featured Last May, Anne Glausser (Science Writing, Trent Knoss (Science Writing, ’13) is the this fall in the Tribeca-award winning docu- ’09) became ideastream’s Coordinating digital editor at Backpacker Magazine in mentary ‘Lil Bub and Friendz, and documentaries Producer for QUEST Science (www.quest- Boulder, Colorado, reporting on bears, Soap Life and Who Shot the Daytime Soap?, as science.org), in Cleveland. mountaineering, and the Arctic. well as The New York Times, NPR Marketplace, and The Los Angeles Times, among other pub- Robin Hauck (CMS, ’03) left Digitas in 2012 Hannah Krakauer (Science Writing, ’12) lications. Over the past few months, Sam has and has been at EF Education First since then. accepted the role of Senior Communica- presented at the Word of Mouth Marketing She have been running the creative group, tions Specialist at the Allen Institute for Association Summit, the Annual Insurance “The Studio” of EF Tours, as Director of Brain Science, a Seattle nonprofit institution Executive Conference, the Association of In- Project Management. In February she takes dedicated to accelerating the pace of neuro- dependent Kentucky Colleges and Universi- on a new role as Director of Group Sales science research using a big science approach. ties, and the Luxury Marketing Council and and Marketing for Go Ahead Tours, EF’s participated virtually in sessions for Social adult travel business. Her family is doing In October, Alan Lightman, Professor of the Media Today and the Argentinian confer- well. Haley is 15, Lucy 13, and Coco 9, with Practice of the Humanities, published The ence “Vi Encuentro International” through husband Steve is continuing to love life as an Accidental Universe: The World You Thought the NeoTVLab in Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, entrepreneur, launching into another new You Knew. The book is “a meditation on Sam and his wife Amanda Ford (former venture with his partner. They live in Dover, the unexpected ways in which recent scien- CMS employee) had a bittersweet November, Mass., just outside of the city, but, Robin tific findings have shaped our understanding enrolling daughter Harper (2) in pre-school, says, “EF is in Cambridge right down the of ourselves and our place in the cosmos.” but are comforted by daughter Emma (4) road from MIT if anyone wants to grab coffee Ovations came from the Boston Globe now being able to read them bedtime stories, or lunch sometime and reconnect.” (“Readers will appreciate the passionately rather than the other way around. argued belief that human perception and un- In January 2010, Lissa Harris (Science derstanding can accommodate a physical and The MetroWest Daily News highlighted the Writing, ’08) and her wife Julia Reischel a spiritual universe, and that both the known “storied” MIT Game Lab in its role of co-host started watershedpost.com, an online local and the unknown are causes for scientific of September’s Festival of Indie Games. Rik news website for the rural Catskills in upstate speculation as well as pure wonder.”) and Eberhardt, the Festival’s co-producer and New York. The site runs general news, but Salon (“Whatever the subject, he writes with the Game Lab’s studio manager, told the they have a focus on water politics, land use, a limpid serenity and frankness that feels as Daily News that “The festival is a great place environment and agriculture issues that are fresh and as clarifying as a spring rain.”) to open up the process behind game devel- key in the Catskills. More recently, they have opment to a wider community,” adding that been going analog, with a series of niche In September, Allison MacLachlan (Science “part of the lab’s mission is to educate the magazines; in November, they launched our Writing, ’11) started a new job at Owlkids, public on the development and use of games. first print Catskills food guide. a children’s book and magazine publishing People who attend the festival can not only company in Toronto with a great non-fiction see games made by local developers but get Professor Heather Hendershot was featured and science focus. She is enjoying writing a chance to talk with them at our digital in September by the MIT News Office. She print and online content, managing projects, and tabletop showcases. We have some great described how growing up in a Quaker and working on marketing strategy. She also talks and films programmed to help people family in otherwise conservative Christian blogs regularly for the Canadian Science understand the community of game develop- Birmingham, Alabama, came to influence Writers’ Association. ment, the importance of games in people’s her interest in gender studies and her focus on lives, and the potentials of games that still lie the “fire and brimstone” versions of conser- Lauren Maurer (Science Writing, ’12) got untapped.” vative television shows and activist battles to married on January 4th to Noel Trew, a have particular shows taken off the air. classmate before she came to MIT, and who The Serious Games Showcase & Challenge “was my main support/sounding board/ in December awarded the Game Lab “Best Liwen Jin (CMS, ’08) is currently working for fanboy during my time in the Science Student Developed Serious Game” for their the Marketing Strategy and Planning team in Writing program — which is at least part of game A Slower Speed of Light, an exploration Liberty Mutual Group Boston office — great why I decided I wanted to marry him.” of how to more intuitively teach the theory team and exciting projects. He got married

