Nicola Masciandaro

Education:

Ph.D., Yale University - 2002 (Medieval Studies)

M.Phil., Yale University - 1999 (Medieval Studies)

M.A., Yale University - 1998 (Medieval Studies)

M.A., University of Connecticut - 1996 (English Literature)

B.A., University of Washington - 1992 (English Literature)

Areas of Expertise:

Medieval literature, philosophy. Areas of interest: mysticism, labor, individuation, sorrow, commentary, spontaneity, metal, para-academia.

Books and Publications

"Obiectum: Closing Remarks." Speculative Medievalisms. Ed. Petropunk Collective. Brooklyn, N.Y.: punctum. 261-70. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2013

"Per Speculum in Aenigmate: Response to Eugene Thacker." Speculative Medievalisms. Ed. Petropunk Collective. Brooklyn, N.Y.: punctum. 39-44. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2013

"Secret: No Light Has Ever Seen the Black Universe." In Dark Nights of the Universe. Miami: [NAME], 2013. 45-87. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2013

"The Sweetness (of the Law)." Non Liquet. (Books and Publications: Forthcoming Publications) 2013

Masciandaro, Nicola, Eileen Joy, Anna Kłosowska and Michael O'Rourke. Speculative Medievalisms. Brooklyn, N.Y.: punctum books. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2013

"Black Metal Theory" [interview, by Dominik Irtenkauf]. Avantgarde Metal. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2012

"Gourmandized in the Abattoir of Openness." Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium. Eds. Ed Keller, Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker. Brooklyn, N.Y.: punctum books. 179-89. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2012

"Grave Levitation." LOVEEEE journal. Live Arts Week. Bologna, Italy. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2012

"Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia." Dark Chaucer. Eds. Eileen Joy, Nicola Masciandaro and Myra Seaman. New York: punctum. 69-88. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2012

"Mysticism or Mystification?: Against Subject-Creationism." English Language Notes 50.1. 253-58. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2012

"Paradise Now." The Passive Collective 2. ISBN: 978-0-9879289-0-0. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2012

"Reflections From the Intoxological Crucible." Black Metal: Beyond the Darkness. London: Black Dog Publishing. 72-75. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2012

"The Severed Hand: Commentary and Ecstasy." English Language Notes 50.2. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2012

"What Is This That Stands Before Me?: Metal as Deixis." Reflections in the Metal Void. Ed. Niall Scott. Oxford: Interdisciplinary Press. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2012

'Comments on Eugene Thacker's 'Cosmic Pessimism.'" Continent. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2012

Masciandaro, Nicola, Ed Keller and Eugene Thacker. Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium. Brooklyn, N.Y.: punctum books. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2012

"Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." Word Riot, December. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2011

"Come Cosa Che Cada: Habit and Cataclysm, or, Exploding Plasticity.: French Theory Today: An Introduction to Possible Futures. Ed. Alexander R. Galloway. New York: TPSNY. 24-31. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2011

"Decapitating Cinema." And They Were Two in One and One in Two. Eds. Nicola Masciandaro and Eugene Thacker. New York. 55-75. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2011

"Getting Anagogic." Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 21. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2011

"Metal Studies and the Scission of the Word." Journal for Cultural Research 15: 247-53. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2011

"Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in Medieval Literature and Culture. Eds. Larissa Tracy and Jeff Massey. Leiden: E.J. Brill. 15-36. (Books and Publications: Chapter) 2011

"Theoretical Animals, by Gary J. Shipley." Word Riot, October. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2011

"Unknowing Animals." Speculations 2: 228-44. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2011

"Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralya." Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1. Ed. Nicola Masciandaro. 67-92. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2010

"Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Collapse VI: Geo/Philosophy: 20-56. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

"Comments on Sukhdarshan Dhaliwal's Ghazals at Twilight." The Ghazal Page. (Books and Publications: Book Review) 2010

"Conjuring the Phantasm." Review of The Signature of All Things: On Method, by Giorgio Agamben (Zone, 2009). Theory & Event 13. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2010

"Consciousness, Individuality, Mortality: Basic Thoughts About Work and the Animal/Human Boundary." Cultural Logic. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

