Middlesex and the Biopolitics of Modernist Architecture

Highlighting the architecture of the Middlesex house of Eugenides’ novel as a major technology of modernity, Seymour argues for the biopolitical understanding of such modernist architecture and for the ways in which it often works against the exploitative effects of automation and sexology, yet constitutes a complex and even contradictory force in processes of modernization, and in the novel itself

Middlesex and the Biopolitics of Modernist Architecture

Highlighting the architecture of the Middlesex house of Eugenides’ novel as a major technology of modernity, Seymour argues for the biopolitical understanding of such modernist architecture and for the ways in which it often works against the exploitative effects of automation and sexology, yet constitutes a complex and even contradictory force in processes of modernization, and in the novel itself

Book Review: At Home in the Anthropocene

Nicole Seymour’s most recent book is Glitter, part of Bloomsbury’s “Object Lessons” series. Her previous monographs include Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination, which won the 2015 Ecocriticism Award from the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, and Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age, which was listed in the Chicago Review of Books’ “Best Nature Writing of 2018.” She has held fellowships at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh. She is currently Associate Professor of English at California State University, Fullerton

Practical applications of small-angle neutron scattering.

Recent improvements in beam-line accessibility and technology have led to small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) becoming more frequently applied to materials problems. SANS has been used to study the assembly, dispersion, alignment and mixing of nanoscale condensed matter, as well as to characterise the internal structure of organic thin films, porous structures and inclusions within steel. Using time-resolved SANS, growth mechanisms in materials systems and soft matter phase transitions can also be explored. This review is intended for newcomers to SANS as well as experts. Therefore, the basic knowledge required for its use is first summarised. After this introduction, various examples are given of the types of soft and hard matter that have been studied by SANS. The information that can be extracted from the data is highlighted, alongside the methods used to obtain it. In addition to presenting the findings, explanations are provided on how the SANS measurements were optimised, such as the use of contrast variation to highlight specific parts of a structure. Emphasis is placed on the use of complementary techniques to improve data quality (e.g. using other scattering methods) and the accuracy of data analysis (e.g. using microscopy to separately determine shape and size). This is done with a view to providing guidance on how best to design and analyse future SANS measurements on materials not listed below

How Wendy Red Star Decolonizes the Museum with Humor and Play

Museums play a prominent role in crafting racial narratives in the United States, and as evidenced by recent social uprisings, these institutions have come under scrutiny. Take, for example, the statue outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which depicts U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by a Black man and an American Indian, both unnamed. As National Public Radio reported in June 2020, “The statue was intended to pay homage to Roosevelt as a ‘devoted naturalist and author of works on natural history,’” but, in calling for its removal, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office affirmed that it “explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.” [excerpt

Alligator Earrings and the Fish Hook in the Face: Tragicomedy, Transcorporeality, and Animal Drag

This article considers the performances of “animal drag” that appear across the affiliated US media projects of Jackass (the television program and film franchise) and Wildboyz (the television program). Drawing on transgender studies scholarship, as well as recent work in affect theory, animal studies, and environmental studies, Nicole Seymour argues that these performances—which include, for example, a human inserting a fishhook in his face before being thrown into shark-infested waters—constitute an extension of this media corpus's general investment in affective interconnectivity. As Seymour shows, such performances ask us to feel along with the performers, which includes feeling along with them as animals. Paying attention to the comic as well as the tragic resonances of animal drag, the article outlines the ethical role that nonserious affective modes can play in probing the trans-, or intersectional and interdependent, nature of human and nonhuman life

Toward an Irreverent Ecocriticism

I see an irreverent ecocriticism as being indebted to two major developments in and around the field: poststructuralist ecocriticism and queer ecology. Poststructuralist ecocriticism, as many readers no doubt know, can be traced to scholars such as William Cronon, Dana Phillips, and David Mazel. In his American Literary Environmentalism (2000), Mazel stresses that his work is not “about some myth of the environment, as if the environment were an ontologically stable, foundational identity we have a myth about. Rather, the environment is itself a myth, a ‘grand fable’ … a discursive construction, something whose ‘reality’ derives from the way we write, speak, and think about it” (xii). Similarly, the essays in Cronon’s 1996 collection Uncommon Ground take aim at simple, essentialist ideals of nature and wilderness; N. Katherine Hayles, for instance, argues that “the distinction between simulation and nature … is a crumbling dike, springing leaks everywhere we press upon it” (411). Some of this work may seem dated to those who engaged with poststructuralism much earlier. But, judging by the negative reactions of many ecocritics and environmentalists, it can also be viewed as quite the opposite: reactionary, overstated, heretical. Indeed, this work could be described as perverse for how it breaks with its forebears, which include not just “classic” ecocriticism but also first-wave or conservationist environmentalism

Water - Gravity - Gradient: A gathering in the floodplain of the Hout Bay valley

This dissertation departs with an enduring interest in matter. The research, in turn, becomes focused primarily on physicality and its implications for people. An empathetic attitude towards considering material developed as a founding precept for the design endeavour. The project can be described as a process which began by following water; the river, the land and the mediating edge. Water, viewed through the particular lens of this document, has an intelligence, an embedded and personified logic. This material logic is inescapably evident in the landscape with which I am most familiar, my home, the Hout Bay valley. This dissertation seeks to create an intervention which should encourage a new relationship with water in Hout Bay. It is through a gathering of found program; wood cutters, Zionist Christians, horse riders, joggers, walkers, bird watchers, gardeners and swimmers, that the community is brought together in the floodplain