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Stephanie McPherson (Science Writing, at Seed magazine in New York. She is back Eleanor to the world. She, along with her ’11) married Jacob Miller, an S.M., ’11, in on the academic circuit, halfway through her mother, is doing well, and she smiles often, Mechanical Engineering, on October 6 — third year as a Ph.D. student at the University “especially at her older brother Alexander and who was the first person she met at MIT. of California Berkeley. Her dissertation “is and her reflection.” During all that and while still in lump-of-clay state,” but she is inter- teaching, Picker put the finishing touches on Assistant Professor Seth Mnookin partnered ested in the politics and political ecology of a chapter about the origins of the telephone with literary agent Andrew Blauner and food systems, with a likely emphasis on seeds. booth for the revised edition of The Auditory fellow writers — Dennis Lehane, Susan Culture Reader (due out sometime this year Orlean, and more — on Our Boston: Writers Susan Nasr (Science Writing, ’06) is grad- or next) and joined the editorial board of Celebrate the City They Love. $5 from every uating from medical school this April, Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal sale of the anthology went to the One Fund, becoming a family doctor, and is writing a of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, a group aiding Boston Marathon bombing newspaper article on how the Affordable whose inaugural issue will be published by victims and their families. Mnookin’s work Care Act is beginning to change primary care Bloomsbury in 2015. A paperback edition on the autism vaccine controversy was also in Rochester, NY. of The Victorian World, containing his essay included in the Open Lab 2013 anthology of “Auditory Anxiety and the Advent of the best science writing online. The Education Arcade’s creative director Modernity,” was published by Routledge in Scot Osterweil authored a piece hosted on November, soon to be followed by a Kindle In January, the Boston Globe highlighted Boston.com’s State of Play blog about his version. Associate Professor of Digital Media Nick work developing the ethics-focused game Montfort’s talk on the Atari 2600, part of Quandry with Learning Games Network, Talieh Rohani (CMS, ’09) has been working the Game Lab’s “Push Button” series during Fablevision, and Marina Bers of Tufts Uni- for Rosetta Stone since April. She was one IAP. The Guardian followed up by naming versity. He repeated our shared chorus when of the product owners of the Advanced Montfort’s book Racing the Beam one of it comes to the purpose of games: “We don’t English for Business Solutions, which has a their “Six best gaming books”. Montfort believe that playing the game will automati- web and mobile presence. She also launched a has also has been completing the book Ex- cally help players take better perspectives in prototype for an oral fluency application that ploratory Programming for the Arts and Humani- their own lives, but we think the game rep- has a powerful speech recognition engine. ties for MIT Press, giving presentations and resents a playful way