[-empyre-] May, 2017: Welcome Margaret Rhee__Robot Poetics, Ephemera, and Other Concerns

[Renate Terese Ferro]

It is with the greatest of pleasure that I introduce new media artist/poet Margaret Rhee to the -empyre- listserv.  Margaret has agreed to shepherd the May discussion on empyre and I could not be more excited.  Her book, Radio Heart or How Robots Fall Out of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2015)” caught my eye a few months ago when I noticed my old friend and poet Cecil Giscombe’s blurb about Rhee’s RADIO HEART.   Previously, I knew of Margaret’s work both as a gifted writer but also an artist engaged in the complications of technology, race, gender and the body.  I was thrilled when she agreed to be our guest and to organize a group around her interests.  This month our discussion “Robot Poetics, Ephemera, and Other Concerns” will bring together writers, artists, activists, technologist’s and more. I want to thank Margaret for her creative, open, spirit and invite other empyreans to join in.  I hope you enjoy this month.
 
Margaret Rhee is a poet, artist, and scholar engaged in the poetics and technologies of difference. As a poet, she is the author of chapbooks Yellow (Tinfish Press, 2011) Radio Heart; or How Robots Fall Out of Love (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and the forthcoming full-length collection, Love, Robot (The Operating System, 2017). She is the recipient of poetry fellowships from
the Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop, Les Figues Press, Hedgebrook, and Kundiman. Her academic writing has been published in Amerasia, Cinema Journal, and GLQ, and she is completing her monograph How We Became Human: Race, Robots and the Asian American Body. With Dr. Brittney Cooper, she co-edited a special issue of Ada: A Journal of Gender, Technology, and New Media on “Hacking the Black/White Binary.” As a new media artist, her project The Kimchi Poetry Machine was selected to exhibit at the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3, and in 2014, she was awarded the Chancellor’s Award for Public Service for her collaborative and social practice feminist HIV/AIDS digital storytelling project in the San Francisco Jail(www.ourstorysf.wordpress.com).

 Currently, she is a visiting assistant professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at the University of Oregon. In 2014, she earned her Ph.D. in ethnic and new
media studies from the University of California, Berkeley.  

Renate


Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
rferro at cornell.edu