The Chicago School of Media Theory > Members > Mal Ahern




Mal Ahern

email: mal@uchicago.edu
homepage: under construction

Mal Ahern is a fourth year in the college's program in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, with a focus on the confusion of the human subject in literature and art. Her field concentrations are in English Language and Literature, Philosophy and the Committe on Visual Arts. She has also been active with the Center for Gender Studies. She recieved her associate's degree in arts from Simon's Rock College of Bard.

Much of her academic work has focused on theories of mediation between selves or between the self and media systems: performance theory (and how forms of performance art can counfound these theories), negotiations between literary character and authorship (recently in the works of Vladimir Nabokov), and the ways old media such as fashion reinvent themselves while reinventing the body-as-subject. In the Theories of Media course she focused largely on metapictures of media in the context of McLuhan and extensions of the body through forms that are pre-biocybernetic (most notably, clothing).

Her other interests include psychoanalysis and post-psychoanalytic thought, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marcel Duchamp, conceptual art, and the book of Genesis. And, of course, rock and roll.

Mal is the former editor of a Detroit poetry magazine and has made several short films both with Detroit Area Film and Television and independently. She has worked for a film editing company, done fundraising research for a modern- classical orchestra, and once ran a popular weblog whose URL has since been absorbed by a vast network of online porn sites. She has also studied at Wayne State University and the University of California at Berkeley.


Works

Chicago School of Media Theory: Reading List

Media Theory Keywords Glossary: performance, performative

Theories of Media Annotation: Gilles Deleuze's "Nomad Thought"

Theories of Media Guest Presentation (2004): "The Hypercube Media Taxonomy Model" (now the Media HyperAtlas)

Theories of Media Prospectus: "Fashioning Bodies, the Fashioned Body"