John Muthyala

  • John Muthyala, Professor of English
  • Project director, USM Digital Humanities

 
John Muthyala
207-780-4780

315 Luther Bonney, Portland Campus

Territory/Specialty

  • Digital Humanities
  • Globalization
  • Postcolonialism
  • Literatures of the Americas
  • Cultural Studies

Education

  • PhD, Loyola University, Chicago Master of Philosophy,
  • Osmania University, Hyderabad, India Master of Arts, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India

Current Courses

  • Digital Revolution
  • Narratives of Discovery, Settlement, and Colonialism
  • Culture and Society

Research Interests

Over the last decade, I pivoted from literary studies to digital studies, from traditional humanities scholarship to digital humanities (DH). Consequently, my professional activities have changed; with grant-funded projects, I am bringing together faculty and staff across USM (and beyond) to learn digital skills and digital literacy, which will have a direct impact on pedagogy. 

My scholarly approach has also changed, as I am studying higher education as a social and cultural enterprise, particularly the role of the liberal arts. Engaging with audiences beyond the university has gained importance.

Given the importance of public-facing scholarship to enrich humanities discourses outside academia, I am working on a digital publishing venture focused on Cultural Borderlands, Health and Well-Being, and Hacking Higher Education.

I am working on a book project on drones and surveillance, which draws from the discourses of the digital humanities, the post-digital age, and the New Aesthetic.

 

Department of English Digital Humanities College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

John Muthyala teaches in the English Department and leads the USM Digital Humanities Initiative. He served as Chair of the English department and was Principal Investigator of two Maine Economic Improvement Fund (MEIF) grants: Digital Maine, and Culture, Commerce, and the Environment: Iceland and the North Atlantic.

His teaching and research areas are the Digital Humanities, Globalization, and International American Studies.

Professor Muthyala’s Digital Innovation in the Liberal Arts demonstrates the productive synergies that can result from collaborating across disciplines to engage in digital innovation. He is currently working on a scholarly monograph on the impact of drones and surveillance on American foreign policy, society, and culture; it draws on the discourses of the digital humanities, post-digital cultures, and the New Aesthetic.

“The uses of the digital are worldly endeavors, a series of innumerable acts and motivations profoundly and inescapably shaped by human interests, local pressures, national trends, and global flows.”
— John Muthyala, Project director, USM Digital Humanities

Selected Publications

Selected publications:

"Digital Innovation in the Liberal Arts" Educause Review

"Drones and Surveillance in a Global World" Digital Studies/La Champ Numérique

“Whither the Digital Humanities?” Hybrid Pedagogy

“The Challenges of Online Education: Perspectives of a Department Chair.” Association of Departments of English Bulletin

“Call Centers and the Transnationalization of Affective Labor.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

“Writing, Exile, and the Practice of Freedom.” Journal of Maine Education 

“Whose World Is Flat? Mapping Information Technology Globalization” New Global Studies

“Gendering the Frontier in O.E. Rölvaag’s Giants in the Earth” Great Plains Quarterly

“Twilight of the Gods: Britain, America, and the Inheritance of Empire” American Quarterly

“‘America’ in Transit: the Heresies of American Studies Abroad” Comparative American Studies: An International Journal

“Almanac of the Dead: The Dream of the Fifth World in the Borderlands” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory

“Ethnic Memory and the Politics of Postcolonial Recall in Meena Alexander’s Fault Lines and Kirin Narayan’s Love, Stars, And All That.” Atlantic Literary Review

“Reworlding America: the Globalization of American Studies” Cultural Critique

“Roberta Fernández’s Intaglio: Border Crossings and Mestiza Feminism in the Borderlands” Canadian Review of American Studies

John Muthyala
207-780-4780

315 Luther Bonney, Portland Campus

Territory/Specialty

  • Digital Humanities
  • Globalization
  • Postcolonialism
  • Literatures of the Americas
  • Cultural Studies

Education

  • PhD, Loyola University, Chicago Master of Philosophy,
  • Osmania University, Hyderabad, India Master of Arts, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India

Current Courses

  • Digital Revolution
  • Narratives of Discovery, Settlement, and Colonialism
  • Culture and Society

Research Interests

Over the last decade, I pivoted from literary studies to digital studies, from traditional humanities scholarship to digital humanities (DH). Consequently, my professional activities have changed; with grant-funded projects, I am bringing together faculty and staff across USM (and beyond) to learn digital skills and digital literacy, which will have a direct impact on pedagogy. 

My scholarly approach has also changed, as I am studying higher education as a social and cultural enterprise, particularly the role of the liberal arts. Engaging with audiences beyond the university has gained importance.

Given the importance of public-facing scholarship to enrich humanities discourses outside academia, I am working on a digital publishing venture focused on Cultural Borderlands, Health and Well-Being, and Hacking Higher Education.

I am working on a book project on drones and surveillance, which draws from the discourses of the digital humanities, the post-digital age, and the New Aesthetic.