of introducing ideas that Currently, she is working on enhancing workshops in Europe, Canada, Mexico, and can be further developed through reflective the LiveMocha community platform and the U.S., and developing several creative conversation with others.” launching a new product line for kids. Over projects, including pi-based poem Round, the past year, Rosetta Stone has transformed Duels — Duets with Stephanie Strickland, the Salt Lake City’s Deseret News interviewed itself, from selling boxes in the airports to collaboration Three Rails Live, the computer- recent grad Chris Peterson (CMS, ’13) about creating mobile/tablet applications and end- generated book World Clock, and the VIC-20 the Minerva Project, an attempt to provide to-end e-learning language solutions. It has demo Nanowatt, which was done with one Ivy-quality education (and Ivy-level profes- also entered brain fitness and Math/Science MIT and one remote collaborator. Montfort’s sional credibility) online. He was doubtful market. Talieh is engaged to Arash Shahan- book of poems #! (Shebang), which consists it would reach the non-elite, as intended. gian, whom she met via Facebook. They are of sections of code followed by output, will “Peterson said he believes that Minerva’s planning to get married in the fall and visit be published by Counterpath Press. In March cost, though lower than costs at top-tier Japan’s Snow Monkeys for their honeymoon. Montfort and Icelandic/American artist Páll U.S. universities, will still be out of reach for Over the past few months, she have developed Thayer will have an exhibition at the Boston many meritorious students, especially those a passion for K-drama and has started learning Cybararts Gallery, Programs at an Exhibition. from Third-World countries. Peterson also Korean. She highly recommends Boys Over Montfort is continuing work on Slant (a col- “reclaimed my throne as King of the Internet Flowers as well as Personal Taste. laborative story generator), on other systems for MITAdmissions, where I direct digital that model literary and poetic processes, and strategy, lead several strategic recruitment Aviva Hope Rutkin (Science Writing, ’13) on investigations of porting, translation, initiatives, and help decide whom to admit to recently started as a reporter at New Scientist. modification, adaptation, the issuing of new MIT.” He has been teaching in CMS/W, as a editions, and other ways of developing digital TA for CMS.950 in the fall and as co-instruc- Interim Head of CMS/W Edward Schiappa media work from existing digital media tor for CMS.400 in the spring, and continues was named Head, proper, in December. sources. some research projects in the Center for Civic His textbook with John Nordin — Argu- Media on mapping banned books. mentation: Keeping Faith With Reason — was After graduating from the inaugural class, released by Pearson in August, and his most Maywa Montenegro (Science Writing, ’03) Just after the fall term began, lecturer John recent scholarly book, Classical Greek Rhetori- spent five years as an editor and staff writer Picker had the pleasure of welcoming baby cal Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse, was

