Audrey Watters

I recorded a podcast today at work, the first podcast that I'd done in quite some time and the first one I'd done for work. I like podcasting, and it's something I wish the volunteers I work with would do more frequently. Podcasting is really quite easy -- it can...

I was disappointed by Shutter Island. Let's call it "The Siskel Effect" -- the movie-going phenomenon whereby you totally know the "surprise twist" to a film because you read the reviews before shelling out your $8 for the evening's entertainment. But even if you avoid The New York Times on...

Isaiah needed help with some homework tonight. Or rather, Isaiah had homework to do this weekend, and he waited til tonight to do it. He had to write an essay -- an exercise that always flusters him -- and so he wanted my help. Isaiah and I really couldn't be...

Ostranenie as avant-garde theory In his essay "Art as Technique" (1917), Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky argues that our day-to-day perceptions become algebrized and automatized, whereby things are replaced by symbols (Shklovsky 11). Shklovsky contends that art combats this tedium. Art's purpose, according to Shklovsky is to impart the sensation of...

Much has changed since I wrote my Masters Thesis in Folklore on political pranks in 2000. Much has changed, I should say, in the world of politics and in the world of pranks. In many ways, things have become substantially less funny. My thesis, with its requisite three chapters of...

I keep a running list of topics I’d like to blog about here: social gaming, mashups as detournement, all manner of geeky, techie, academic stuff. On that list is the topic of social media and cancer, a topic much more difficult to write about than any densely theoretical or technical...

I have a lot of exciting projects underway. This website, for one, has become a good focal point for me, allowing me to go through old essays and syllabi, to revisit old ideas and move them forward or let them go as the case may be. I’ve barely scratched the...

I admit, I spend a lot of time trying out new productivity tools (a good indication of and reason for my lack of productivity perhaps). As there are three "computers" I use during my day -- my home PC, my work laptop, and my iPhone -- I try to ensure...

If rereading and reposting these old essays is painful, it's not in the way one might expect. I really don't regret stepping away from academia. I'm not particularly sad that my dissertation is unfinished. What is painful instead, especially as I revisit my political scholarship, is the "where are we...

November 30 marked the ten year anniversary of the WTO Protests in Seattle. Like many events I look back on from my past, I have this weird dual sensation of "Wow, has it only been ten years?" and "Wow, that seems like a lifetime ago." I presented the paper "'Whose...