Research

This page features brief abstracts of some of my recent research endeavors.

Measuring Behavior:
The Role of Optical Instruments in the Experimental Psychology Laboratory

A preliminary investigation for my dissertation, this paper offers a theoretical framework to understand the ways in which optical instruments in nineteenth-century experimental psychology laboratories can be theorized as tools of culture. It highlights some of the principles of vision that came to be tested and verified by optical instruments at this time, and explores how many of these concepts were then seen to be manifest in the lived realities of social subjects.

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Picturing Nature:
Guided Picture Tours and the View-Master as Ideological Apparatus

My work on the View-Master examines reel sets of American National Parks during the 1960s and 1970s, and considers the media format of the View-Master as a distinct ideological mode through which young people had some of their first and most formative encounters with such natural spaces. I explore notions of “nature” and “the natural,” particularly in relation to conceptions of culture, and the role of the toy—especially one that so integrally relies upon the exercise of human perceptual capabilities (binocular vision), to examine how particular ways of looking, seeing, or apprehending the natural environment are encouraged, while other perspectives remain obscured. A version of this paper will be presented at the MediaModes conference at the School of Visual Arts in November of 2009.

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“If Ye are Prepared”: The Blogosphere, Gift Economy, and
Response to a Catastrophe

Following a small private plane crash that critically injured a mother of five and prominent member of the mom-blog community, a series of internet auctions were held to raise contributions toward her recovery effort. My study of this situation explores an online community of women who blog about motherhood and design, and the circulation of both economic and moral capital within their circle as a distinct gift economy.

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Proof of the Invisible: Early Televisual Evidence in Radio and Spiritualism

Pulling together an eclectic set of primary materials, for this project, I examined several pieces of visual evidence that document, illustrate, or visualize signal transmission between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: the Spiritualist movement and the development of early wireless technology. Looking at both areas in tandem opens up a host of questions about what qualifies as visual “evidence,” and causes the reevaluation of the term “televisual.” A version of this paper was presented at the Visible Evidence XVI conference at USC in August 2009.

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Portrait of Portrait of a Serial Killer

While studying forensic media, I conducted an analysis of mystery writer Patricia Cornwell’s non-fiction book Portrait of a Serial Killer, in which she definitively claims that forensic evidence proves the identity of Victorian-era terror Jack the Ripper. In my piece, I argue that Cornwell wields a popular conception of “forensic” technology that over extends is actual potential.  Doing so permits her to make claims about a century-old crime spree and has serious implications for our understanding of materiality, historicity, and truth.

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Nickelodeon

Expanding on work done by people like Heather Hendershot, I examined the Nickelodeon network in the early 1990s in the context of NAFTA. I focused on the appropriation of international [often Canadian] programming, such as You Can’t Do that on Television in the service of constructing a pan-national [yet simultaneously quite markedly American] kid citizenship, and the extent to which free trade facilitated the importation, translation, and export of Nickelodeon programs.

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A New Spin on Media History: The Zoetrope

A forerunner to my larger dissertation project, my research on the zoetrope examines the device’s lasting presence into the twentieth century through promotional materials, legal discourses, and adaptations. Such work then counters the claim of traditional film and media scholarship that pre-cinema toys were mostly replaced by the cinema.

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Critical Mass: The Semiotics of the Swarm

I wrote a paper about critical mass as a semiotic event, largely in terms of Yuri Lotman’s idea of translatability inside and outside of the semiosphere. The paper also discusses swarm theory.

* This lovely Victorian-themed Critical Mass image is taken from the UAA bike club site.

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The Art of Hype: The Tactics and Transgressions of Banksy

My work on Banksy has examined the extent to which his artistic practice began as what Michel De Certeau would call a series of tactical maneuvers, but how his entry into, and firm position within, the global artistic establishment becomes more of a strategic operation. The key to his continued success, however, is the way in which his strategic operations masquerade as tactical, permitting him to inhabit both the center and the periphery of circuits of global capital.