Ken Alba

My dissertation focuses on the relationship between literature and information technology, with a particular focus on post-45 Anglophone drama and newer works of electronic literature. I’m fascinated by the ways certain media technologies make possible (or impossible) certain kinds of literary and social performance, and how a careful reading of literature about the relationship between performance and technology can illuminate what identity – and identity categories like race and gender – looks like in the information age. In the classroom I work with a wide range of material, from science fiction to early modern drama, in a wide variety of genres and mediums, from novels to films and television programs to video games. This year, I will be continuing my research and finishing my dissertation at MIT’s Digital Humanities Program as the Paul Funk Predoctoral Fellow.

You can view my CV here and visit my website here.

Education
Ph.D., English, Boston University, expected Spring 2021
M.A., English, Boston University, 2015
B.A., English, Southern Connecticut State University, 2014
B.A., Philosophy, Southern Connecticut State University, 2014

Publications
2019 Pop Beckett
Forthcoming, Ibidem Press
Included Essay, “Samuel Beckett and Memes: Online Aftertexts”

2019 Spring The Beckett Circle
Theater Review: “But The Cloudless at the Sprinkler Factory”
 
2018 Autumn The Beckett Circle
Theater Review: “Waiting for Godot at the Firehouse Theater”

Conference Presentations
2019 July The Electronic Literature Organization Conference and Media Arts Festival
University College Cork, Cork, IR
Presented “Texts, Interfaces, and The Puzzle Element in Her Story” 

2019 May The American Literature Association’s Annual Conference
Boston, MA
Presented “‘Skin and Air’: Remediation and Power in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”

2019 April Technology and Literature
Boston University Romance Studies Department, Boston, MA
Presented “‘A Play Infected With A Virus’: Signal, Noise, and the Glitch in Blue Kettle”

2019 March “Beyond Beckett”
Centre Culturel Irlandais de Paris, FR
Presented “Almost to the Tick and EndlessGame: Adapting Beckett with Unity”

2018 September Samuel Beckett and Technology
Charles University, Prague, CZ
Presented “Krapp’s Last Tape and the Extended Mind”

2017 May Embodying Media: From Print to the Digital
Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
Presented “Staging Quad as an EndlessGame”

2016 April Technology and the Human: Rethinking Post Humanism 
Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
Presented “Performing Identity on Virtual Stages”