J Hughes | "What's Inside This Box?"
"What's Inside This Box?": Unpacking McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
Northrop Frye Centre (VC102)
91 Charles St West Toronto, ON M5S1K5
The NFC and is pleased to invite you to a talk from one of our NFC Doctoral Fellows, J Hughes.
About this talk...
How do you unpack a book? How do you hold an inflated story? When a book gives you its number, do you give it a call? Since 1998, with issues ranging from party balloons to newspapers to handsome hardcovers, the experimental and materially-diverse contemporary literary journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern has “challenge[d] conventional expectations” for readers and scholars alike.
My dissertation incorporates critical frameworks developed for studying artists’ books in its investigation of twentieth and twenty-first century works of experimental narrative. I focus on works and narrative strategies that, like McSweeney’s, self-reflexively make visible the formal and editorial choices made by their creators and invite readers to reflect on or even participate in those choices. This presentation integrates historical context and critical lenses from experimental narrative and artists’ book studies in order to explore how McSweeney’s encourages multivalent, creative, and collaborative reading.
About the speaker...
J Hughes is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto in the Department of English and the Book History and Print Culture collaborative specialization. J’s research integrates artists’ books and experiential learning in their investigation of twentieth and twenty-first century experimental narratives whose methods of making and of reading foster activated readers. Their professional and creative experience in book arts research and education includes exhibition curation, public programming development, book design, and print production.