26 in medias res PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS

released in paperback in January. He also gave the Boston Globe about Fire Hose Games’ the MIT Visualizing Cultures Controversy.” several talks at a conference in November, launch of a Boston-based game industry In October, she flew to Lund, Sweden, to including “The Phenomenal Text of Michael incubator, “but I’m not sure we’re going to give a talk at Lund University on “Change Moore’s Sicko” (with Daniel Ladislau Horvath see anywhere near the same rate of growth Makers and New Media Technology: In- and Peter B. Gregg), “Discussion of the 2013 on the Triple-A side,” referring to big-budget troducing NGO2.0 and a Civic Hackathon Supreme Court decisions on DOMA and game development. “The barrier for entry is Model” in a conference on ICT for Develop- Prop 8”, and “Boston Strong: Commodity, always dropping, and I think we’re going to ment in China.” During the same month, she Identity, or Both?”, each presented at the see more opportunities for very small teams visited Rice University and participated in Annual Meeting of the National Communi- to recover their costs and make a profit on the review of the Chao Asian Studies Center. cation Association in Washington. top of it.” Qi Wang’s (CMS, ’02) first book, Memory, In November, Megan Scudellari (Science Associate Professor T.L. Taylor had a busy, Subjectivity and Independent Chinese Cinema, is Writing, ’08) received the Evert Clark/ but exciting fall semester. She keynoted at to be published in August by the Edinburgh Seth Payne Award from the National Press Vienna’s Future and Reality of Gaming con- University Press, as part of its series Edinburgh Foundation, given to one top young science ference, as well as being invited as plenary Studies in East Asian Film. She is an assistant writer annually for outstanding reporting and speaker at the Association of Internet Re- professor of film and media studies at the writing. She also moved back to Boston in searchers conference and McGill’s Partici- Georgia Institute of Technology. and is happy to be a Massachusetts resident patory Condition symposium. Her article again. Megan and her husband welcomed “Words with Friends: Writing Collabora- Genevieve Wanucha (Science Writing, ’09) their second child, a boy, born December 5th. tively Online” (co-authored with Boellstorff, is starting her second year as the writer for They also have a two year old girl. Nardi, and Pearce) was published in the ACM Oceans at MIT, a publication reporting on all journal Interactions. She was also featured on ocean-related research at MIT and partner Morgan Sherburne (Science Writing, ’09) the Social Media Clarity podcast, discussing institutions such as WHOI. In tandem, she recently left her job of three years as the her latest book project on live-streaming, as writes for the website of the MIT Program outdoors and environment reporter for the well as quoted in pieces at NBC News and in Oceans, Atmospheres, and Climate. She is Petoskey News-Review in Petoskey, Michigan. Pomona College Magazine. at work on her first book, which will be a She has started as a science writer for the Uni- creative work of science writing on human versity of Florida’s Health Communications. Iris Monica Vargas (Science Writing, ’08) emotion, plunging into the lives and minds published her first book in September, and it of neuroscientists, affective scientists, clini- David Spitz (CMS, ’01) is now President and has remained on Amazon’s Bestsellers List for cians, and patients with a fatal brain disease Chief Operating Officer of RebelMouse, a the past four months. It is a poetry book about called frontotemporal degeneration, a lesser freemium content publishing and distribu- the process of dissecting a human being for known dementia that steals emotional insight tion platform from the team behind Buzzfeed medical purposes, written from the perspec- and personality. and Huffington Post. As of January, Rebel- tives of the medical student who performs Mouse was reaching roughly 20 million the dissection and the donor who offered his/ After graduating from the Science Writing unique individuals a month across hundreds her body to medicine. It has received great program in October, Erin Weeks (Science of thousands of sites. reviews and it seems to have a life of its own Writing, ’13) started work as a science writer considering it was published by Terranova, at Duke University, where she has taken over Abe Stein (CMS, ’13) is working in the com- a very small publisher of fiction in Puerto from another program alum, Ashley Yeager munications office at Wheaton College, Rico. (Science Writing, ’08). applying knowledge he garnered in the CMS program to many different projects. He is also Kenrick Vezina (Science Writing, ’11) left a Michelle Woodward (CMS, ’02) has been working as a researcher and strategist with year-long tenure with the Genetic Literacy living in Beirut since 2011. She has a daughter, Azubu, an eSports web-streaming company, Project, jumping into freelancing and looking Amina, born in 2009, and her husband, which keeps him active and engaged in the for new opportunities. Waleed Hazbun, teaches at the American sports media and videogame fields. After University of Beirut. Woodward is still graduation, he and wife Morgan and son Professor Jing Wang’s two articles “Culture working freelance as a photo editor for Ezra moved to their new house in Pawtucket, as Leisure and Culture as Capital” and “The Middle East Report magazine (merip.org) Rhode Island, and are enjoying living in the Global Reach of a New Discourse: How and is also the founding editor of the photog- wee bitty state tremendously. Far Can ‘Creative Industries’ Travel?” were raphy page on the e-zine Jadaliyya (photogra- published in Chinese Media, Routledge, 2013. phy.jadaliyya.com). This semester she has “‘I think we’re going to see continued growth She also finished editing a special issue for been teaching a history of photography class on the indie side,” Philip Tan (CMS, ’03) told Positions: Asia Critique on “Reconsidering at a local university.

