Mark Walters

Education

PhD Student (2008 Cohort): Communication & Science Studies, UCSD.       La Jolla, CA
MLIS, 2005: Library & Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh.        Pittsburgh, PA
MA, 2003: English/Literary & Cultural Studies, Carnegie Mellon University.            Pittsburgh, PA
BA, 2001: Comparative History of Ideas, University of Washington.                        Seattle, WA

UCSD Professional History:

Fall, 2008: Student Reader,
COSF 180:The Political Economy of Mass Media; Prof. Andrew Feldman

Pre-UCSD Professional History:
(Link to a more thorough CV here…)

July, 2005-June, 2008: Librarian & Assistant Professor,
Ensor Learning Resource Center, Georgetown College. Georgetown, KY
Summer, 2003: Adjunct Professor,
Cultural Studies Department, University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Lowell, MA
2003-2005: Tutor & Mentor,
Carnegie Mellon Role Models Program. Pittsburgh, PA
2002-2005: Stock Clerk & Cashier,
Carnegie Mellon University Bookstore. Pittsburgh, PA

My Interests:
I am interested in the cultural history of intellectual property, broadly defined. The central question I ask is this: How can our culture best foster and protect creativity and innovation in the sciences, arts and humanities—that is, all those endeavors which help each of us to become more fully and nobly human?
I chose the discipline of communications because I believe that new technologies, and the communities that are being fostered by them, will play a central role in our generation’s struggle to own and access our own cultural heritage. It is a heritage that is being increasingly denied to us.
Before coming to UCSD, I worked for three years as a professional librarian at Georgetown College—a small, Baptist-affiliated liberal arts college just north of Lexington, KY. In that job, I was primarily responsible for cataloging books and other print materials, and for helping students with library research. I enjoy working with students, and still regularly assist undergraduates with planning, researching and writing papers. Feel free to contact me!
I am also a lifelong choral musician—I began singing with the Northwest Boychoir in Seattle in 1986, at the age of seven. Since then, I have sung with choirs at the University of Washington and the University of Pittsburgh, community choirs in Spokane, Pittsburgh, and Lexington, KY, as well as a number of opera companies throughout the country. Currently, I sing baritone with the La Jolla Symphony Chorus.

Works in Progress::
I am currently revising three seminar papers and one novel, with an eye toward future publication:

“Tears in the Waves: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, the Cantucum Calamitatis Maritiamae, and the Aestheticization of Cultural Trauma”

Mäntyjärvi’s Canticum, an eight-part, a capella choral piece, was written in the aftermath of the Estonia ferry disaster of 2004. Mäntyjärvi splices Biblical texts and texts drawn from news reports of the event; his music mimics the sounds of foghorns and bells, screams and shearing metal, and funerary bagpipes. My paper addresses how Mäntyjärvi has used these musical and literary techniques to create a manifold, powerful cultural artifact that serves as a memorial to those who passed, and a source of hope to those who still grieve.

“Si(ng/gn)ing the Subject: Jacques Attali’s Noise and the History (and Future) of the Musical Commodity”

Drawing primarily from Attali’s masterwork—Noise: The Political Economy of Music—my paper attempts to trace the cultural use and economy of music in the Western tradition through four distinct historical periods, each tied to a unique technology of musical production and dissemination: Oral (prehistory- ca. 1500), Print (ca. 1500-1900), Recorded (ca. 1900-2000) and P2P (ca. 2000-). My goal is to provide a better understanding of the positioning of music as a commodity in each of these periods, in order to better understand the position of music vis-à-vis state and corporate regulation in the present day.

“Scrap’n’Art: West’s Day of the Locust, the Frankenstein Story in Print and Film, and Critiques of the Culture Industry from the Inside”

In this paper, I compare Nathanael West’s novella—The Day of the Locust—with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and James Whale’s 1931 film version of the Frankenstein story. Drawing from Frankfurt School critics, I show how West’s work can be understood as a vitrolic and very personal critique of the business of 1930’s Hollywood, written by someone who was, at the time, working as a Hollywood screenwriter.

Lights Out: Growing Up During World War II

This is a children’s novel I have co-authored with my mother, Margaret Walters. The novel is a fictionalized autobiography of my mother’s experiences as a young girl in Fresno, from late 1941 through late 1945. The 214-page manuscript is now complete; we are in the process of locating an agent or publisher who will take on the work.