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!
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
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
The wonderful “Conjectures” series at The Public Domain Review has just published a piece from The Elizabeths that started the whole project. I’m very grateful to them, and you can read it by heading over here. Continue reading The Elizabeths at Public Domain Review
Dominic Pettman and I have spent the last year and a half (or so) conducting an experiment born out of a series of related questions: As a writer, what can it look like to meaningfully engage theory? As we respond to a work of cultural theory, what might fiction writing help us understand, see, and make that straight-up academic theory writing might not offer? Thus was … Continue reading Metagestures
Happy it’s-almost-summer, everyone! This is mostly a post to wave hello-again-nice-to-see-you-again as the website and I emerge from the fog of the academic year. I’ll be back to updating the site regularly from here on out, posting from Berlin as I finish a book manuscript and start a new project this summer. In the meantime, here’s a thing: I’ll be part of a small group … Continue reading Long time no post! Plus, What History Could Have Been 3…
Jonathan Ichikawa and I co-wrote an opinion piece for the The Vancouver Sun about our experiences with faculty activism in the midst of the current crisis of governance at UBC. You can find it by heading over here. Continue reading Standing up for change at UBC: an op-ed
On April 29, Cabinet Magazine in NYC hosted a conversation among Dominic Pettman and I (punctuated and elevated by gorgeous films created by Merritt Symes) about our respective books, each inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. (Dominic’s beautiful book was recently published, and mine is in progress and should be out soon.) Better put, it really wasn’t a conversation between us, but between those books: we wove our writing together … Continue reading The City as Phantasm
On May 21, a handful of historically-minded people will gather at Princeton to participate in an experiment in “conjectural historiography”: imagining and memorializing historians who never existed, but should have. It will be fabulous, it will be the beginning of something, it will be an experiment, and anyone who is in the area is warmly invited to join us. I’ll be sharing some reflections on a group … Continue reading What History Could Have Been: A Symposium
Hey NYC folks! Come to Brooklyn later this month to see Dominic Pettman and I attempt to translate our two Italo Calvino-inspired books into a hybrid, beautiful, monstrous third entity with help from the film artist Merritt Symes. This is not a two-talks kind of a thing: it will be a performance blending two books and some gorgeous film interludes together to create something new. April 29, … Continue reading The City as Phantasm: Upcoming Event in NYC!
Carla Nappi 