"Falling Out of Language With Animals." Whiskey & Fox 4: 22-27. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

"Individuation: This Stupidity." Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 1: 124-31. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

"The Sorrow of Being." Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 19: 9-35. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium 1. (Books and Publications: Edited Book) 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola and Anna Klosowska. "Between Angela and Actaeon: Dislocation." L'Esprit Créateur 50: 91-105. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola, Kristen Alvanson and Scott Wilson. "dESIRE Gloss: A Specimen." Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary 3: 95-125. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2010

"Black Sabbath's 'Black Sabbath': A Gloss on Heavy Metal's Originary Song." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009

"Eros as Cosmic Sorrow: Locating the Limits of Difference in Julian of Norwich and The Cloud of Unknowing." Mystics Quarterly 35: 59-103. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009

"The One With a Hand: An Essay on Embodiment, Labor, and Alienation." Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 19. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009

Masciandaro, Nicola and Anna Klosowska. "Beyond the Sphere: A Dialogic Commentary on the Ultimate Sonetto of Dante's Vita Nuova. Glossator 1: 47-80. (Books and Publications: Peer Reviewed Article) 2009

Review of Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England. Eds. Gordan McMullan and David Matthews. Renaissance Quarterly 61: 1018-20. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2008

"Animal Beauty." Fiction International 40. (Books and Publications: Other Article) 2007

The Voice of the Hammer: The Meaning of Work in Middle English Literature. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame. (Books and Publications: Book) 2006

Creative Work

"Poison Egg." Text-exhibition for Orbitecture I & II. Head Gallery (New York) and Focal Point Gallery (London). Spring. 2011

Event of Oneself [52 ghazals]. 2010

Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums

"Amor Fati: A Prosthetic Gloss." Cyber-Nietzsche: Tunnels, Tightropes, Net-&-Meshworks, 4th Annual Nietzsche Workshop. Center for Transformative Media at Parsons, The New School for Design, April 13. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2013

"Absolute Secrecy: On the Infinity of Individuation." Thinking the Absolute: Speculation, Philosophy, and the End of Religion. Liverpool Hope University. Liverpool, U.K., June 29-July 1. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2012

"Mystical Sorrow, or, You Are a Weeping Stone." Drew University. Madison, N.J., March 27. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012

"Secret: No Light Has Ever Seen the Black Universe." Recess Gallery. New York, April 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2012

"Spontaneous Acts of Scholarly Combustion." The Past Has Arrived: The Digital Middle Ages and Renaissance. New York University. New York, April 13. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2012

Discussant. Panel discussion on para-academic publishing. Observatory. Brooklyn, N.Y., April 17. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2012

Video-conference interview. Post-Space Conference at the Elsewhere Collaborative. Obscura Day. Greensboro, N.C., April 28. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2012

"Gourmandized in the Abattoir of Openness." Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium I. The New School. New York, March 11. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

"Ni wood for sorow: On (the Necessity of) Being at One's Wits' End in The Cloud of Unknowing." 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2011

"On Commentary." Para-Academia & Theory-Fiction. The Public School New York. Observatory. Brooklyn, N.Y., May. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

"On the Mystical Love of Black Metal." P.E.S.T. (Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst) - Black Metal Theory Symposium. Dublin, November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

"Paradise Now: The Heresy of the Present." Observatory. Brooklyn, N.Y., April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011

"Per Speculum in Aenigmate." Response to Eugene Thacker, "Divine Darkness." Speculative Medievalisms: A Laboratory-Atelier. King's College. London, January. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

"Questioning Animals." English Department Works-in-Progress Seminar. Brooklyn College. February. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

"Wormsign." Melancology: Black Metal Theory Symposium II. The Fighting Cocks. London, January. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2011

Masciandaro, Nicola and Clodagh Emoe. "Black Metal/Mysticism/Anarchism." National College of Art and Design. Dublin, Nov. 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2011

"Beyond the Sphere: Getting Lost With Dante." Observatory. Brooklyn, N.Y., November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2010

"Come cosa che cada: Habit and Cataclysm." After the End: Medieval Studies, the Humanities and the Post-Catastrope: 1st Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. University of Texas, Austin. November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2010