spring 2014 27 RESEARCH GROUP UPDATES

Going into 2014, we’re focusing on two The Education Arcade has undertaken a new Work on Annotation Studio, a tool to support main areas of research: building tools for research project in collaboration with Nick- close reading and collaborative interpretation community organizers and tools to analyze elodeon. We are surveying the fields of neu- of texts, is well underway. With an NEH online media content. roscience and congnitive psychology for the Digital Humanities Implementation Grant Chelsea Barabas, Heather Craig, Alex latest findings on development in children we continue developing and expanding ot. Gonçalves, Alexis Hope, and Jude Mwenda ages 3-6, and in the light of those findings Kurt Fendt, HyperStudio's Executive are exploring the role citizen monitoring can assessing tablet-based apps targeted for those Director, discussed "Humanities as Data" play in holding elected leaders accountable children. We will assess the current state of at Wentworth Institute of Technology's fall for promises they make about infrastructure. apps, and suggest promising directions for Digital Humanities Speaker Series. They are designing and piloting a mobile- future design. Caitlin Feeley and Ling Zhong Kurt and Wyn Kelley both gave keynote based tool called Promise Tracker, which are leading this effort. Our results will be addresses about the tool at Hofstra Univer- allows citizens to see evidence documenting presented at our annual Sandbox Summit sity’s Digital Thinking/Critical Thinking the origin of a promise, collect data about (sandboxsummit.org), which will be taking conference where Web Developer Jamie the status of a promise and then take action March 24th and 25th at the Stata Center. Folsom also presented Annotation Studio. if the promise has not been fulfilled. Promise We have also received a grant from the We made significant progress on our tracker is being piloted in Brazil in early 2014. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pilot US-Iran project, including an extensive Catherine D’Ignazio and Ali Hashmi games that promote academic literacy. The redesign of the web application interface, and are working on new tools that leverage the games themselves are based on an earlier a cleanup of the OCR text in the database, Berkman Center’s Media Cloud database. Gates funded ESL product, Xenos, created thanks to our resident data wrangler, These include The World According To, a by our not-for-profit spinoff Learning Games Gabriella Horvath. Kurt presented the ap- web-based visualization tool that geoparses Network. The games were designed by CMS plication to the Advisory Board of the Center information in the database and maps media alum Dan Roy, with contributions from Jesse for International Studies. coverage by country, and Topic Detector, Sell. Carole Urbano and Jesse are leading the Kurt and Jamie attended a meeting which takes a machine learning approach to pilot. Xenos itself was recently evaluated in with French collaborators on the Comédie analyzing information from news corpuses. a pilot with Spanish-speaking adult immi- Française Registers Project where they Using Media Cloud in a real world setting grants, and results from 13 weeks of game presented the work of the lab to a group of Erhardt Graeff, Matt Stempeck and Ethan play exceeded those from comparable or researchers and members of the Labora- Zuckerman conducted a detailed analysis of longer periods of traditional instruction. toire d’excellence at the Université de Paris/ media attention surrounding the Trayvon In the Scheller Teacher Education Program Nanterre. We hosted Writing in Digital Martin killing. Their results are outlined in (home base for Ed Arcade activity) work Margins, a workshop on using Annotation “The Battle for ‘Trayvon Martin’: Mapping a continues on our massively multi-play- Studio in the classroom. Media Controversy On- and Offline” which er on-line role playing game, the Radix We’ve also added a few new faces to the has been accepted for publication. Endeavor (www.radixendeavor.org), with HyperStudio team. In the fall, Liam Andrew More than a billion people a month visit an open beta test beginning this spring. Led and Desi Gonzalez, both graduate students in YouTube. Often, they watch the same video. by Eric Klopfer, this project has included the Comparative Media Studies class of 2015, A fascinating new project is What We Watch, contributions from much of the STEP lab joined. Rachel Schnepper started as Commu- a browser for trending YouTube videos staff. Eduardo Alvarez has been involved in nication Officer, providing outreach. developed by Ed Platt and Rahul Bhargava. quest design, and the development of tutorial Liam and Desi will give a presentation Some videos trend in a single country, and materials. on “HyperStudio: Collaborating with Col- some find regional audiences. Others spread leagues and Cultural Institutions” at The Hu- across borders of language, culture, and educationarcade.org manities and Technology Camp, College Art nation to reach a global audience. What We Association edition. They will discuss a new Watch lets us visualize and explore the con- project, tentatively titled ArtX, which will nections between countries based on their empower users to discover cultural events, video viewing habits. exhibitions, and objects in the Boston area. civic.mit.edu hyperstudio.mit.edu

