A MITH Digital Dialogue

Tuesday, February 5, 12:30-1:45

MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

“On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I’m a Dog”

by MARILEE LINDEMANN

“On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I’m a Dog” represents Marilee Lindemann’s coming out as a blogger in her professional life. Although Roxie’s World is a blog written by an academic, it is not an “academic blog” in the usual sense. It is a creative experiment in punditry, topical humor, and cultural commentary offered in the voice of a 13-year-old wire-haired fox terrier””Roxie””who has a leaky heart and a laptop. Roxie’s major preoccupations are politics, pop culture, and basketball. Her stance is that of a dogged progressive fascinated by the queer doings of Homo sapiens. Though Roxie is a purebred, Lindemann’s lecture is a mongrel mixture of critical reflection on her own practices as a blogger and analysis of what blogging can teach us about reading, writing, and social networking in the twenty-first century. Situated at the intersection of canine cultural studies, queer/feminist studies, and an emerging discourse of blog studies, the presentation takes up issues of persona, parody, and irony in connection with a post-9/11 politics of dissent; of building and tracking real and imagined audiences in the blogosphere; of the complex role played by words, images, and sound in the grammar and in the world-making aspirations of blogs; and of satirical self-publication as a healthy response to the conditions of academic work under late capitalism.

MARILEE LINDEMANN is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program at the University of Maryland. She is the author of Willa Cather: Queering America (Columbia University Press, 1999) and the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Willa Cather (Cambridge University Press, 2005). She also edited Cather’s Alexander’s Bridge (1997) and O Pioneers! (1999) for Oxford University Press. Her writing has appeared in several anthologies of criticism and in American Literary History, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage, and the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter. She is also the author of the blog, Roxie’s World (http://roxies-world.blogspot.com/), where she writes in the persona of Roxie Smith Lindemann, a 13-year-old wire-haired fox terrier she shares with her partner.

Coming up @MITH: February 12, The Gamers Symphony Orchestra: A Discussion and Performance!

MITH’s complete Spring Speakers Schedule will be posted very soon.

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927).