Hello! My name is Alijan and I’m a scholar of Book History, Media Studies, and Med-Ren Incunable. My name is pronounced Ah-Lee-John or /ɑ·li·dʒɑn/ if you prefer phonemic transcription. My pronouns are he/him/his.
I am a PhD Student at New York University. My research unites the fields of Book History and Media Studies through the lens of information infrastructure. I study the English Incunabula period (1450-1500), centered on the printer William Caxton, as a pivotal moment of media shift to elucidate born-digital media. Accordingly, I apply my study of Med-Ren information infrastructure to identify and complicate continuities in “new” media. My research questions revolve around format theory and the residual, overlapping social economies of communication as agency shifts within them
More broadly, I’m interested in patterns of communication and materiality in the digital sphere. To elaborate, I work with format theory to understand artifacts of digital communication like emoji, slide shows, online writing platforms, and all the materials and technologies that allow these things to happen.
I tend to appropriate existing skillsets in literary studies and apply them to my analysis of digital communication. For example, I’m a huge fan of using methods of textual criticism, such as curating an understanding of the materiality of textual forms, to better understand the tools and contents of digital communication. To supplement my approach I also use analytic programs like Stylo and Gephi, as well as other tools like Google ngrams or Microsoft Excel, to collect data to better understand whatever I’m working on.
I’m always happy to chat about research, clothes, video games, or life in general! Please feel free to reach out to me on any of my socials or email me at alijan@nyu.edu
Keywords: Book History, Media Studies, New Media, Medieval-Renaissance, Incunable, Early Print, Digital Humanities, Information Infrastructure