swanstream

Welcome to my web site. My name is Elizabeth Swanstrom (my friends call me Lisa), and I am a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. My research interests include twentieth-century literature, digital culture, the literature of the fantastic, (new) media theory, and science-fiction. I am currently working on my dissertation, (me)diation: Network Technology and Emergent Selfhood, which examines the relation between network technologies and subjectivity in 20th and 21st century expression. You can contact me at swanstro@gmail.com

The following are courses that I have designed and taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A complete summary of my teaching experience is available on my c.v.

Comparative Literature 30C Major Works of European Literature from the Romantic to the contemporary period

Comparative Literature 146 “Robots,” an upper division course focusing on intersections between literature and technology

Writing 50 “Technology and Society,” Writing and the Research Process

English 10 “Data Made Flesh or Flesh Turned Code? Issues of Identity in the Digital Age,” Introduction to Literature and the Culture of Information

Writing 2 “Introduction to Academic Writing”

The following are descriptions of research projects with which I am affiliated.

The Agrippa Files (Editor, Archival Documents; Co-Editor Bibliography) The Agrippa Files is a scholarly site that offers a unique archive of materials related to the creation and early reception of the original art book Agrippa: (a book of the dead), an experimental work which appeared in 1992 as a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and publisher Kevin Begos, Jr.

ARTMargins (Managing Editor) Founded in 1998, ARTMargins is an on-line journal devoted to contemporary Central and Eastern European visual culture.

Consortium for Literature, Theory, and Culture (Comparative Literature Graduate Representative, 2005-2006) The Consortium brings together faculty and graduate students from the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB to advance collaborative research in literary studies.

New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion (Graduate Student Researcher, 2004-2005) Ultimately, science and religion both attend to the same ultimate reality, the same biophysical and human nature. By working toward synthesis of contemporary visions of nature, New Visions of Nature, Science and Religion aims to provide an important metaphysical meeting ground for these two great traditions.

Transliteracies (Project Coordinator / Graduate Student Researcher, 2005-2007) Established in 2005, the Transliteracies Project includes scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering in the University of California system (and in the future other research programs). It will establish working groups to study online reading from different perspectives; bring those groups into conjunction behind a shared technology development initiative; publish research and demonstration software; and train graduate students working at the intersections of the humanistic, social, and technological disciplines.

UC New Media Directory (Contributing Editor, 2006-2007) The area of “new media studies” has recently emerged at the intersection of humanities, arts, social science, and computer science research into digital, networked technologies and their cultural implications. The UC New Media Directory provides a guide to new media researchers and programs in the University of California system, which has invested strategically in this area.