"Decapitating Cinema." And They Were Two in One and One in Two: Talking Beheading. The New School. New York, December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2010

"Unknowing Animals." Animals and Humans in the Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Twenty-Second Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Conference. Barnard College. New York, December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2010

"Urania, or Astral Theses on Deep Bewilderment." After the End: Medieval Studies, the Humanities and the Post-Catastrope: 1st Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. University of Texas, Austin. November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2010

"Anti-Cosmosis: Black Mahapralaya." Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium. Public Assembly. Brooklyn, N.Y., December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009

"Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Miami University. Oxford, Ohio, Feb. 18. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"Grave Levitation: Being Scholarly." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May 7-9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009

"Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May 7-9. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009

"Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible." Medieval Club of New York. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, December. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy." Glossing a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present and Future of Commentary. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, April 9-10. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2009

"The Sorrow of Being." NYU English Medieval Forum. New York University. New York, November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

"The Truth of Commentary." New Directions in Medieval Scholarship Roundtable. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2009

Moderator, "The Future of Commentary: A Roundtable With Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Avital Ronell and Jesus Rodriguez Velasco." Glossing Is a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present and Future of Commentary. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, April 9-10. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2009

"Falling Out of Language with Animals." Robert L. Hess Faculty Colloquium. Brooklyn College. April 16. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2008

"Fro thens list hir not remove for nothing': The Place of Contemplative Desire." 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association: Bodies, Embodiments, Becomings. Saint Louis University. St Louis, October. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008

"The New: Poverty and Plenitude." Vernal Temporalities: Imagining the New in Literature. Brooklyn College Graduate English Conference. May 3. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Invited Talk) 2008

"The One With a Hand: Belaboring the Animal/Human Boundary." Brooklyn College Faculty Day. May 21. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008

"The Sorrow of Being in The Cloud of Unknowing." 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008

"What Is This That Stands Before Me?: Heavy Metal as Deictic Art." Heavy Fundametalisms: Music, Metal and Politics. Salzburg, Austria, November. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2008

"Labor, Language, Laughter: An Aesopian Phenomenology of the Human." 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May 10-13. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2007

"'This monster labour': Disfiguring Work in Barclay's Fourth Eclogue." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. San Francisco, March 23. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2006

"Counterfeited Churl: Animal Beauty, Human Ugliness and the Arbitrariness of Individuality." Works in Progress Seminar. Brooklyn College. Dec. 7. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006

"The Ambivalence of the Human in Late Medieval Literature." Whiting Seminar. Brooklyn College. March 30. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006

"The Voice of the Hammer." Wolfe Institute Humanities Colloquium. Brooklyn College. Dec. 4. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006

"The Work of Writing: Between Self-Expression and Professionalization." Brooklyn College Works in Progress Seminar. Brooklyn College. Feb. 7. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Contributed Talk) 2006

"Animal Laborans in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century English Literature." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. Cambridge, United Kingdom, April 7. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2005

"'My feithful bisynesse': Work and Subjectivity in Fragment VIII of The Canterbury Tales." 29th International Conference on Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Studies. Villanova University. Villanova, Pa., Sept. 17. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2004

"Bourgeois Pacifism in Late Medieval England." 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich. May. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003

"Labor and Literature in the Middle Ages: An Uneasy Relationship." Brooklyn College Works in Progress Seminar. Brooklyn College. March 12. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2003

"Chaucer's Former Age and Contemporary Primitivism." Medieval-Renaissance Colloquium. Yale University. New Haven, Conn. Dec. 6. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2001

"Middle English Werk: A Cultural Keyword?" Yale Medieval Studies Colloquium. Yale University. New Haven, Conn. Jan. 31. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 2001

"Pentecost and Its Afterlife: An Introduction to the Medieval Language Miracle." Revising Genealogies: An Interdisciplinary Conference in Medieval Studies. University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame, Ind. Sept. 9-11. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1999

"'It is better wroght / Than I coude haif thought': Work and Providence in the Noah Plays of Wakefield and York." 16th Annual Medieval Studies Conference. Brown University. Providence, R.I. April 4. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1998

