WICI Speaker Series with Heather A. Love
Monday, January 29th, 2024
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. | DC 1302 | University of Waterloo
Cybernetic Aesthetics draws from cybernetics theory and terminology to interpret the communication structures and reading strategies that modernist text cultivate. In doing so, Heather A. Love shows how cybernetic approaches to communication emerged long before World War II; they flourished in the literature of modernism's most innovative authors. This book engages a range of literary authors, including Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce, and cybernetics theorists, such as Norbert Wiener, Claude Shannon, Ross Ashby, Silvan Tomkins, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Mary Catherine Bateson. Through comparative analysis, Love uncovers cybernetics' relevance to modernism and articulates modernism's role in shaping the cultural conditions that produced not merely technological cybernetics, but also the more diffuse notion of cybernetic thinking that still exerts its influence today.
Please register for this free event below!
In-person attendees will be provided light refreshments and an opportunity for informal networking at the start of the event.
It is not necessary to read the book prior to this event, but if you are interested in purchasing a copy from the publisher, please feel free to use code LOVE2023 to receive a 20% discount.
Check the University of Waterloo Library or your local public library for copies as well!
Heather A. Love is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, where she conducts interdisciplinary research and teaches courses on topics related to communication in STEM disciplines, literature and culture, technology and health, and engineering ethics education. This work has been funded by several Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grants.
Love is author of Cybernetic Aesthetics: Modernist Networks of Information and Data (2023, Cambridge University Press), and her work on modernist literature and on the cultural and intellectual history of cybernetics has appeared or is forthcoming in both literary studies venues (Modernism/modernity, Journal of Modern Literature, Feminist Modernist Studies, New Literary History) and more tech- and education-focused publications (IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, The Routledge Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education).
Dr. Love holds a B.Mus. in Piano Performance (2005) and B.A. in Honours English (2006) from the University of Victoria, an M.A. in English (2007) from Queen’s University, and a Ph.D. (2015) in English from Indiana University. She is Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology’s (SSIT’s) monthly newsletter, an IEEE TechEthics Ambassador, IEEE/SSIT Representative to the National Institute for Engineering Ethics (NIEE), and Associate Editor for the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine (TSM).
Registration for this event is now closed. The recording from this event is now available on our Vimeo channel.