Project poster and talk last October

Digital Imaginary poster.

Last October I gave a “brown bag” talk (Wayback Machine link) over lunch in the History Department Library at the University of California, Riverside. I spoke for about 40 minutes and gave a wide overview of my project, using images and video clips to help illustrate my research. It was a great turnout of both professors and graduate students, and I received some terrific feedback that I was able to use for future talks.


IBM 705 EDPM Brochure cover.

At the top is the poster I created for the talk at UCR, and the images come from a variety of primary source materials. The inspiration for the color scheme comes the brochure cover just above, which is featured in the online exhibit, “Selling the Computer Revolution,” at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.

The brochure is for an IBM 705 EDPM (Electronic Data Processing Machine), a mainframe computer produced in the mid 1950s. Mainframes like the IBM 705 were powerful workhorses in the business world during the postwar era, handling payroll for thousands of employees. The brochure’s cover features a computer processing unit at the center, with punched cards and magnetic tape for data storage.

(Revised and republished April 6th, 2025)


BAM Colloquium this Friday

Please join us for the Year-End Colloquium for Graduate Students in "BAM." Designated Emphasis in Book, Archive, and Manuscript Studies – http://bam.ucr.edu (Wayback Machine link)

Friday, June 7, 2013. 10:00am to Noon

English Department Conference Room (HMNSS 2212)

Presentations by Steve Anderson, Cori Knight, and Heather Van Mouwerik

Display of printshop projects by Rebecca Addicks, Ann Garascia, Cori Knight, Jessica Roberson, and Anne Sullivan

This will also be a celebration of the new Mellon Workshop Grant awarded to the Material Cultures of the Book Working Group – http://bookhistory.ucr.edu (Wayback Machine link)

(Revised and republished April 23rd, 2025)


Presenting in Seattle

I just returned from a history conference in Seattle. It was the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association (Wayback Machine link). It was a great conference, well run, and very friendly.

I presented, "Processing the Suburbs: Gender, Technology, and Paperwork in Postwar America." At the heart of the paper is the need to provide a historical component to the Digital Humanities, and to better understand the historical foundations of modern digital culture.

(Revised and republished April 21st, 2025)


Remember The Conference