Friend of mine just forwarded me this CFP (that’s ‘call for papers,’ for the unwashed among you) for an impending scholarly clambake at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. In this golden age of academic off-jag, it’s pretty hard to stand out as a polysyllabic bullshitter, but this, uh, text and its author deserve mad props for totally delivering on the enticing promise of the panel’s subtitle. Take us beyond meaning, Jamie Bianco of the University of Pittsburgh!
Non-discursivity and Affect: Beyond Meaning in Media
Seminar Organizer: Jamie Bianco, U of Pittsburgh
Within cultural and comparative studies, we engage the world through discursive and critical frameworks. In response to emerging theorization of multimodality, non-discursivity, creative criticism, practical research, object-oriented philosophy, and speculative realism, this seminar seeks to engage work that draws out these emergent conceptualizations in relation to cultural and media production, reception, circulation/distribution, and response. Are non-discursive elements “readable” in a critical response? What is the role of “design”? How might we think about and produce responses to ecologies and ethologies of culture, media, mediated objects, and user/makers within creative critical or multimodal productive methods that privilege critical making over intervention? Are experiential critical designs effective? This seminar considers media to include print and analog forms as well as digital and computational forms and welcomes work in multimodal/multimediated genres and styles.
So much to admire here. I love the way that “practical research” stands out like a turd in a punchbowl next to “multimodality, non-discursivity” etc etc. I loves them scare quotes around “‘readable'” and “‘design,'” though would prefer to see same around “role,” and maybe “seminar” too, because that’s a concept that’s really been insufficiently problematized. I’m dying to know the distinction between “critical making” and “intervention.” Are we talking here about the difference between sitting around criticizing shit and actually doing something about shit? Just a fucking guess, based on the rash assumption that it has to mean anything at all.
In the words of my man Flann, “Can you imagine the sneering daredevils who despise each other for not ‘understanding’ grey incomprehensibilities like this?”
I’ve finally found a use for my fancy and protracted education: 
I just posted this 
As a semi-lapsed academic, I’ve been really disappointed in the way accused spree killer Dr. Amy Bishop, PhD, got dropped down the mass media’s memory hole after the 
I’m shooting for second Beard as a 
The Compaq 6510b is has gone back home again to the Hewlett-Packard repair facility, so they’ll be no posts for the nonce. Meanwhile, here’s an
The amazing Hewlett-Packard Compaq 6510b is back up and running after its sixth or seventh Fedex trip back the manufacturer for service. I wish I’d kept better track of its medical history because it’s all starting to blur at this point. I do know this: I’m on my third hard drive, my third adapter, my second CPU, my second battery, and my second disk drive. It’s really only the same computer I originally bought 18 months ago in the sense that it’s got the same serial number and will almost certainly start fucking up again in a couple of weeks. I’ve still got another year left on the warranty, so I guess I’ll just keep sending it back for rehab on Hewlett-Packard’s dime as needed until the clock runs out. Whereafter I will never, ever buy anything from Hewlett-Packard again. I’m not even gonna buy HP Sauce, even though it’s made by Heinz and I like it on fried eggs. 
Assuming my my flight gets me there on time, I’m going to be giving a brief lecture on 
The Hope Chest 
