Rhiannon Goad's blog

Before starting up for the spring semester, we would like to take a moment to remember Jim Wiedner. Those of us on the viz. team had the privilege of working with Jim both on the blog and in the Digital Writing and Research Lab. In every writer’s meeting, Jim was always incredibly kind and thoughtful to each of us. We'll miss viz.'s “Resident Dude”—as both a colleague and a friend. We hope the posts below give you a sense of the Jim we knew: a funny, sharp, and well-dressed guy a heart of gold. Read more about Remembering Jim Wiedner

Austin voting districts, image from Austin Chronicle  Read more about Beer'n'Bridges: the Look of Austin's City Council Race

final girl + corpse supercut from rhiannon on Vimeo.

In honor of Halloween, I compiled a supercut of a trope within a trope: the moment in which the final girl* discovers a corpse. Enjoy!

*In her excellent 1987 essay “Her Body Himself” Carol J. Clover coined the term “final girl.” According to Clover:  Read more about Final Girl + Corpse Supercut

By accident, books on my nightstand fall into two piles: those which I should read and those which I want to read. In my current situation, coursework determines my should pile. The want pile consists of, well, books I read even though no one is making me. My haphazard nightstand organization is not meant to defend the divisions between high art and low culture—what gets counted as Literature with a capital L and what’s categorized as trash reflects hierarchies of race, class, gender, and nationality. My piles of books merely echo a more general conversation about the canon, one that is particularly active in English courses.