28 in medias res RESEARCH GROUP UPDATES

The MIT Game Lab started the academic The ICE Lab published a number of The Mobile Experience Lab steered a year by hosting the second annual Boston articles, released multiple projects, and added workshop “Designing Interactions: Rethink- Festival of Indie Games, bringing over 5500 new members to its core team. Director Fox ing the MBTA Ridership Experience” in attendees, 100 digital game companies and 25 Harrell published his newest book, Phan- collaboration with Massachusetts Bay Trans- tabletop game designers to the MIT campus tasmal Media: An Approach to Imagination, portation Authority (MBTA). The workshop in September. The family-friendly event Computation, and Expression (MIT Press), to explored the question: How can new media included film and speaker series, a game jam, wide critical acclaim. U.C. Irvine professor technologies be used to connect the Boston and live musical performances. of informatics Paul Dourish has argued that MBTA station services to public transit pas- The Culture of Digital Fighting Games, the book provides “a new basis for under- sengers by designing innovative experiences? written by our researcher Todd Harper, hit standing human-computer interaction and Through the workshop participants from the bookshelves/tablets in 2014. Harper in- artificial intelligence.” Likewise, George multiple disciplines developed and tested troduced a new class to the MIT syllabus: Lewis, a professor pioneering research on concepts. Students worked in clusters to CMS.S60 Game Design for Expression. He computational approaches to improvisa- conduct ethnographic research of the transit recently presented his work at the AoIR in tion at Columbia University has called it a system and develop working prototypes. Denver and the No Show Conference in “bold and audacious view of the relation- The lab also initiated a project in collabo- Cambridge. At the Digital Games Research ship between computing and the imagina- ration with ENI, an Italian multinational oil Association conference in Georgia Tech, both tion,” adding this “is what a groundbreaking and gas company to imagine a fuel station for Harper and Mikael Jakobsson gave talks and book looks like.” The team welcomed new the future. Future fuel stations must consider represented the lab. Research affliate Kon- graduate researchers in Comparative Media both physical architecture and digital stantin Mitgutsch also edited and released Studies, Jason Lipshin and Ainsley Suther- services. The focus involved research on user Context Matters! Exploring and Reframing land — both talented theorist-practitioners. trends and station capabilities. Findings from Games in Context, collecting the proceedings Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence ethnographic and secondary research were of the 2013 FROG Conference in Vienna. Ph.D. students Chong-U Lim and Dominic distilled to develop a CAVE (computer aided Real-time visualizations developed Kao have been thriving and pushing forward virtual environment) pump experience that by the MIT Game Lab for eSports were in the areas of modeling identity in social was implemented at the ENI headquarters in recently featured in several tournaments media, games, and related educational tech- Milan, Italy. such as the prestigious Global StarCraft 2 nologies. With the semester’s new infusion The Jiangnan University School of Design League in Seoul. Several of our games have of energy, the team was able to make strides in Wuxi, China awarded Federico Casalegno, been featured at festivals, including Movers on several projects related to Chimeria, a the Director of the Mobile Experience Lab, and Shakers at the IndieCade and A Slower platform for creating nuanced social catego- an honorary professorship. Research papers Speed of Light at the World Science Festival, rization models in digital media such as social authored by researchers at the lab have been Otronicon, and Start//Expogame. Phantoma- networks and video games. Chimeria was accepted by various journals and confer- tion was named Best in Show in the Inter- used to build a computer role-playing game ences. “Designing synchronous Interactions national Serious Play Awards at the Serious scenario that models phenomena such as social for the Fenestration System of a Prototype Play Conference in Redmond, and A Slower stigma, stereotyping, and racial profiling. Sustainable Dwelling” was accepted as a Speed of Light also won “Best Student An article about the system was designated research paper by ASCAAD 2013 in Saudi Developed Serious Game” at the Serious an “exemplary paper” at the Foundations of Arabia. “Social Sustainability in Design: The Games Showcase & Challenge at I/ITSEC Digital Games 2014. Finally, ICE Lab alumni Window as an Interface for Social Interac- conference in Orlando. Jia Zhang is now a graduate student nearby at tion” and “Reinventing Financial Learning In 2014, we also hosted the Global Game the MIT Media Lab; Sonny Sidhu is a game for the Unbanked and Under-banked in Jam, the QUILTBAG jam, and the Push developer at Insomniac Games; and Ayse Brazil” have been accepted for the Human Button Game Jam, which was accompanied Gursoy is a now a Ph.D. student in the School Computer Interaction Annual Conference to by a lecture series on arcade games. We will of Information at the University of Texas. be held in June 2014 in Greece. offer the second iteration of our short program for professionals, “Game Development for icelab.mit.edu mobile.mit.edu Software Engineers,” in summer 2014. gamelab.mit.edu spring 2014 29 RESEARCH GROUP UPDATES