"Laughter in Piers Plowman." 15th Annual Medieval Studies Conference. University of Connecticut. April. (Conferences, Seminars and Symposiums: Conference Presentation) 1997

Professional Leadership

Co-founder and co-director, punctum books, 2011-12. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2011

Editorial advisory board, Journal for Cultural Research. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009

Editorial board, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2009

Founder and editor, Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary. (Professional Leadership: Organizational Leadership Position) 2008

Community Activities

President, Medieval Club of New York. 2008

President, Medieval Club of New York. 2007

Other Professional Activities

Masciandaro, Nicola, Daniel Colucciello Barber, Alexander Galloway, and Eugene Thacker, co-organizers. "Dark Nights of the Universe." Recess Gallery & The Public School. New York, April 26-29. 2012

Masciandaro, Nicola, Ed Keller and Eugene Thacker, co-organizers. Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium I. The New School. New York, March 11. 2011

Masciandaro, Nicola, Eileen Joy, Anna Kłosowska and Michael O' Rourke, co-organizers Speculative Medievalisms: A Laboratory-Atelier. Sponsored by BABEL, Kings College and Urbanomic. King's College. London, Jan. 15. 2011

Masciandaro, Nicola, Eileen Joy, Anna Kłosowska and Michael O' Rourke, co-organizers. "Speculative Medievalisms 2: An Object-Imaginarium." Sponsored by BABEL and CUNY Graduate Center. CUNY Graduate Center. New York, Sept. 16. 2011

Masciandaro, Nicola, Michael O' Rourke and Karin Sellberg, co-organizers. P.E.S.T. (Philial Epidemic Strategy Tryst). The Pint Bar. Dublin, Nov. 20. 2011

Organizer, "On the Love of Commentary (In Love)," 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. 2011

Guest critic, Crypto-Form, Polytics, Noise: Taking the Post-Empire Pulse. Studio critic: Ed Keller. Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Columbia University. New York. April 30. 2010

Interview. Legacy Magazine 70: 9. 2010

Interview. Miasma Magazine 36: 48-50. 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola and Anna Klosowska, co-organizers, "Post-Abysmal I: Exegesis, Ethics, Saturation." 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola and Anna Klosowska, co-organizers, "Post-Abysmal II: Optimism, Devotion, Radiance." 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola and Anna Klosowska, co-organizers. "FAULT." After the End: Medieval Studies, the Humanities and the Post-Catastrope. 1st Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. University of Texas, Austin. November. 2010

Masciandaro, Nicola, Ed Keller, Eugene Thacker and Evan Calder Williams, co-organizers. "And They Were Two in One and One in Two: Talking Beheading." Co-organized with The New School. December. 2010

Radio interview (with Erik Davis, Maja D'Aoust, Eugene Thacker). Expanding Mind. September. 2010

Member, BABEL Working Group. 2009

Organizer, "Glossing Is a Glorious Thing: The Past, Present and Future of Commentary." CUNY Graduate Center. New York, April 9-10. 2009

Organizer, "Glosynge is a Glorious Thyng: Medieval Studies and the Future of Commentary." 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May 7-9. 2009

Organizer, Hideous Gnosis: Black Metal Theory Symposium. Public Assembly. Brooklyn, N.Y., Dec. 12. 2009

Organizer, "Exploring the Animal/Human Boundary." Brooklyn College Faculty Day. May. 2008

Organizer, "Why Am I Me?: On Being Born in the Middle Ages." 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May. 2008

Organizer, "New Directions in Medieval Labor." 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, Mich., May 10-13. 2007

Organizer, "Permutations of the Pastoral." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. San Francisco, March 23. 2006

Organizer, "Animal/Human Boundaries in Renaissance Literature." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. Cambridge, United Kingdom, April 7-9. 2005

Organizer, "Labor-Knowledge-Virtue: The Intersection of Human Powers in the Renaissance." Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. New York, April 1-4. 2004

Organizer, "The People of the Book: Islamic, Christian and Judaic Cultures in Contact During the Middle Ages." 17th Annual Medieval Studies Conference. Yale University. New Haven, Conn. April 17. 1999