(The author at home... and pretty much anywhere else. MarianSigler made this image, btw.)
Hello.
My name is Evan. I hold a PhD in Communication Studies from a school in North Carolina. Previous to that I earned a master's in Communication Management from the only school named USC in America*. Before those experiences, I got a Bachelor's of Fine Arts from a school that used to be called something else. When not studying I did a bunch of technical stuff, working at Cisco, the American Film Institute, the Connected Learning Alliance, and a lot of other places in the US and Japan. I'm an EdTech consultant and lecturer based on the east coast, and I often work on small tech projects, events, and media production ventures. It's always changing, but feel free to "peep out the manuscript" if you want (meaning my CV). My mail address is on there if you feel like connecting. I also run a very low-impact, minimal update mailing list you can sign up for here. My current professional focus is on teaching people about crafting small machines while investigating critical placemaking.
(*- This may or may not be true... meaning the "America" part.)
Anyway, on the academic front I write about things like the rhetoric of abandonment, critical infrastructure studies, metabolist architecture, space and place as cultural becomings, the mediation and adaptive re-use of abandoned buildings, and the nature of self-defined maker culture. Somehow I even managed to do a whole dissertation about that stuff so now I can ask to be called "Doctor" when I'm trying to get upgrades on flights... although this is often unsuccesful. I also run makerspace events at various conferences like the Cultural Studies Association, and host panels and workshops at fan conventions like Anime Weekend Atlanta. Sometimes I end up on the news talking about things like the abandoned prison I found in the woods in Chapel Hill or disability and masking practices, other times I just write about them. Every now and then I make short films, but these days I'm mostly typing up things from all the excess research I did during COVID lockdown.
"Uh... why am I looking at a website from 1997?"
Well... pardon the occasionally NSFW language... but watch this:
This website is a love letter to when the net wasn't always "serious business," a time before it all became hilariously Foucauldian-stressor-a-riffic due to the turmoil caused by Big Money Venture Capital Internet Discourse.™ I was inspired by a media studies professor who has a site I love, so I followed his lead (if you like "old web" stuff and BBS culture? Read this book yesterday!). I also have an academia.edu page I need to update, but until I have an appropriately lamentable headshot I fear it may disappoint you. I'll post the same stuff here, anyway. I'll also put up various syllabi (profs and teachers? Share your syllabi!), rough guides for grad students who are figuring it out on their own or struggling while navigating a large, impersonal system, and some of my other writing when I'm not road-tripping in a van I converted into a sci-fi space barge named after a geography pun. In the interim, you can find my LinkedIn here.
(Sign from my "dissertation defense countdown period" at UNC, as featured in Rhetoric 170. "The Wait" is a reference to the band Killing Joke.)
I am currently teaching myself to build small robots and analyzing circuit-based wayfinding, which is an outgrowth of my CircuitPython HID accessibility and other microcontroller device work. I am also working on receiving my drone piloting license, which I hope to use to examine spatial narratives and alternative/alterative cartographic practices. The most fun I've had in the last year was running around some of Tokyo's various electronics stores to buy individual components and talking about crafting one's own technology, by the way. Tech should be accessible to make, use, and break.
Thanks.