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Home: Our Faculty: Brooklyn College Faculty:

Nicola Masciandaro

Associate Professor   Department: English   Location: 3149 Boylan Hall   Phone: 718-951-5784   Fax: 718-951-4612   Email:

The Whim (blog) Current projects: Sorrow of Being, dESIRE Gloss, Spontaneity: A Commentary Education: DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, YALE UNIVERSITY - 2002 (Medieval Studies) M.Phil., Yale University - 1999 (Medieval Studies) M.A., Yale University - 1998 (Medieval Studies) M.A, University of Connecticut - 1996 (English Literature) B.A., University of Washington - 1992 (English Literature) Areas of Expertise: Medieval literature, philosophy. Areas of interest: labor, individuation, sorrow, commentary, spontaneity, metal, para-academia. Books and Publications "Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." In Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in Medieval Literature and Culture. Eds. Larissa Tracy and Jeff Massey. University Press of Florida. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 "Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralya," in Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1. Edited by Nicola Masciandaro. 2010. 67-92. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2010 "Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Collapse VI: Geo/Philosophy (2010): 20-56. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010 "Between Angela and Actaeon: Dislocation." Co-written with Anna Klosowksa. L'Esprit Créateur 50 (2010): 91-105. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010 "Conjuring the Phantasm." Review of Giorgio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method (Zone, 2009). Theory & Event. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 "Consciousness, Individuality, Mortality: Basic Thoughts about Work and the Animal/Human Boundary," Cultural Logic. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010 "Falling Out of Language with Animals." Whiskey & Fox 4 (2010): 22-7. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010 "Individuation: This Stupidity." Postmedieval 1 (2010). Forthcoming. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 "Labor, Language, and Laughter: Aesop and the Apophatic Human." In Fragments for a History of a Vanishing Humanism. Eds. Eileen A. Joy, Betsy McCormick, and Myra J. Seaman. Ohio University Press. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 "The Sorrow of Being." Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 "What is This that Stands before Me?: Metal as Deixis." In (title TBA)" Ed. Niall Scott. Rodopi Press. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2010 Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1. Edited by Nicola Masciandaro. 2010. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2010 "Beyond the Sphere: A Dialogic Commentary on the Ultimate Sonetto of Dante's Vita Nuova. Co-written with Anna Klosowska. Glossator 1 (2009): 47-80. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009 "Black Sabbath's 'Black Sabbath': A Gloss on Heavy Metal's Originary Song." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009 "Eros as Cosmic Sorrow: Locating the Limits of Difference in Julian of Norwich and The Cloud of Unknowing." Mystics Quarterly [now Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures] 35 (2009): 59-104. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2009 "The One with a Hand: An Essay on Embodiment, Labor, and Alienation." Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009 "Worms, Hungering For All The Dimensions." In Glossator 4: Black Metal Commentary. Eds. Nicola Masciandaro and Reza Negarestani. Forthcoming 2012. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2009 Review of Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, eds. Gordan McMullan and David Matthews. Renaissance Quarterly 61 (2008):1018-1020. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2008 "Animal Beauty." Fiction International 40 (2007). (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2007 The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006. (Books and Publications: Book) 2006 Creative Work Event of Oneself [52 ghazals]. 2010 Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums "Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya." Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium. Public Assembly. Brooklyn, NY. December, 2009. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009 "Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Miami University. Febrary 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009 "Grave Levitation: Being Scholarly." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 7-9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009 "Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 7-9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009 "Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." Medieval Club of New York. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, NY. December, 2009. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009 "Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Glossing a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present, and Future of Commentary. Graduate Center, The City University of New York. April 9-10, 2009. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2009 "The Future of Commentary: A Roundtable with Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Avital Ronell, and Jesus Rodriguez Velasco." Moderator. Glossing is a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present, and Future of Commentary. April 9-10, 2009. Graduate Center, The City University of New York. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009 "The Sorrow of Being." NYU English Medieval Forum. New York University. New York, NY. November, 2009. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009 "The Truth of Commentary." New Directions in Medieval Scholarship Roundtable. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, NY. November 2009. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009 "Falling Out of Language with Animals." Robert L. Hess Faculty Colloquium. Brooklyn College, CUNY. April 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2008 "Fro thens list hir not remove for nothing': The Place of Contemplative Desire." 