swanstream

Welcome to my web site. My name is Elizabeth Swanstrom (my friends call me Lisa), and I am currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Umeå’s HUMlab.  Before coming to Sweden, I was the Florence Levy Kay Fellow in the Digital Humanities in the English Department at Brandeis University.  I completed my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in June 2008 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and my research interests include twentieth-century literature, digital culture, the literature of the fantastic, (new) media theory, and science-fiction.

While I am at HUMlab I will be working on a project entitled “Digital Landscapes,” which considers computer-generated simulations of natural spaces in light of literary and artistic tradition.  A more thorough description of this project is available on the HUMlab blog.  I am also currently revising a book project entitled “Self.net,” which traces the way that the emergence of network technology influenced expressions of subjectivity during the dot-com-boom-and-bust of the mid nineties to the turn of the century.

You can contact me at swanstro@gmail.com

Brandeis University

Mediums and Messages (Comparative Literature 163A) This course explores how human beings and human bodies participate in expressive communication technology, digital or otherwise.

Introducing (New) Media (English 48A) This course offers a broad orientation to issues in the digital humanities.

Self.net (Humanities 125A / 6320) This course examines how network technologies of the current age can be seen as co-extensive with representations of identity in contemporary aesthetic works.

University of California, Santa Barbara.

Comparative Literature 30C Major Works of European Literature from the Romantic to the contemporary period

Comparative Literature 146 “Robots,” an upper division course focusing on intersections between literature and technology

Writing 50 “Technology and Society,” Writing and the Research Process

English 10 “Data Made Flesh or Flesh Turned Code? Issues of Identity in the Digital Age,” Introduction to Literature and the Culture of Information

Writing 2 “Introduction to Academic Writing”

A complete summary of my teaching experience is available on my c.v.

Self.net
This book considers the way  that the development of network technologies are coextensive with subject formation in contemporary aesthetic works.

In Progress:

Animal, Vegetable, Digital
This project situates contemporary digital artworks that express animal-human-nonhuman assemblages within a cultural history that dates back to antiquity. 

e-Vocative Cases: Digitality and Direct Address
This project explores the concept of “direct address” in digital works and identifies moments within them–both subtle and overt–that signal, cue, or otherwise point outside themselves to the reader as she progresses through the text.

The following are descriptions of research projects with which I am affiliated.

The Agrippa Files (Editor, Archival Documents; Co-Editor Bibliography) The Agrippa Files is a scholarly site that offers a unique archive of materials related to the creation and early reception of the original art book Agrippa: (a book of the dead), an experimental work which appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr.

ARTMargins (Managing Editor) Founded in 1998, ARTMargins is an on-line journal devoted to contemporary Central and Eastern European visual culture.

Consortium for Literature, Theory, and Culture (Comparative Literature Graduate Representative, 2005-2006) The Consortium brings together faculty and graduate students from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB to advance collaborative research in literary studies.

New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion (Graduate Student Researcher, 2004-2005) Ultimately, science and religion both attend to the same ultimate reality, the same biophysical and human nature. By working toward synthesis of contemporary visions of nature, New Visions of Nature, Science and Religion aims to provide an important metaphysical meeting ground for these two great traditions.

Transliteracies (Project Coordinator / Graduate Student Researcher, 2005-2007) Established in 2005, the Transliteracies Project includes scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering in the University of California system (and in the future other research programs). It will establish working groups to study online reading from different perspectives; bring those groups into conjunction behind a shared technology development initiative; publish research and demonstration software; and train graduate students working at the intersections of the humanistic, social, and technological disciplines.

UC New Media Directory (Contributing Editor, 2006-2007) The area of “new media studies” has recently emerged at the intersection of humanities, arts, social science, and computer science research into digital, networked technologies and their cultural implications. The UC New Media Directory provides a guide to new media researchers and programs in the University of California system, which has invested strategically in this area.

Click here for my c.v. (in .pdf).