Jani Scandura

Associate Professor

Co-Director Space & Place Collective
Ph.D. English, University of Michigan, 1997

20 Lind Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
(612)625-9017
jani@umn.edu

Jani Scandura was a magazine writer before returning to graduate school and maintains an interest both in mass culture and writing more generally (though more often recently in the aesthetics of theoretical writing). She is also Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Space & Place Collective. Her primary research and teaching interests are in North American and European modernisms and modernities and North American fiction, poetry, film, material and mass culture. She has subspecialties in African-American literature, cultural studies, critical theory and an outsider's view of cultural geography. Overall, her research centers on developing the tools and theoretical models for rethinking the way we understand and theorize modern subjectivity, representation, and materiality. Her current research includes engagements with 19th century science, contemporary musicology and sound theory, French modernism, and Holocaust and Japanese American internment memory. Her book, Down in the Dumps: Place, Modernity and American Depression, is in press at Duke University Press. It investigates Depression-era productions of four places—Reno, Key West, Harlem, Hollywood—which functioned as discursive, material, and affective “dumps” within American modernity. Through an analysis of these places, and the texts that produced them, she charts the trajectory of what she calls depressive modernity—which she defines as modernity in place. This book extends from work she began in Modernism, Inc: Body, Memory, Capital (New York University Press, 2001), co-edited with Michael Thurston, an interdisciplinary anthology that explores the multiple meanings of incorporation—embodiment, repressed memory, advanced capitalism—in order to rethink American modernism and modernity. She is working on two current projects: Suitcase: Fragments on Memory and Motion is a short fragmentary work that literalizes the quest to extend a metaphor at its most extreme. Situating the ordinary suitcase as a central object and trope in modernist art, literature and memorial practices, this project meditates on the significance and consequences of how and under what circumstances matter becomes metaphor. A second, more long-term project, Dead Air: Affect and the Acoustic Subject, analyzes the relationships between sound, emotion, and subject-formation in modern Euro-American cultures. She has also published work on Victorian medicine.

Department Affiliations

English; American Studies; Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies;
work consistently with students in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature; Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society; Humanistic Geography

Areas of Expertise

cultural studies and critical theory, esp. theories of modernity, materiality, subjectivity; 20th century North American literatures, film, visual and mass culture; European, American and (recently) Japanese modernisms; theories of space and place; stuff--theories of matter, objects, things, refuse, trash;
sound and acoustic culture, memory; history of science, medicine and its intersections with philosophy; African American literature and art; writing in cultures impacted by US imperialisms (especially Cuba)

Selected Publications

Down in the Dumps: Place, Modernity, and American Depression. Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming March 2008.

Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital. Ed. Jani Scandura and Michael Thurston. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

“Refused Modernity.” Blackwell Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900-1950. Ed. John T. Matthews. London: Blackwell, forthcoming 2008.

“Cinematic Insomnia.” New Formations 53 (2004).

“Introduction: America and The Phantom Modern.” (with Michael Thurston), Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

“Reno-vating Gender: Place, Production, and the Reno Divorce Factory.” Modernism, Inc.: Body, Memory, Capital. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

“Deadly Professions: Dracula, Undertakers and the Embalmed Corpse.” Victorian Studies 40.1 (1997).

Libretto for Alice. A ballet and recitative arranged for two pianos and a mezzo-soprano. Braxton Blake, composer. Freda Herseth, mezzo-soprano. Performed May 1996 in Darmstadt, Germany. April 1998 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio.

Book projects:

Suitcase: Fragments on Memory and Motion (expected date of completion Spring 2009)

Dead Air: Affect and Acoustic Memory

Graduate Courses

Seminar in Special Subjects: STUFF: Materiality and Modernity
Topics in Cultural Theory: Motion and Memory
Modern Debris
American Modernisms and Modernities
The City: Modernity, Postmodernity, and After
Advanced Topics in Cultural Theory: Sound, Space, and Modernity
Topics in American Lit.: American Depressive Modernity
The City: Modernity, Postmodernity, and After
Modern and Contemporary Theory: Vampires, Monsters, and Freaks

Undergraduate Courses

First Year Seminar: Avant-garde modernisms
Honors Textual Analysis and Methods: SKIN
Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: Modern Matters
Senior Seminar: Modernisms and Modernities US Imperialisms and Colonialisms
Hollywood
Studies in Film: Hollywood
Senior Seminar: American Modernisms and Modernities
First Year Honors Seminar: North American Imperialisms
Advanced North American Imperialisms and Colonialisms
Multicultural American Literature
American Poetry from 1900: Poetry and Popular Culture
Introduction to Women Writers: Gendered Spaces/ Women’s Places