Elisabet Takehana

PROFESSOR
English Studies School of Arts and Sciences
Elisabet Takehana selfie outside in front of her laptop
978.665.3141 Office: Miller Hall 214A
Office Hours
Fall 2024

Leave of Absence

Website

Biography

I have been teaching writing and literature since 2006. Why? Because it is essential. Written language is one of humankind’s original external hard drives and a powerful mechanism to reveal our thinking to others and to ourselves. While we certainly use words to express ourselves, we also write to document history, to share a joke, to write laws, to incite revolutions, to organize phenomena into concepts – sometimes helpful and sometimes hurtful. Language helps us create our reality, so we have to use it thoughtfully.  "Words are that powerful."

Courses Taught

Writing I (ENGL 1100)
Writing II (ENGL 1200)
Honors English (HON 1050)
Style Studio (ENGL 2020)
English Study Abroad – Absurd and Experimental Paris (ENGL 3025)
Genres, Forms, and Themes in Creative Writing (ENGL 3026)
Experimental Writing (ENGL 3027)
Media Conscious Storytelling (ENGL 3045)
Editing & Publishing (ENGL 3075)
Online Magazine Writing (ENGL 3840)
Feature and Magazine Writing (ENGL 3870)
Creative Nonfiction Writing (ENGL 3890)
Genres, Adaptations, and Hybridity (ENGL 9017)

Background

Ph.D., University of Florida (English)
M.A., California State University, San Bernardino (English)
B.A., California State University, San Bernardino (English)

Elise Takehana has been a professor at Fitchburg State since 2012 and teaches first-year writing, magazine journalism, nonfiction, rhetorical style, editing, experimental writing, and media studies either in creative writing courses or the occasional graduate literature seminar. Her research interests are equally varied with essays and articles on 20th and 21st century print and digital literature, media studies, aesthetics, genre studies, posthumanism, digital humanities, and multimedia composition.

Elise is looking to develop new methodological skills to contribute to the growing field of quantitative and networked literary analysis and stylometry. She is currently developing a project exercising the boundaries of antagonistic stylometry for creative generation and conducting research for two proposed articles “Expressive Algorithms and Formulaic Expressions” and “The Nature of Randomness in Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1"

Book:

The Baroque Technotext – a monograph on the baroque aesthetic practices that underpin several print and digital literary texts that embrace the meaning value of their materiality

Digital Projects:

When We Were Normal­ - an augmented reality walking tour of Fitchburg State’s early history built and written in collaboration with students

Robert E. Cormier Digital Archive Exhibits – thematic collections of archival material from young adult author, Robert Cormier’s rich collection.

Articles:

  • “Prying Open the Oyster: Creating a Digital Learning Space from the Robert Cormier Archive.” The ALAN Review vol. 43, no. 3, 2016, pp. 11-21. (co-authored with AnnaMary Consalvo)
  • “The Shape of Thought: Humanity in Digital, Literary Texts,” Comunicazioni sociali, vol. 37, no. 3, 2016, pp. 342-353.
  • “Can You Murder a Novel? Part 1” Hybrid Pedagogy 26 Jul. 2015, https://hybridpedagogy.org/can-you-murder-a-novel-part-1/(co-authored with Jonathan Jena, Matthew Ramsdem, and Natasha Rocci)

Conference Presentations

  • “Do You Speak Math? Or Extrapolating Humanity in How Mathematicians Talk” New Directions in the Humanities, Paris, France, June 2023

  • “The Map Is in the Details” NeMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association), Niagara Falls, NY, March 2023

  • “Georges Perec on the Street and in the Mind.” PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association), Los Angeles, November 2022

  • “The Digital and the Baroque: Confronting Hyper-Representation.” ELO (Electronic Literature Organization), Porto, Portugal, July 2017

  • “Mise en Abîme Mediascape: The Book in Code and Code in the Book.” SHARP (Society on the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing) 25th Annual Convention, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, June 2017

 

ELO Electronic Literature Organization