MSU grad to lecture about impact of smartphones on humanities

From MSU News Service
A free public lecture about the impact of smartphones on the humanities will be given Tuesday, April 16th, at Montana State University.
Christopher Schaberg, the Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University and an MSU graduate, will discuss “No Ideas but in Phones: Confronting the Cellular Humanities” at 4pm in the Procrastinator Theater in the Strand Union Building.
Part of the College of Letters and Science’s Distinguished Speakers Series, Schaberg will discuss new ways to think about smartphones in relation to the humanities and everyday life, starting with the college classroom and ranging widely across contemporary culture. With smartphones everywhere and always demanding our attention, Schaberg will examine how the humanities should engage the ubiquitous technologies, whether as mere personal devices or as richly textual communicative media forms.
Schaberg received a master’s degree in English from MSU and a doctorate from the University of California, Davis, where he specialized in 20th century American literature and critical theory.
At Loyola, Schaberg teaches courses on contemporary literature and nonfiction, cultural studies and environmental theory. He also teaches a first-year seminar on airports in American literature and culture. He is the author of three books on airports: The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight, The End of Airports and Airportness: The Nature of Flight. He has co-edited two essay collections: “Deconstructing Brad Pitt” with MSU English professor Robert Bennett and “Airplane Reading.” His most recent book, The Work of Literature in An Age of Post-Truth, was published in 2018 and examines teaching, reading and writing in the early 21st century.
Schaberg is founding co-editor of an essay and book series called “Object Lessons” that explores the hidden lives of ordinary things. This series offers hands-on opportunities for Loyola students who are interested in nonfiction writing as well as working in editing and publishing.
Schaberg’s lecture is sponsored by the Department of English and is presented by the College of Letters and Science’s Distinguished Speakers Series. The series, which began in spring 2011, brings distinguished scholars to MSU to give public talks and to meet with faculty and students to enrich the intellectual life on campus and enhance research connections.
For more information about this and other Distinguished Speakers Series lectures, go to www.montana.edu/lettersandscience/speakers or call (406) 994-4288.