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association: Bodies, Embodiments, Becomings. Saint Louis University. October 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008 "The New: Poverty and Plenitude." Vernal Temporalities: Imagining the New in Literature. Brooklyn College Graduate English Conference. May 3, 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008 "The One with a Hand: Belaboring the Animal/Human Boundary." Brooklyn College Faculty Day. May 21. Brooklyn College, CUNY. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008 "The Sorrow of Being in The Cloud of Unknowing." 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008 "What is This that Stands before Me?: Heavy Metal as Deictic Art." Heavy Fundametalisms: Music, Metal, and Politics. Salzburg. November 2008. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008 "Labor, Language, Laughter: An Aesopian Phenomenology of the Human." 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 10-13, 2007. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007 "'This monster labour': Disfiguring Work in Barclay's Fourth Eclogue." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, CA, March, 23, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006 "Counterfeited Churl: Animal Beauty, Human Ugliness, and the Arbitrariness of Individuality." Works in Progress Seminar, Brooklyn College, CUNY, December 7, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006 "The Ambivalence of the Human in Late Medieval Literature." Whiting Seminar, Brooklyn College, March 30, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006 "The Voice of the Hammer." Wolfe Institute Humanities Colloquium, Brooklyn College, CUNY December 4, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006 "The Work of Writing: Between Self-Expression and Professionalization." Brooklyn College Works in Progress Seminar, Brooklyn College, CUNY, February 7, 2006. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006 "Animal Laborans in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century English Literature." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Cambridge, UK, April 7, 2005. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2005 "'My feithful bisynesse': Work and Subjectivity in Fragment VIII of The Canterbury Tales." 29th International Conference on Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Studies, Villanova University, September 17, 2004. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004 "Bourgeois Pacifism in Late Medieval England." 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2003. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003 "Labor and Literature in the Middle Ages: An Uneasy Relationship." Brooklyn College Works in Progress Seminar, Brooklyn College, CUNY, March 12, 2003. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003 "Chaucer's Former Age and Contemporary Primitivism." Medieval-Renaissance Colloquium, Yale University, December 6, 2001. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2001 "Middle English Werk: A Cultural Keyword?" Yale Medieval Studies Colloquium, Yale University, January 31, 2001. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2001 "Pentecost and its Afterlife: An Introduction to the Medieval Language Miracle." Revising Genealogies: An Interdisciplinary Conference in Medieval Studies, University of Notre Dame, September 9-11, 1999. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1999 "'It is better wroght / Than I coude haif thought': Work and Providence in the Noah Plays of Wakefield and York." 16th Annual Medieval Studies Conference, Brown University, April 4, 1998. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1998 "Laughter in Piers Plowman." 15th Annual Medieval Studies Conference, University of Connecticut, April 1997. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1997 Professional Leadership Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies. Editorial Board. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009 Journal for Cultural Research. Editorial Advisory Board. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009 Founder and Editor of Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2008 Community Activities Medieval Club of New York, President 2008 Medieval Club of New York, President 2007 Other Professional Activities Guest Critic. Crypto-Form, Polytics, Noise: Taking the Post-Empire Pulse. Studio critic: Ed Keller. Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Columbia University. April 30, 2010. 2010 "Glossing is a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present, and Future of Commentary." CUNY Graduate Center. April 9-10. Organizer. 2009 "Glosynge is a Glorious Thyng: Medieval Studies and the Future of Commentary." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 7-9. Organizer. 2009 "Post-Abysmal I: Exegesis, Ethics, Saturation." 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 2010. Co-organizer with Anna Klosowska. 2009 "Post-Abysmal II: Optimism, Devotion, Radiance." 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 2010. Co-organizer with Anna Klosowska. 2009 Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium. Public Assembly, Brooklyn, NY. December 12, 2009. Organizer. 2009 BABEL Working Group. Member.. 2009 "Exploring the Animal/Human Boundary." Faculty Day. Brooklyn College. May 2008. Organizer. 2008 "Why Am I Me?: On Being Born in the Middle Ages." 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 2008. Organizer. 2008 "New Directions in Medieval Labor." 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 10-13, 2007. Organizer. 2007 "Permutations of the Pastoral." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, CA, March, 23, 2006. Organizer. 2006 "Animal/Human Boundaries in Renaissance Literature." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Cambridge, UK, April 7-9, 2005. Organizer. 2005 "Labor-Knowledge-Virtue: The Intersection of Human Powers in the Renaissance." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, New York, April 1-4, 2004. Organizer. 2004 "The People of the Book: Islamic, Christian, and Judaic Cultures in Contact during the Middle Ages." 17th Annual Medieval Studies Conference, Yale University, April 17, 1999. Organizer. 1999