What are you currently reading?
I'm reading: Clay Shirky "Here comes everybody" (non-fiction, digital media studies), Marian Keyes "Rachel's Holiday" (chick lit), and my digital version of "The Complete New Yorker" on CD-ROM.
What are the top five texts that you find to be the most useful for teaching?
- Ira Levin, "The Stepford Wives" -- I can pretty much guarantee that no one has read it before
- Frank and Ernestine Gilbreth, "Cheaper by the Dozen"--a great and funny introduction to technoculture, actually
- Kevin Williams, "Understanding Media Theory"--a clear, comprehensive, and fairly brief intro to the field
- M. H Abrams, "Glossary of Literary Terms"--a dictionary of literary critical practice: essential
- OED: dictionaries are fascinating, and lead you where you didn't know you wanted to go
What texts have you had the most fun researching?
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I have been to the Computer History Museum in California to take pictures of 1960s-1980s computer keyboards. That was a lot of fun!
- I also read a lot of mommy blogs for work, and these are really entertaining.
- For my dissertation, I managed to write 17 pages on the topic of RoboCop. Fun!
What would you be if you weren't an English professor?
I would be a professional closet organizer, or, possibly, a crowd scene wrangler for the film industry. Seriously. I've been telling people these are my ambitions, for years.