OpenDocLab began the semester with a new Harding, a historian from Harvard who uses Located in MIT Building 14N, room 233 visiting fellows program. From a conflict digital mapping and data visualization as part photo journalist creating interactive installa- of his research practice. Recent research in the Trope Tank has tions around issues of combat to a filmmaker We are working with the Tribeca Film focused on story generation by collaborat- exploring gender through an interactive Institute to create a Social Justice Media ing systems, comparing digital works and game experience, these artists, technologists, Impact Working Group. The group will their ports and remakes, and the development and scholars joined the OpenDocLab team to consist of researchers and practitioners in of electronic literature in Poland. Dr. Piotr experiment and push the boundaries of docu- a variety of media-related fields who are Marecki is focusing on the last of these; he mentary storytelling and scholarship. “Open currently looking at questions of social joined the Trope Tank in November thanks Doc Lab has been a great space for profes- impact and how to measure it. Prof. Sasha to the support of a Fulbright fellowship. Dr. sional growth,” said fellow and interactive Costanza-Chock is the lead principal inves- Marecki came to MIT from Krakow, where documentary maker Suvi Helminen, “for tigator on the project. We are organizing a he has served since 2009 as executive director sharing and discussing ideas about emerging March convening. and chairman of the board of publishing documentary forms, and for getting qualified The other big news is the launch of house Ha!art. This January, an author who feedback on the development of my own _docubase (docubase.mit.edu), a curated, was first published by Dr. Marecki’s press in interactive work.” Added fellow Karim participatory database of the people, projects, 2013 received Poland’s major literary prize, Khelifa, “In my journey as a storyteller and and technologies transforming documenta- the Paszport Polityki. war correspondent, the OpenDocLab at the ry in the digital age. Katie Edgerton, CMS Speaking of presses, Bad Quarto Press MIT has been key in opening my mind to alum worked tirelessly all summer to fill lurched into action in October as Trope unknown technological possibilities and to the database with interesting projects and a Tank researchers and an affiliate from fandom start implementing tomorrow’s interactive robust taxonomy. Research Assistants Julie restored, set up, and used the lab’s Kelsey and immersive techniques for my current Fischer and Sean Flynn continued the work Excelsior 3x5 printing press from the 1890s. project ‘The Enemy’.” in the fall preparing the database for its soft On January 29 the Trope Tank hosts an IAP Katerina Cizek, an Emmy-winning in- launch in November at the International workshop on BASIC programming using teractive documentary pioneer from the Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, the five real Commodore 64 systems from the National Film Board of Canada, is back as premiere documentary festival in the world. 1980s. The Trope Tank’s Purple Blurb series a Visiting Artist this year. She is collaborat- As William Uricchio explains, “The goal is of presentations of digital writing, emphasiz- ing with MIT researchers on a documen- twofold: to attract audiences and participa- ing practice and creative work, resumes in the tary about digital citizenship in suburban tion from across disciplines to inspire cross Spring semester. Finally, two recent Trope and urban highrises around the world. She is disciplinary and participatory innovation and Reports (technical reports from the lab) have creating a survey tool on an i-Pad that will to use the database as a tool to study language been issued: “Videogame Editions for Play collect data and serve as the basis for her doc- and categorizing trends in the field.” It is in and Study” by Prof. Clara Fernández-Vara umentary. beta form and we are continuing to build it (now at NYU) and Prof. Montfort and “No OpenDocLab continued its speaker series out. Take a look. We’d love any feedback. Code: Null Programs” by Prof. Montfort. including a talk from Glorianna Davenport, Media Lab Research Scientist and interac- opendoclab.mit.edu trope-tank.mit.edu tive cinema pioneer, and Professor Vincent

