The Network Archaeology conference, sponsored by the Miami University Humanities Center, is the culminating event to a year-long series of discussions and events on the topic of “Networked Environments.” The conference is being co-coordinated by cris cheek, Associate Professor of English, and Nicole Starosielski, Assistant Professor of Communication.
Altman Fellows
Eight faculty scholars from across campus were chosen as Altman Fellows to participate in the year’s discussions:
Renee Baernstein (History) teaches the history of Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation Europe. Her current book project, Gender and Marriage in Baroque Rome: The Colonna Family, argues that the unique characteristics of the Papal political system, particularly clerical celibacy, created in the ruling class a family environment conducive to women holding powerful but hidden and mistrusted positions of influence.
Ron Becker‘s (Communication) research interests include television studies, cultural theory, LGBT studies/queer theory, and media history. His research has been published in The Television Studies Reader, The Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, Television & New Media, and The Velvet Light Trap. Dr. Becker’s first book, Gay TV and Straight America, has come out from Rutger’s University Press
Vitaly Chernetsky (GREAL) is currently working on a book project tentatively titled Displacement, Desire, Identity: East European Writing and the Diasporic Momentum. The book will engage with the narratives of displacement and identity-construction generated by the waves of diasporic displacement from the Russian/Soviet empire and Eastern Europe from the 1890s to the 1990s. He is particularly interested in instances of interrogation and subversion of rigid, stable identities, where diasporic displacement triggers a reworking not only of national and linguistic, but also of class, gender, and other aspects of identity. This volume is meant to initiate a dialogic engagement between Western/Third World theorizations of diaspora and the work of displaced authors with ties to Eastern Europe. The authors discussed will include Joseph Conrad, Vasyl’ Stefanyk, Vladimir Nabokov, Witold Gombrowicz, and Dubravka Ugrešić.
Cindy Klestinec (English) is currently working on two projects. The first is a study of Lucrezia Marinella’s On the Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men(1600, 1601) and her use of prudence, the practical intellect, and Aristotle’s Ethics(book 6) to imagine a new, public woman in the Renaissance. The second is a project on the culture of reprint for sixteenth-century surgery texts that examines the intersection of surgery texts, print circulation, and the history of the book.
Glenn Muschert‘s (Sociology) areas of scholarly interest lie in the sociological study of crime and social problems, including the mass media framing of high profile crimes, school shootings, missing persons, and social control through surveillance technologies. His publications have appeared in American Behavioral Scientist, The Gerontologist, Research in Social Problems & Public Policy, Critical Sociology, Sociological Inquiry, Justice Policy Journal, Sociological Imagination, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Annual Review of Law & Social Science, Sociology Compass, Social Science Journal, and Youth Violence & Juvenile Justice.
Braxton Soderman (Communication) is working on a project entitled Interpreting Video Games through the Lens of Modernity, in which he uses particular video games to investigate problems associated with the rise of modernity and its current transformation into postmodernity or second modernity.
Susan Spellman (History) is Assistant Professor of History on the Miami University Hamilton Campus. Her teaching and research interests include 19th and 20th C. U.S. social and cultural history, business history, consumerism, and history of technology. Her current book project, Cornering the Market: Independent Grocers and Innovation in American Small Business, moves beyond the nostalgic myth of the “backward” grocer and instead looks at nineteenth and twentieth-century independent grocers as pioneers of national business and technology methods and practices.
Pepper Stetler‘s (Art History) research focuses on the art and visual culture of Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918-1933). She is currently working on a book manuscript that addresses how the display and sequencing of photographs in books relates to contemporary debates on modern visual experiences. Photographic books by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Karl Blossfeldt, Helmar Lerski, and August Sander figure prominently in her research. Other projects focus on intersections between avant-garde photography and methodologies of art history in early twentieth-century Germany and the notion of Sachlichkeit in modern German culture.
Altman Junior Fellows
Four Altman Junior Fellows were selected to participate in the discussions leading up to the conference, and to help coordinate its events:
Alexandra Tirrell is a sophomore political science and journalism major. She is involved with Dance Marathon and the Miami Quarterly on the Miami University campus, and is a writing tutor for the Howe Writing Center for Excellence. Her passion is for politics and writing about politics, and when she graduates she hopes to work in Washington D.C..
Alex Underwood is a Senior with a double-major in Anthropology and French. Originally from Long Grove, IL, he spent last year studying abroad in Nantes, France, where he worked at a local high school teaching English. His interests include cultural studies, archaeology, the French language, game design and analysis, and music composition. Alex hopes to continue onto graduate school, with a focus in Digital Humanities.
Traci Kim is a senior with a double major in Creative Writing and Spanish Literature. She is the writing director of Inklings, Miami University’s undergraduate magazine of Arts & Letters. In August 2011, she published Amsterdamned If You Do: an anthology about setting with Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. After graduation, Traci plans to live abroad, and upon her return to the United States pursue an MFA in creative fiction.
Ann Marie Clark
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