Alex Christie, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Digital Prototyping at Brock University’s Centre for Digital Humanities. He teaches digital prototyping, videogame design, digital media production, project management, modernist (twentieth-century) literature, and digital humanities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He is the recipient of Brock University’s 2019 Award for Excellence in Teaching for Early Career Faculty. His research areas include spatial humanities, genetic criticism (manuscript studies), modernist studies (twentieth-century literature), the digital humanities, and digital pedagogy. In 2020, he completed a six-year term on the Executive Board of the Modernist Studies Association as its first Chair of Technology and Infrastructure.
Research Area: Digital Textuality
Modern Manuscripts. Media studies. Humanities computing.
My research in the area of digital textuality examines where modernist (twentieth-century) authors experimented with proto-digital editing methods in the first half of the twentieth century. Such methods evolved alongside twentieth-century media and influenced the design of early computing machines, charting a line of influence between twentieth century novelists and early humanities computing. I recover these lost connections between literature and computing in my monograph, Paper Processors. I am also prototyping a series of innovative reading environments that draw upon these lost experiments in digital writing. Incorporating techniques from videogame design and machine learning (AI), these prototypes explore new models for the electronic book (ebook).
Prototypes
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Entwicklung: A Facial recognition prototype (Early Alpha build). (2020). Read about the prototype in Composures..
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Processing Modernism: An experimental publication. (2020). Download Electronic Supplementary Material from SpringerLink at https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-50277-5_11.
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I Cannot Go On, I’ll Go On. (2015). Play the Beckett Prototype
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Duel in Paris. (2015). Play the Proust Prototype
Publications
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Paper Processors: Modern Manuscripts and Humanities Computing. [In progress.]
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Christie, A. (2020). Processing modernism: The textual politics of Nightwood.” In J. Bloom & C. Rovera (Eds.), Genesis and revision in modern British and Irish writers. (pp. 223-246). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Christie, A. (2020). Entwicklung: A book you read with no hands. In C. Parayre (Ed.), Composures. (pp. 28-34). St Catharines: Small Walker Press.
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Bath, J., Arbuckle, A., Crompton, C., Christie, A., Siemens, R., & the INKE Research Group. (2018). The futures of the book. In J. Sayers (Ed.), The Routledge companion to media studies and the digital humanities. (pp. 336-344). New York: Routledge.
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Saklofske, J., Belojevic, N., Christie, A., Sapach, S., Simpson, J., & the INKE Research Team. (2016). Gaming the edition: Modelling scholarly editions through videogame frameworks. Digital Literary Studies, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.18113/P8dls1159703
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Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Grant, Brock University. (July 2017 - December 2017).
Grants
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Humanities Research Institute (HRI) Grant, Brock University. (July 2017 - December 2017).
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Research Area: Spatial Humanities
Geospatial Criticism. Cultural Critique. 3D Data Visualization.
Z-Axis research is a mapping project that uses warped 3D maps to interpret modernist literature, rather than impose GIS-specific space on texts that predate digital mapping. This project’s z-axis method uses data from modernist novels to warp archival maps from the modern period in 3D. The results visualize the spatial experience of the modern city as represented by a given novel, considering marginal and incomplete perspectives on the ground, rather than top-down or totalizing views from above. This project was first conceived by myself and Katie Tanigawa.
Prototypes
Z-axis Map of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood (Paris 1936)
Z-axis map of James Joyce’s Ulysses (Dublin, 1922)
Legacy Mapping Tool
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The legacy (old) z-axis mapping prototype can be accessed at zaxis.uvic.ca. A new prototype tool is in very early development.
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Publications
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Hawkes, J., Christie, A., & Nienhuis, T. (2022). American Science Fiction Television and Space - Productions and (Re)configurations (1987-2021). Palgrave Macmillan.
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Christie, A. (2021). Open source interpretation using z-axis maps. In A. Mauro (Ed.), Social Knowledge Creation in the Humanities, Vol. 2. Tulsa, Toronto: Iter Press & the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
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Christie, A. & Tanigawa, K. (2016). Mapping modernism’s z-axis: A model for spatial analysis in modernist studies. In S. Ross & J. O’Sullivan (Eds.), Reading modernism with machines: Digital humanities and modernist literature. (pp. 79-107). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Christie, A. (2016). Critically making humanities cyberinfrastructure. Scholarly and Research Communication, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2016v7n2/3a264
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Arbuckle, A., Christie, A., with the ETCL, INKE, & MVP Research Groups. (2015). Intersections between social knowledge creation and critical making. Scholarly and Research Communication, 6(2). https://doi.org/10.22230/src.2015v6n3a200
Grants
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SSHRC Explore Grant, Brock University. (July 2019 - June 2020).
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Research Area: Digital Pedagogy
Digital Pedagogy. Open Source Repository. Social Knowledge Creation.
Access Pedagogy Toolkit at pedagogy-toolkit.org
Pedagogy Toolkit is an open source and community-driven repository of teaching materials, community-authored guides to teaching with DH tools, and open access syllabuses and a syllabus templating tool. This project applies an open source philosophy to course development, offering a platform for pedagogues to share, author, and develop digital activities and teaching platforms. The repository serves as a contact zone where tool developers and a range of humanities pedagogues can contribute their expertise. All content is free to use for any non-commercial purpose, including open source code for authoring teaching and project websites with no funds or technical expertise required. This project is powered by Jekyll and GitHub Pages.
Publications
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Roth, A. & Christie, A. (2019). Beyond the fear of failure: Towards a method for student experiential autobiography mapping (SEAM). The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, (16). https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/beyond-the-fear-of-failure-towards-a-method-for-student-experiential-autobiography-mapping-seam
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Christie, A. (2017). Building a toolkit for digital pedagogy. E. Murphy & S. Smith (Eds.), Digital Humanities Quarterly, 11(3). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/3/000310/000310.html
Grants
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Microgrant, The Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH). (August 2014 - December 2014).
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Teaching Award
In 2019, I received Brock University’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for Early Career Faculty. This University-wide award is given annually to one Tenure-Track Faculty member.
International Service
Modernist Studies Association (MSA) Executive Board
From 2014-2020, I served on the Executive Board of the Modernist Studies Association as it Webmaster (2014-2018) and then its first Chair of Technology and Infrastructure (2018-2020).