30 in medias res EVENTS

Spring 2014 Talks

Feb 13 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 Mar 20 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 Play in the Age of Computing Machinery The Antidote: Reporting from Inside the World of Games scholar Miguel Sicart of the IT University of Copenhagen Big Pharma looks at the culture, aesthetics, and technological implications of play Barry Werth’s most recent book, The Antidote: Inside the World of Big in the age of computers. Pharma, gives an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at how a cash-starved startup became one of the great triumphs of American Feb 20 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 bio-tech innovation. Who Tunes Whom?: Auto-Tune, the Earth, and the Politics of Frequency Apr 3 | 5:00 PM | Location TBA | Communications Forum McGill’s Jonathan Sterne gives a cultural history of auto-tune as a Science in Fiction form of signal processing, drawing on patent documents, interviews, Hanya Yanagihara, Alan Lightman, and Rebecca Goldstein discuss operational protocols, tuning standards and competing acoustemolo- the unique challenges of respecting the exacting standards of science gies. The obvious artifice in its most extreme forms points us back in fictional texts. to a centuries-long project to technologize human voices through standards and tuning. This spring Sterne is a visiting researcher in April 10 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England and “Natural Vision vs. Tele-Vision”: Defining and a visiting scholar in the Department of Music at Harvard Univer- Managing Electronic Color in the Post-War Era sity He is author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke 2012), The Susan Murray on the discourses that framed and managed color use Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke, 2003); and and reception not only in the standardization period, but also during numerous articles on media, technologies and the politics of culture. RCA and NBC’s early attempts to sell color to consumers, sponsors, and critics. Feb 27 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 Music, Culture and Transformation Apr 24 | 5:00 PM | 66-110 | Communications Forum Meredith Schweig explores the gender politics and practices of the Online Reading and the Future of Annotation Taiwan rap scene, drawing on long-term fieldwork with the island’s Using the tools of online textual annotation, readers can collaborate hip-hop community and invoking emergent scholarly discourses on on annotating or interpreting a work, make their annotations public, East Asian and global masculinities. and respond to interpretations by others.

Mar 6 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 | Communications Forum May 1 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 Henry Jenkins Returns Tarleton Gillespie Legendary former MIT professor and housemaster Henry Jenkins Gillespie is a Professor in the Department of Communication at returns to the Forum for a conversation about his time at the Institute Cornell University and the author of the book Wired Shut: Copyright and the founding of CMS as well as his path-breaking scholarship on and the Shape of Digital Culture. He is currently teaching at the Commu- contemporary media. nication department of Cornell University, as an associate professor, with an affiliation with the Information Science program and the Mar 13 | 5:00 PM | 4-231 Science & Technology Studies department. He also serves as a non- Kate Crawford residential fellow with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society Crawford is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research (Social at the Stanford Law School. Gillespie has been awarded the Young Media Collective), a Visiting Professor at the MIT Center for Civic Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in the College of Agriculture and Media, a Senior Fellow at the Information Law Institute at NYU, Life Sciences at Cornell University; he was also the commencement and an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. speaker for the Information Science/Information Science, Systems She researches how people engage with networked technologies, and and Technology majors at Cornell University for 2007. analyze the political, cultural, legal, philosophical and policy-making implications. She has done interview-based studies in Australia, India May 8 | 5:00 PM | E14-633 and the US, in big cities and in very small towns. Crawford is in- (To Be Announced) terested in how networked data becomes part of our understanding Stayed tuned to cmsw.mit.edu. of knowledge, privacy, democracy, intimacy and subjectivity. Her first book Adult Themes was published by Pan Macmillan, and she is A current schedule, including conferences and special events, is available at currently working on a new book. cmsw.mit.edu/events.

Miss an event? Catch up at cmsw.mit.edu/podcasts.

spring 2014 31 MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Building E15, Room 331 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA 02139

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