Para-Academia & Theory Fiction | Session 1: Nicola Masciandaro on Commentary
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Observatory at Proteus Gowanus, 543 Union Street, Brooklyn
Presented by the Hollow Earth Society and The Public School New York
Blogs, Speculative Medievalisms, Collapse, Cyclonopedia, Lovecraft, print-on-demand: the idea of “para-academia” has arisen in recent years as an addendum and an ultimatum to established disciplines and practices.
The Public School New York will explore these emerging ideas and modes of expression through a series of discussions and writing workshops.
Questioning the concept of the ‘marginal’, this session will consider commentary as a para-academic and theory-fictional mode of thinking and writing. Specific topics to be discussed include geometrics of commentarial thought, contemplation vs. speculation, hidden writing and acontextual scholarship, philological eros, and destructive reading. A theoretical introduction will be followed by open discussion of the texts and the futures of commentary.
Nicola Masciandaro is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College and a specialist in medieval literature. He is founding editor of Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary and co-director of the open-access press Punctum Books. For more information, see The Whim.
For related texts and more information, go to http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/3268
Audio from the second session in the series featuring Wythe Marschall on Gnostic Vertigo in Bataille and Lovecraft can be found here.
10 plays
Para-Academia & Theory Fiction | Session 1: Nicola Masciandaro on Commentary
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Observatory at Proteus Gowanus, 543 Union Street, Brooklyn
Presented by the Hollow Earth Society and The Public School New York
Blogs, Speculative Medievalisms, Collapse, Cyclonopedia, Lovecraft, print-on-demand: the idea of “para-academia” has arisen in recent years as an addendum and an ultimatum to established disciplines and practices.
The Public School New York will explore these emerging ideas and modes of expression through a series of discussions and writing workshops.
Questioning the concept of the ‘marginal’, this session will consider commentary as a para-academic and theory-fictional mode of thinking and writing. Specific topics to be discussed include geometrics of commentarial thought, contemplation vs. speculation, hidden writing and acontextual scholarship, philological eros, and destructive reading. A theoretical introduction will be followed by open discussion of the texts and the futures of commentary.
Nicola Masciandaro is Associate Professor of English at Brooklyn College and a specialist in medieval literature. He is founding editor of Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary and co-director of the open-access press Punctum Books. For more information, see The Whim.
For related texts and more information, go to http://nyc.thepublicschool.org/class/3268
Audio from the second session in the series featuring Wythe Marschall on Gnostic Vertigo in Bataille and Lovecraft can be found here.