Draper Fall Orientation and Welcome Back Party: Tonight!

Thursday, September 3, 2009
5:00 - 7:00 PM

Introduction and Presentations:
13-19 University Place, 1st Floor Auditorium (Room 102)

Reception following in Draper Map Room, 14 University Place

Incoming and returning students are encouraged to attend our fall orientation to receive important information about starting the semester, learn about fall courses and upcoming events, and meet faculty and staff. A reception will follow in the Draper Map room and food and drink will be served.

Introducing Amber Musser: Draper's New Faculty Fellow in Gender Politics

This semester, Draper is delighted to welcome two new faculty fellow members to our program. Amber Musser joins us as the faculty fellow in Gender Politics and will be teaching two courses for us this year: 'Introduction to Gender Politics I: Melancholy, Politics, and Identity' and 'Topics in Gender Politics: Objects of Affection.' Please see below for her introduction.

Amber Musser joins the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program as an Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow in gender politics. Dr. Musser received an A.B. in Biology and History of Science from Harvard (2002), a M.St. in Women’s Studies from Oxford (2003), and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard (2009).

My work focuses on psychoanalysis, queer affect, and theories of subjectivity. My dissertation, "On the Subject of Masochism," is a history of the various readings and re-readings that produced masochism's discursive shift from psychiatry to critical and queer theory. Portions of my dissertation have been published: “Masochism, a Queer Subjectivity” in Rhizomes and "Reading, Writing ,and the Whip" forthcoming in Literature and Medicine. All of my work is a dialogue between history and philosophy of science, critical theory, queer and feminist theory, and critical history. In addition to bringing science and gender and sexuality studies together in conversation, I believe that treating these areas together reveals a new space in which to situate and destabilize our prevailing notions of subjectivity and agency. This perspective allows me to focus on understanding race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, and class as critical dimensions of personal experience, which also extends to the realm of science. In keeping with this theme, I have published an article, “From Our Body to Yourselves,” which discusses the shift in concepts of Woman and community within the Women’s Health Movement in the 1970s. I have also been working on an article, “The Obscure Object of Desire,” that interrogates negotiations of intimacy and sexuality in relationships with inanimate objects. In addition to turning my dissertation into a book, I am currently researching queer attachments to objects and embodiments of multiple subjectivities.

Introducing Rebecca Colesworthy: Draper's New Faculty Fellow in Literary Cultures

This semester, Draper is delighted to welcome two new faculty fellow members to our program. Rebecca Colesworthy joins us as the faculty fellow in Literary Cultures and will be teaching one course for Draper this fall: 'Introduction to Literary Cultures I.' Please see below for her introduction.

Rebecca Colesworthy joins Draper as the new Faculty Fellow/Assistant Professor in Literary Cultures after having received her PhD in English from Cornell University. Her dissertation, entitled “Modernism’s Gifts,” explores the relationship between modernist ethics and poetics by juxtaposing the work of Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Stevie Smith with theories of the gift and exchange drawn from the fields of anthropology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. In addition to completing articles on Jean Rhys and on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, she looks forward to undertaking her next project, which considers the ways in which various 20th-century writers reimagine the traditionally exceptional position of the feminine subject with respect to moral laws.

Professor Colesworthy attributes much of her investment in interdisciplinarity to her longstanding interest and work in the field of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. As an undergraduate concentrating in English and Women’s Studies at Brown University, she had the opportunity to develop a course of study at once variegated and specific to her intellectual concerns. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant for three Brown faculty members: Professor Carolyn Dean in History, Professor Mary Ann Doane in Modern Culture and Media, and Professor Elizabeth Weed at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Before attending Cornell, she also worked for two years at the National Council for Research on Women – a nonprofit network of feminist research, advocacy, and policy centers – where she gained significant insight into the difficulties and rewards of bringing the humanities and the social sciences into dialogue.

Anamesa call for papers

As promised! Pertinent info - in this case a call for contributions to Anamesa. If you missed the earlier post about this, you can read the Fall 2008 Perception Issue on the website. We also just received a stack of hard copies, so please feel free to stop by the Draper offices and grab one.

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Anamesa is currently accepting submissions for the 2009 Intersections issue. We encourage NYU graduate students in any department to submit essays, reportage, fiction, poetry, photography, artwork, or translations that address themes of crossing, commingling, and conflict, broadly construed. An interdisciplinary anthology, Anamesa considers material of diverse subject matter and length, from short book reviews (400-600 words) to longer literary essays (not to exceed 6000 words).

Academic papers should adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style and include a brief abstract. The author’s name, contact information, and departmental affiliation should appear only in the cover page. Submissions of graphic art should be in digital format with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI, at 5x7in.

Send submissions and queries to anamesa.journal@gmail.com. Please include the relevant genre in the subject heading of all messages (e.g., “essay,” “fiction,” or “photography”). The submission deadline is September 28. For further information, and to peruse earlier issues, visit www.anamesajournal.org. Printed copies of Anamesa are available at the Draper office (14 University Place).

An introduction

Hello, readers of in.ter.reg.num! I'm the new administrative aide at the Draper program, and with that great responsibility comes the great privilege of being a contributor to this blog. Sort of like Spiderman, just the other way around.

In any case, if you were to look at the official Draper website and find me on the administration page , you would see my interests listed as: "Food (especially culture, sustainability, and hunger issues), fiction writing, contemporary literature." All this is true, but since we're in a slightly more informal environment here, I can add that I also enjoy Coney Island, dressing up, children's literature, American football, and pretending to be a mixologist. And that, at any given moment, I usually have one thing that I'm a little obsessed about; currently, it's Gone With the Wind, which I just started reading, and which, so far, is well worth the back-ache I get from carting it around.

I'm also really happy to be working at the Draper program. Not only have Robin Nagle, Robert Dimit, and Larissa Kyzer all been welcoming and wonderful to work with, the students have been equally delightful. Some of my friends don't understand this, but I can't wait to do the part of my job that involves entering student thesis titles into a database, because I can't wait to get a peek at all the marvelous ideas that Draper students are playing with. Having most recently worked at NYU's College of Nursing, this is a welcome change for my liberal-artsy tastes.

I will be posting pertinent info on this site - calls for papers and the like - but hope to add a more personal post once in a while as well. Thanks for indulging me in my introduction, and please stay tuned!