Brian Croxall
1163D JFSB
Research Areas:
American studies, Digital humanities, Twentieth century, Twenty-first century
Put simply: in each class I teach, I want my students to wrestle with questions that I do not yet know the answer to. We experiment by mapping novels, looking at every frame of a film at once, or counting character interactions within 18 thousand comic strips. And then I try something else. I am fanatic about improving as a teacher, and I hold myself accountable for past performance by publishing every teaching evaluation I’ve ever received at https://briancroxall.net/teaching. My research falls into a broad range of activities called digital humanities. I tell people this means that I use a computer to read poems, map novels, and understand network relations in comic strips. But it also means I think about computers, computational processes, and computational culture (from social media to memes, from games to GIFs) using the tools and patterns of thought that we often bring to literature, filmed, and art. I collaborate with faculty across the College of Humanities. To cite three examples, this means collecting oral histories of the survivors of the Cambodian genocide; exploring depictions of the Wounded Knee massacre by Native American journalists; searching through 100 years of French linguistics to understand what “standard French” might be. I’m working on a co-edited book about digital humanities pedagogy. My previous co-edited volume was about steampunk, a science fiction subgenre that imagines computers were invented in the nineteenth century. ## Edited Books – Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures, co-edited with Rachel A. Bowser, University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Co-winner of the 2017 Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture from the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association ## Edited Issues ## Chapters – “How to Not Read Hemingway,” Hemingway in the Digital Age: Reflections on Teaching, Reading, and Understanding, eds. Laura Godfrey and Mark Ott, Kent State University Press, 2019, 57-91 – “Exploring How and Why Digital Humanities is Taught in Libraries,” co-authored with Hannah Rasmussen and Jessica Otis, A Splendid Torch: Learning and Teaching in Today’s Academic Libraries, eds. Jodi Reeves Eyre, John C. Maclachlan, and Christa Williford, CLIR Report 174, 2017, www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub174, 69-88 ## Articles – “Becoming Another Thing”: Traumatic and Technological Transformation in The Red Badge of Courage,” American Imago 72.1, 2015, 101-127, doi: 10.1353/aim.2015.0004 Universities grew out of medieval monasteries and convents, which might explain why so many academics like being left alone. To resist this, I dedicate significant time connecting with and enabling the work of others in my field. Over the last decade, I served on the boards of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), and the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO). Locally, I help organize the annual Digital Humanities Utah. – Secretary (elected), Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (2017-2021)Teaching Experience
Research
Selected Publications
– Debates in Digital Humanities Pedagogy, co-edited with Diane K. Jakacki, University of Minnesota Press, in progress
– “Looking for Signposts,” #Alt-Academy: Alternative Academic Careers, MediaCommons, 2014-2015, mediacommons.org/alt-ac/cluster/getting-there-2.
– “Steampunk, Science, and (Neo)Victorian Technologies,” Neo-Victorian Studies 3.1, 2010
– “Failure,” co-authored with Quinn Warnick, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities, eds. Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, Modern Language Association, 2020, https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/Failure/
– “A Syllabus is a Chance to Show Your Sources,” Syllabus, 9.1, 2020, http://www.syllabusjournal.org/syllabus/article/view/294Service
Citizenship assignments
– Program Committee (appointed), Modern Language Association (2019-2022)
– Delegate Assembly (elected), Modern Language Association (2018-2021)
– Executive Council (elected), Modern Language Association (2014-2018)
– Executive Council (elected), The Association for Computers and the Humanities (2013-2017)
– Committee on Information Technology (appointed), Modern Language Association (2011-2014)Professional Website