Gregory Ulmer
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Gregory L. Ulmer has been a professor at the University of Florida (Gainesville), Department of English since 1985, and is Professor of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee, Switzerland), where he teaches an Intensive Summer Seminar.
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[edit] Career
From 1972 to 1977 Ulmer worked as an assistant professor in the Humanities Department of the University of Florida and became the Acting Chair of the department in 1979. Since then he has received tenure, and he became the co-director of the Institute for European & Comparative Studies (1987-1990), and the director of the film studies program (1986-1989).
[edit] Academic interests
Ulmer's work focuses on hypertext, electracy and cyberlanguage and is frequently associated with o"emerAgency", "fetishturgy," "choragraphy" and "mystoriography." He is the author of 'Applied Grammatology: Post(e)-Pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys; Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video; Heuretics: The Logic of Invention; Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy; and Electronic Monuments.
Following his motto (from the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō) "not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought," Ulmer developed a mode for research and pedagogy that does for electracy what the argumentative essay (paper) does for literacy.
[edit] Popcycle
The context for this electrate mode is the popcycle, Ulmer's neologism for the collection of discourses and institutions within which identity (both individual and collective) is constructed in modern societies. The primary institutions of interpellation (hailing) include Family (orality), Community (history learned in school; literacy), Entertainment (electracy), Career (specialized knowledge, beginning with one's college major). For some individuals, Church may displace Entertainment, or Street may displace Career. The learning practice used to map one's location within the popcycle is "mystory." This neologism was derived by continuing the feminist displacement from "history" to "herstory," to develop the lesson that "the personal is political," and also ethical and aesthetic. Taking into account the postmodern condition of the humanities--the transformation of identity in the digital apparatus from "know thyself" to "no 'thyself'"-- the function of mystory is to exercise and provide experience with creative thinking. One of the insights of electracy is that digital media have an affinity for and support inherently creative modes of thought (lateral, right brain, dreamwork). In composing a mystory the maker produces an emblem version of his/her "image of wide scope" (the core set of images that guide the application of imagination in practical reason). The methodology and rationale for the composition of a mystory are explained most fully in Internet Invention (2003). An archive of student mystorical websites is available in the Mystory/Myseum on Ulmer's homepage.
To view a student example of a mystory/image of wide scope, visit http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~gulmer/s04/callen/.
[edit] From his lectures
| “ | If one does not apply grammatology as one applies sunscreen, one's signifier will undoubtedly get burned. And forget about the signified—that'll be toast, too. | ” |
