PAST PROJECTS

Abstracts from projects and conferences pre 2015

​Translating the Holocaust into fiction for young audiences
​​One Line Summary: This interdisciplinary paper explores ‘translation’ and ‘language’ by investigating the translation of genuine Holocaust experiences into fiction in order to provide a modern ‘language’ of the Holocaust for young audiences.
Date: 2010
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​Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: projected fictional landscapes based on the memory of nuclear holocaust
​​One Line Summary: Although Derrida termed nuclear war a 'non-event', the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the wealth of nuclear literature made the ‘non-event’ strangely familiar; the aim of this paper is to examine the numerous ways the memories of the 1945 nuclear event are reposed and performed through the medium of narration.
Date: 2011
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Here is a diverse selection of past projects from 2010-2015.

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These abstracts reflect the work presented at conferences. Some papers are connected and may be similiar as I presented different aspects of a piece of work at different conferences to test the theory.

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Some of these papers I will return to at a later date and convert into journal pieces or chapters in edited collections.

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Forthcoming projects build on much of this work.

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I welcome collaboration; so if any of the pieces speak to work you may be doing I will be happy to hear from you.

Click the documents to download the appropriate abstract.

​Apocalyptic Imagination: the fear of a nuclear driven apocalyptic event within American Cold War Literature (1945-1959)
​​One Line Summary: The human as eradicated or dehumanised will be discussed through the contextual framework of the Cold War by discussing how science fiction during this time enshrined paranoia over scientific advancements.
Date: 2012
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​Technology, psychological doubling and genocide. How remote technology facilitates evil acts as explored through science fiction after World War II
​​One Line Summary: This inter-disciplinary paper explores the notion of how technology can be seen to facilitate "evil" acts through remote human action using the context of World War II and how the implementation of remote war action.
Date: 2012
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​The 'bare life' of the human in conflict contexts: the static behaviour and autonomous movement of the zombie in war
​​One Line Summary: The purpose of this paper is to expose the ‘horror’ of humanity reduced to ‘bare life’ under dominating systems and how this has been visually presented through the cultural phenomenon of the zombie focusing predominantly on the quintessential zombie activities of group marching, walking and static behaviour.
Date: 2012
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​Abuse and Control in 'Black Widow's Eyes'
​​One Line Summary: A close reading of 'Black Widow's Eyes' by The Who will suggest that the song presents the modern world as a place of conflict and control; this control, I will argue, is evidenced on three pivotal levels: domestic (personal, e.g. romantic), battlefront (combat area, e.g. terrorism), and global (universal, e.g. general ideas of mechanization).
Date: 2013
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​The dominance of technology in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow: the light bulb and the cybernetic apocalypse
​​One Line Summary: This paper uses the contextual framework of the cybernetic movement and World War II to analyze how Gravity's Rainbow features an apocalyptic scenario in which the human race is mechanised and dominated by artificial structures
Date: 2013
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​The Digitalization of Reader Response: How Technology Has Enabled a New Relationship between the Reader, the Text, and the Author
​​One Line Summary: In this paper I discuss the wider implications of digitalized literature; I suggest that technology has resulted in a widening of the creative field to include supplementary ‘texts’ such as Twitter feeds, Facebook comments, Tumblr blogs and forum exchanges in which the reader is able to extend texts in new ways.
Date: 2013
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​(Future) Apocalypse Now
​​One Line Summary: I will argue that part of the enjoyment of apocalyptic fiction and urban exploration is the related potential to explore the forbidden unchecked; the want to venture forth into decay is perhaps a psychological desire to occupy history and defy the rules which bar access to a part of the human realm.
Date: 2013
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​Private Access: Rejecting Tourism and Exploring Lost Sites
​​One Line Summary: An examination of ‘lost’ monuments which have not been converted into tourist spaces and are often ‘hidden’ amongst new builds or blanketed by nature; why do urban explorers visit these ‘lost’ or hidden places over tourist locations?
Date: 2013
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​Bio-Objects and Transobjects: Tresspass, Transformation or Transgression?
​​One Line Summary: This paper explores how transhumanism and posthumanism can present the human body as a test subject and a design laboratory and how this fundamentally reconsiders how the human is defined.
Date: 2014
Abstract not available. Short draft article (4000) words available upon request.
​Bio-Objects: Breaking Binaries and Becoming Boundary Crawlers
​​One Line Summary: This article investigates the animal and human as transobjects through technological engineering which reposition the entities as bio-objects and “boundary crawlers."
Date: 2015
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​Remote action and reaction: images and war in the 2.0 era
​​One Line Summary: In this short and informal explorative essay, I look at the idea of ‘remote’ experience through the media and question how war images can themselves be ‘in conflict’ and part of conflict. 
Date: 2015
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​Becoming Content: The Relationship between Netflix and Subscriber
​​One Line Summary: By reflecting on Tim Wu’s argument that ‘Netflix has a plan to rewire our entire culture’, I will reflect on how Netflix has not only redesigned the parameters of media consumption and the concept of consumer, but has actually reconfigured the viewer as a data source within Netflix’s rating algorithms. 
Date: 2015
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