Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 4
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Contributors
Benjamin Balthaser is assistant professor of multi-ethnic U.S. literature at Indiana University-South Bend. His forthcoming book from University of Michigan Press, Anti-Imperialist Modernism: Race and Transnational Radical Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War, explores connections between cross-border, anti-imperialist movements and the making of U.S. modernist culture at mid-century. Critical and creative work of his appears in journals or collections such as such as American Quarterly, The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Criticism, Cultural Logic, Minnesota Review and elsewhere.[article]
Walter Bosse holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati. His doctoral dissertation, "Breaking the Iceberg: Ernest Hemingway, Black Modernism, and the Politics of Narrative Appropriation," explores Hemingway's early fiction in relation to African-American cultural productions of the twentieth century. He has published on Hemingway and Charles W. Chesnutt and, at present, he is a Teaching Fellow in the Humanities at Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he teaches courses in writing, research, and literature. [article]
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein is Associate Professor of philosophy Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait. He has been working on Asian philosophy, cinema aesthetics, and philosophy of architecture in many different countries. He has a maitrise from the Sorbonne, a Ph.D. from Oxford University and a ‘habilitation’ from the EHESS in Paris. He has been researching in Japan and worked for the Center of Cognition of Hangzhou University (China) as well as a at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Publications: Place and Dream: Japan and the Virtual (Rodopi, 2004); Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Sokurov, Bergman, Kubrik, Wong Kar-wai (Lexington 2007); La Chine contre l’Amérique. Culture sans civilisation contre civilisation sans culture? (Paris: L’Harmattan 2012); Vasily Sesemann: Experience, Formalism and the Question of Being (Rodopi 2006); Aesthetics and Politics of Space in Russia and Japan (Lexington 2009); The Cool-Kawaii: Afro-Japanese Aesthetics and New World Modernity (Lexington 2010); The Veil in Kuwait: Gender, Fashion, Identity (with Noreen Abdullah-Khan, Palgrave 2014); Transcultural Architecture: Limits and Opportunities of Critical Regionalism (Ashgate 2015). Editor of: The Philosophy of Viagra: Bioethical Responses to the Viagrification of the Modern World (Rodopi, 2011); Inception and Philosophy: Ideas to Die For (Chicago: Open Court, 2011). Re-ethnicizing the Minds? Tendencies of Cultural Revival in Contemporary Philosophy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006). Website; www.botzbornstein.org [article]
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein. Gender: male. Genre: European postpunk cinemystic. Attracted by everything that is virtual, stylish, playful, and dreamlike, Thorsten has been drawn towards linguistic air guitars, confusianisms, red pills, inceptions, Baltic hippos, Dionysian perspectivisms, blue pills as well as posthuman kitschiness. He has also elaborated on profound parallels between the design of the new Mini Cooper and traditional Japanese pottery. The continuation of his research takes place in a setting which is, in his opinion, as unreal as Hello Kitty in the sky with diamonds: Kuwait.
Tobias Conradi is a postdoctoral researcher at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig’s Institut für Medienforschung. He received his PhD in media studies from the Universität Paderborn, where he held a scholarship with the Graduiertenkolleg Automatismen. His research focuses on the connection between crisis, critique and decisions, the politics of representation, and the history of games and play. His recent publications include: Automatismen in der Repräsentation von Krisen- und Katastrophenereignissen, (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2015); (with Stephan Böhme, Rolf F. Nohr, Serjoscha Wiemer) “Kulturtechnik Unternehmensplanspiel. Eine medien- und kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherung“ in Sebastian Schwaegele, Birgit Zuern, and Friedrich Trautwein’s Planspiele - Erleben, was kommt: Entwicklung von Zukunftsszenarien und Strategien (Stuttgart: DHBW, 2014); and (Ed. with Heike Derwanz and Florian Muhle) Strukturentstehung durch Verflechtung. Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie(n) und Automatismen (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2011). [article]
Steven Conway is co-convenor of the Games and Interactivity course at Swinburne University of Technology. His research explores the philosophy and aesthetics of modern digital game design. Recently, his work has focused upon introducing a new model for comprehending the experience of play. His recent publications include contributions to Digital Media Sport: Technology, Power and Culture in the Network Society (New York: Routledge, 2013), The Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (Bristol: Intellect, 2014), and Playing To Win: Sports, Video Games, and the Culture of Play (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). He may be reached at sconway@swin.edu.au. [article]
Will Cunningham is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Kansas. Will's interests lie in the intersection of twentieth century African American and Southern Literature, with a focus in Space and Place theory. Will has previously published articles in Black Magnolias Literary Journal and Southwestern American Literature Journal. [article]
Nathan Frank has a Master of International Studies (MIntSt) from the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, and an MA in literature from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He approaches contemporary critical theory as a creative genre in its own right, and he resists periodization in order to most fully demonstrate the extent of theory's creative powers. He is published as the co-winner of a graduate contest in RMMLA and he has forthcoming articles from Biblical Interpretation and Kudzu Review. [article]
