VCU Hosts Panel Discussion of New Media

By Tom Gresham

Xeni Jardin, a Richmond native and one of the foremost new media commentators in the country, will be part of a panel discussion at  Virginia Commonwealth University that examines the risks and rewards of new technologies for writers and artists.

The panel discussion will be held Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. in the Richmond Salon of the VCU Student Commons at 907 Floyd Ave. Joining Jardin on the panel will be Johanna Drucker, an artist and professor at the University of Virginia, and John Kinsella, a writer and professor at Kenyon College. The discussion marks the first event in a year-long series of lectures and other events focused on the topic of "Humanities for the 21st Century: Creating and Consuming Culture in the Digital Age.

Jardin, who attended Open High School, is a tech culture journalist and co-editor of the award-winning blog, BoingBoing, one of the most popular on the Internet. She is a contributor to Wired Magazine and National Public Radio and has discussed technology topics on ABC World News Tonight, CNN, NBC Today, Fox News and the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The Los Angeles Times dubbed her "wizard of blogs" last year.

Drucker is internationally known as a book artist and visual poet, as well as for her publications on the history of written forms, typography and visual poetics. Her recent work focuses on aesthetics and digital media. She is a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia.

Kinsella, a self-described "vegan anarchist pacifist," is one of Australia's leading writers. He has published more than 30 books of poetry, prose and fiction, and is the founder and editor of the international literary journal Salt. He is a professor of English at Kenyon and a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University.

"Humanities for the 21st Century: Creating and Consuming Culture in the Digital Age" is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities administered by the VCU Honors College. The series is organized by the Department of English in collaboration with the School of Mass Communications and the School of the Arts.

For more information about the series, visit www.creatingculture.vcu.edu.

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