Featured Scholar: December 2023

Dr. Aaron Braver (Associate Professor, English)

What are you watching/streaming?

I've been watching a lot of a Youtube channel called Technology Connections, which takes a deep dive into how many types of technology work (everything from toasters to LaserDisc players).  It also has some great videos on the history of digital and analog audio and video recordings and playback.

What games are you playing?

I really enjoy crosswords and (perhaps predictably) language-related games.  The New York Times has a new game called Connections where you group words based on a common theme.

What are you listening to?

I've been listening to the new album from The Lemon Twigs, Everything Harmony.  The song “In My Head” is a personal favorite.

What are you reading?

I just finished reading the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie, and am starting the Interdependency trilogy by John Scalzi.  Both are sci-fi series with a heavy emphasis on world-building and politics.

What are you writing/thinking about?

I'm preparing for my fieldwork trip to South Africa, where I'll look at the clicks of the Xhosa language, along with an interesting phenomenon in Afrikaans.  For both of these projects, I'll be using a new tool I recently acquired (with funds from the Humanities Center's Alumni College fellowship), called an electroglottograph (EGG).  EGG involves placing two electrodes on the neck, which measure the electrical activity created by vocal cord movement.  This allows us to get a picture of what's happening in the larynx without invasive procedures like laryngoscopy (a fiber optic camera in the throat).