Johanna Isaacson is an instructor in English and Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College. She received a Ph.d from UCSC in 2011. Her work on politics and aesthetics in contemporary literature, DiY culture, and cinema has appeared in Criticism,Liminalities, Counterpunch, Viewpoint, Lana Turner, and Cesura//Acceso.[article]
Beatrice Kohler is a doctoral student with Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen, Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich. After completing her BA studies in English Literature & Linguistics, Film Studies and Swiss History, she obtained an MA in English Literature and Film Studies from the University of Zurich. She is currently working on her PhD thesis that investigates American cinema between 1945 and 1962 in terms of Cold War culture, with particular focus on paranoia and conspiracy theories. [article]
Michael Leong teaches at Goddard College and will join the English Department at the University at Albany, SUNY as an Assistant Professor in August. His articles on contemporary poetry and poetics have appeared in Contemporary Literature and Modern Language Studies. He is the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry, most recently Cutting Time with a Knife (Black Square Editions, 2012). He can be contacted at michael.c.leong@gmail.com. [article]
Chris Margrave lives in Austin and teaches writing at Texas State University, where he earned his MFA in Fiction. His work has appeared in the Rio Grande Review, Precipitate Journal, Southwestern American Literature, and on ESPN, where he co-produces the “Longhorn Film Showcase,” a television show featuring short films made by students at The University of Texas at Austin. He currently is writing an experimental historical novella about the brief life of Italian cyclist Ottavio Bottecchia, who is purported to have been murdered in 1927 by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. [article]
Ken S. McAllister [bio] [article]
Rolf F. Nohr is Professor of Media Aesthetics and Culture at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig. He earned his PhD in Media Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and worked as Research Assistant at the University of Cologne and before joining Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig as Assistant Professor of Media Culture. His main research is focused on game studies, media theory, critical discourse analysis and metal studies. His recent English language publications include: “The Game is a Medium. The Game is a Message” in Tobias Winnerling and Florian Kerschbaumer’s Early Modernity and Video Games (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014); “Restart After Death: Self Optimizing, Normalism and Re-entry in Computer Games” in Jason C. Thompson and Marc A. Ouellette’s The Game Culture Reader (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013); and “Free Market Economy and Dino Crisis: The Production and Circulation of Knowledge in Strategy Games” in Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger’s Computer Games and New Media Cultures: A Handbook of Digital Games Studies (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012). More information can be found here. [article]
Marc Ouellette [bio] [article]
Hossein Pirnajmuddin is an Associate Professor of English Literature at University of Isfahan, Iran, where he has taught since the completion of his PhD at University of Birmingham, UK, in 2002. His interests include Renaissance literature, colonial and postcolonial theory, contemporary fiction and translation studies. He has published on Renaissance and contemporary figures including Spenser, Milton, Conrad and Joyce. [article]
Theo Röhle [article]
Judd Ruggill is an Associate Professor of Communication at Arizona State University and Co-Director of the Learning Games Initiative. His research interests center on mass media history, theory, and criticism, with a particular emphasis on computer game technologies, play, and cultures. His most recent book (co-authored with Ken McAllister) is the forthcoming Tempest: Geometries of Play (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015), and samples of his scholarship can be found here. [article]
Elias Schwieler has a PhD in English literature and works at the Department of Education at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research interests include phenomenology, deconstruction, and teaching and learning literature. His latest work, “Re-Thinking Gelassenheit: Educational Intimations in Heidegger’s Thought of the ‘Turn’,” co-authored with James M. Magrini, is submitted for publication in Philosophy Today. [article]
Robert T. Tally Jr. is an associate professor of English at Texas State University. He is the author of Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism; Poe and the Subversion of American Literature; Spatiality (The New Critical Idiom); Utopia in the Age of Globalization ; Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel; and Melville, Mapping and Globalization. The translator of Bertrand Westphal'sGeocriticism, Tally is the editor of Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies; Kurt Vonnegut: Critical Insights; Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative; and The Geocritical Legacies of Edward W. Said: Spatiality, Critical Humanism, and Comparative Literature (forthcoming). He also serves as the general editor of the Palgrave Macmillan book series Geocriticism and Spatial Literary Studies. [article]
Ebrahim Zarei holds an MA in English Literature. He has graduated from the University of Isfahan, in Iran. His interests include Renaissance literature, contemporary fiction and cultural studies. He is looking forward to publishing articles in the stated fields. [article]
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