Contents

 

Creative Think Piece: Puddles are Portals                                          1

       Nancy Hightower

 

“The Connective Sinew Inside the Story”: Interview with

Steven Barnes, Guest of Honor                                                             5

       Steven Barnes, interviewed by Alexis Brooks de Vita

 

Algorithmic Care in the Age of Machine Learning: Plenary

Address by Distinguished Scholar Jennifer Rhee                              27

       Jennifer Rhee

 

“A Back Alley into Their Ethical Brain”: Interview with Annalee

Newitz, Guest of Honor                                                                          49

       Annalee Newitz, interviewed by Novella Brooks de Vita

 

The Bad Pennies: Distinguished Scholar Plenary                              64

       Alec Nevala-Lee

 

“Ways to Freedom”: Plenary Interview with Martha Wells,

Guest of Honor                                                                                        80

       Martha Wells, interviewed by Alexis Brooks de Vita

 

 

REVIEWS

 

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Joshua Uchenna Omenga’s

Between Dystopias: The Road to Afropantheology                         92

       Rev. by Andrew Erickson

 

 

Creative Think Piece:

Puddles are Portals

 

Nancy Hightower

 

 

 

 

ALL OF 2016 FEELS LIKE A CENTURY AGO, a once upon a time kind of beginning. I say this with certainty as I look at a photograph from that year. In it, my first-year students pose for an end of the semester picture. They are being silly and exuberant, cool and embarrassed all at the same time as only young people can be, full of hope despite the outcome of an election that would endanger their lives, with smiles that seemed to defy reality.

 Two election cycles and a pandemic later left me revisiting that photo as more smiles disappeared with each semester, and with worry and exhaustion replacing the joy and excitement I saw before. At times, I can detect glimpses of something approaching gratitude, but when I ask them if they have fun, they shake their heads. If I follow up with what gives them joy, I might as well be asking what life is like on Mars.

My friends are no different. They are worried about job security and health insurance in a culture that promotes 24-hour news cycles and 60-hour work weeks. It’s almost as if we are being trained to live on borrowed time. In their excellent essay, “Counterproductive Habits of Mind,” David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen argue that we are often “somewhere else—especially if the activity we are doing is seen as boring or mundane” (n.p.). Rather than being fully present in the moment, we calculate what must be done in the next hour, later that evening, or by tomorrow. We replay the conversation we had yesterday, how the date went three days ago, or the presentation last week. In A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Charles Wallace is always being corrected to ask about the when they’ve traveled to instead of the where, and this might be a good question to ask ourselves. Humans aren’t meant to time travel, and doing so in a capitalistic system where we are always on the clock racks up unfathomable debt by way of ill health, sleepless nights, missed deadlines, depression, anxiety, and a nameless dread that never quite goes away. 

I have no easy answer on how to be more mindful at a point in the Zeitgeist when our attention is already frayed thin with only what ifs on the horizon. The authors of “Counterproductive Habits of Mind” remind us of David Lodge’s thesis that art revitalizes the way we see the mundane through “defamiliarization” (Lodge 53; Rosenwasser and Stephen, n.p.), but what if it did more than that? What if art has the power to put us back in time, back in the now, where we can reconnect with wonder. My own artistic practice of taking photographs of New York City in puddle reflections demands a certain amount of both presence and wild abandon. Like Alice in Wonderland, I have to believe that even the smallest, muddiest puddle can show me a reflection that I can’t even imagine.

This means I’m looking down and all around as opposed to straight ahead. I have circled a puddle many times, crouching beside it and then standing up to look at the surrounding buildings to see what scene might be forming. Sometimes I find other worlds, and sometimes, there’s just really dirty water. Yet the practice of this art always produces joy and wonder and returns me to the right timeline. Could that be what was missing in my college classes?

When one thinks of school, one does not think joy or whimsy (unless we remember our kindergarten days when everything was new). I experimented with creating a radical defamiliarization of my classroom. I brought in tea lights and holiday lighting so that we didn’t need the overhead lights on. I had two different machines that either produced a disco strobe lighting effect or the Northern Lights. I played disco music as they came in to find their seats. Was it harder for them to check their phones or having thirty tabs open on their computer? No, but were they more engaged? Yes, because art demands that we engage with it. Art returns us to this timeline.

2025 feels like it might be a terrifying year. As an adjunct instructor, my job is not secure. My housing in NYC is not secure. I will turn 55 in July, and my health insurance is contingent on whether I get enough courses.  Will I still bring twinkle lights into my classrooms? I hope so, because we will need joy and wonder, along with community care, more than ever before. Rather than exhaust me, this kind of mindful presence increases my empathy, despite the large bag I carry to every class full of lights and food. One student said I reminded them of Mary Poppins, but true magic is created in community. I remember how before the pandemic, a small gang of first-year students would grab pizza after my class and encourage others to join, including the loner who sat in back. She was a passionate poet and scholar, and within a few years was listed as one of Time’s Women of the Year for her role in being a climate change activist. My students are starlight.

Puddles are portals, which might explain why they lay hidden in plain sight. As children, we instinctively knew this truth and tried to jump into another world with gleeful anticipation. As adults, we view them as nuisance and a sign of bad drainage.

We forget that art is a bowing down. Art demands I give up my ego so that a city can show me the future of herself underwater. Ego is all about expecting the world as I want it to be. Art demands that I hunch over a puddle in the freezing rain, skirt wet and fingers numb to find a universe I never imagined. Art creates space for the world to tell the story of its joy and pain; it transforms the timeline to one of hope rooted in community. It reminds us that our daily planners, which propel us into anxious futures, must become a tesseract.