Author: Carla Nappi

Podcasts

Textures of Mourning: An Interview

Reginald Jackson’s inspiring new book takes a transdisciplinary approach to rethinking how we read, how we pay attention, and why that matters deeply in shaping how we understand the past, live in the present, and imagine possible futures. Textures of Mourning: Calligraphy, Mortality, and The Tale of Genji Scrolls (University of Michigan Press, 2018) explores the relationship between reading, dying, and mourning across three central texts: the Heian … Continue reading Textures of Mourning: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
News

The Invisible College!

Folkses! For a while now, Professor Carrie Jenkins and I have been writing and working together, first as colleagues at UBC who found each other via Twitter during a kinda tumultuous time at the university, then as friends and co-teachers in the UBC Arts One program, then-then as co-makers of a book that we’ve been writing together. We’re both artist-scholars who are working to make space … Continue reading The Invisible College!

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
News

Imagining History/Writing Late Imperial China

There’s a very cool section in the latest issue of Late Imperial China devoted to engaging the arts as late imperial (or early modern) historians. I have a little piece in the issue on fictioning with late imperial Chinese history and it’s a sneak peek of the monograph I’m finishing. The essay is sisters with the recent PMLA piece on fictioning with history, and the two contain … Continue reading Imagining History/Writing Late Imperial China

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
News

Metagestures news, and assorted updates!

Happy summer, y’all! It’s been year of transitions, and I haven’t been here much while I took a hiatus from podcasting, finished up some other things, and did some re-orienting. It’s good to be back. I’m about to move to a brand new position as Andrew W. Mellon Chair in History at the University of Pittsburgh, and I’m really thrilled to be joining such a … Continue reading Metagestures news, and assorted updates!

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
News

Symposium, Reimagined

Happy holidays! I’ve just added a page for a project that I’m very, very excited about. Carrie Jenkins and I are writing a book together, reimagining Plato’s Symposium in a hybrid poetry/fiction format. You’ll find our own versions of the speeches of the text – of Phaedrus, of Aristophanes, of Diotima, etc – as inspired by Tarot cards, outer space, a love affair between Sappho and Medusa, and much … Continue reading Symposium, Reimagined

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
News

Gestures of Photographing

I’m so excited to share the first public fruits of the Meta-gestures project that Dominic Pettman and I are collaborating on. The project itself is a hybrid of fiction and theory that explores gesture through Vilém Flusser’s work. We just published our first pair of stories in the wonderful new Thresholds journal. Head over there to explore our gestures of photographing! We designed the piece … Continue reading Gestures of Photographing

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

The Social Life of Inkstones: An Interview

Dorothy Ko’s new book is a must-read. Troubling the hierarchy of head over hands and the propensity to denigrate craftsmen in Chinese history, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China (University of Washington Press, 2017) explores the place of inkstones in the early Qing political project in a story that places ink-grinding stones and their craftspersons at the center. Ko’s book … Continue reading The Social Life of Inkstones: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Face/On: An Interview

Sharrona Pearl’s new book is an absolute pleasure to read. Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other (The University of Chicago Press, 2017) looks closely at facial allotransplantations, commonly known as face transplants, in order to offer a careful and fascinating study of the stakes for changing the face, and the changing stakes for the face. Troubling the indexical relationship between the face and … Continue reading Face/On: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Synthetic: An Interview

Sophia Roosth’s wonderful new book follows researchers clustered around MIT beginning in 2003 who named themselves synthetic biologists. A historically informed anthropological analysis based on many years of ethnographic work, Synthetic: How Life Got Made (University of Chicago Press, 2017) offers a fascinating account of the changing relationship between making and understanding in the life sciences, and of the metamorphoses of life itself as an analytic … Continue reading Synthetic: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

A World Trimmed with Fur: An Interview

Jonathan Schlesinger’s new book makes a compelling case for the significance of Manchu and Mongolian sources and archival sources in particular in telling the story of the Qing empire and the invention of nature in its borderlands. A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule (Stanford University Press, 2017) traces the history of Qing nature and its environments … Continue reading A World Trimmed with Fur: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi