sleepcamel's blog

It's been just over a year since I wrote the very first gnovis blog entry, "Making the Case for a gnovis Blog," in which I argued that academic blogging offers, for both readers and writers, an opportunity to narrow the gap between pure critical theory and contemporary "real world" issues. While I'll still happily defend that particular argument, my own views on academic blogging have become considerably more nuanced.  Read More »

When I arrived on the coast of Maine last Saturday, I had little of note but a comic book, a pad of paper, a short writing workbook, and a fierce determination to make some measurable amount (any measurable amount) of progress towards choosing a topic for my thesis. Imagine my surprise when I arrived home Tuesday afternoon with not only a soft tan, but also a fully articulated -- and completely viable-- thesis proposal. Sans lit review, of course.  Read More »

A few days ago I was asked about the new full-body scanners that are being used at several airports, including BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). I'm a little embarrased to admit that, though I knew the scanners were being used, I didn't know the details. After all, one of the core readings in the CCT program (during my 1st year here, at least), was Jeffrey Rosen's "The Naked Crowd," and these new scanners are exactly what Rosen referred to as The Naked Machine.  Read More »

I have long had a vaguely secretive fascination with what I'm going to call, in this post, "collective nostalgia," though I am often more inclined to call it "false nostalgia," emphasizing that the object of this nostalgia is generally something imaginary.

To scholars of nationalism and nation building, this concept is quite familiar, in principle if not in name -- the public memory that underlies national histories is characterized by a collective memory (and collective forgetting) that is selective, essentialized, and at times imagined.  Read More »

Here in Georgetown's Communication, Culture and Technology (CCT) program, the students have informally divided themselves into CCT ("CC-Big-T") and CCt ("CC-little-t"). The implication, for the benefit of outside readers, is that some of us, the little-t's, while comfortable working with theories of technology, are not comfortable working with technology itself. There is, without trivializing a very important term, a digital divide in our midst.  Read More »