Andrew Pilsch

Welcome to Andrew Pilsch’s Webpage

Andrew Pilsch is a graduate fellow at The Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the emergence of digital collectivities in the 20th and 21st centuries, considering science fiction narrative, political theory, the avant-garde, and postmodern/hypermodern culture.

He currently teaches composition courses for the English Department at Penn State that make use of a range of digital technologies, including wikis.

Andrew Pilsch

Department of English Literature
Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16803

andrew()AT()pilsch()DOTcom

Education:

• MA: English Literature, The Pennsylvania State University, 2007
• BS: Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005
• BS: Science, Technology, and Culture, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005

Conferences / Workshops:

• “Utopia.com: Piracy and Fredric Jameson Online,” SLSA 07: Code, 3 November, 2007.
• “Revising Tomorrow: the Historical Present, Telecommunications, and Capitalism in Nova and Neuromancer,” Samuel Delany: A Critical Symposium, University at Buffalo (State University of New York), 23 March 2006.
• “From ‘Terminators’ to Synners: The Cyborg as Monstrous Artist,” Monstrous Bodies, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1 April 2005.

Awards / Grants:

• Philip Young Memorial Endowment in American Literature, Spring 2006.
• President’s Undergraduate Research Award, Fall 2004.

Teaching Information Forthcoming

Research Interests

Andrew Pilsch is a researcher interested in the intersection between politics, science, literature and spirituality in the social milieu of the 21st century. While this is a rather broad field, Andrew’s work has ranged from a consideration of Donna Haraway’s cyborgs within Shakespearean comedy to a Utopian reading of Internet piracy. His broader research themes cluster around the future of non-capitalist politics and non-centered human subjects, specifically as these topics get explored in the cultural laboratory of theoretical and fictional texts. Currently, Andrew is working on the cultural regime of transhumanism as it moves from eugenics and inter-War avant gardism into the 21st century and onto the Internet. His project draws from texts as diverse as Wyndham Lewis’s social critique to trans-planetary politics in contemporary, post-cyberpunk science fiction.

Graduate Seminars

Fall 2007

• “Trance Humanities”, Dr. Richard Doyle
• “Studies In Theory: Deleuze & Guattari”, Dr. Jeffrey Nealon
• “Science Fiction and Cybercultures”, Dr. Paul Youngquist

Spring 2007

• “English Online”, Dr. Stuart Selber
• “Foundations of Science Studies”, Dr. Susan Squier

Fall 2006

• “Studies In Theory: Fredric Jameson”, Dr. Jeffrey Nealon
• “Theory vs. Theory”, Dr. Jonathan Eburne

Spring 2006

• “PsycheTropics”, Dr. Richard Doyle
• “Milton and Popular Culture”, Dr. Laura Knoppers
• “Avant Black”, Dr. Aldon Nielsen

Fall 2005

• “Shakespeare”, Dr. Patrick Cheney
• “Sexologies”, Dr. Scott Herring
• “Research Methods”, Dr. Paul Youngquist

This site was developed, from scratch, by Andrew Pilsch. The page is written in PHP and Javascript, utilizing the Mootools Javascript framework. The accordion effect is a plugin in for Mootools, but all other aspects of the site, including page loading, were coded by Andrew Pilsch, based on the framework. The pages are created in WordPress and marked up in Textile. These pages are then extracted from WordPress using the native mysql layer in PHP and loaded using AJAX.

Managing the content from WordPress allows for great ease in page creation, as does the use of Textile. Similarly, the Javascript framework is constructed to highlight the intersection between visually appealing display and manageable content. While each page is dynamically loaded, the usage of internal anchors allows for permanent linking to specific pages.