User:Mediahash/Davis Schneiderman

Davis Schneiderman (born 1974) is an American innovative writer and academic.

Biography:
Davis Schneiderman earned a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University (1996), an M.A. (1998) and Ph.D. (2001) from Binghamton University. Since 2001, he has been a professor of English at Lake Forest College north of Chicago, receiving tenure in 2006.

At Lake Forest, Schneiderman is Chair of the American Studies Program. He co-directs the Lake Forest Literary Festival, the On the Run lecture series, and was recently named Director of the Lake Forest College Press / &NOW Books. He is a national board member of the &NOW organization, which holds a biennial conference dedicated to innovative art and writing, and also Director of the NEH-funded Virtual Burnham Initiative, a project to create 3-D models of the 1909 Plan of Chicago. Schneiderman is a creative writer who has garnered attention for his sometimes-aggressive prose style as well as for his literary criticism on innovative writing and writers, particularly his criticism on William S. Burroughs. American Book Review calls calls Schneiderman’s novel Multifesto: A Henri d’Mescan Reader, “a stunningly original work deserving of careful, and multiple, readings by anybody interested in where American literature is headed."

In 2009, Schneiderman’s work will appear in Naked Lunch@50: Anniversary Essays, edited by Oliver Harris and Ian MacFadyen, to be published by Southern Illinois University Press, along with the work of Dj Spooky, Barry Miles, and Philip Taaffe. In a review of 2004’s Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization in Postmodern Culture, David Banash writes that Schneiderman,

...suggests that Burroughs's use of space, especially in his work with sound recording, "finds connection with the political struggles characterizing the emerging global economic order, where 'all nature has become capital, or at least has become subject to capital.’" Just as globalization has changed what space means, so Burroughs provides new ways to think about that space through his use of media technologies.

Schneiderman’s creative work is marked by a number of literary “stunts” including the sandpaper cover of his 2006 work Multifesto, so that the book might damage those it is placed against. In 2008, Schneiderman made two videos for YouTube for a "Deconstructing Books" project. In one, he cuts Stephen Colbert’s book I am America (and So Can You) in half with a handsaw, and in the second, he boils several novels in order to make noodles with writers Raymond Federman and Lidia Yuknavitch. Federman’s 1971 novel Double or Nothing is centered around a conceit of noodles.

Additionally, Schneiderman is known for his collaborative works, including the novel Abecedarium, written with Carlos Hernandez, and had recently produced a series of short works with a variety of experimental writers including Lance Olsen, Mark Spitzer, and Stacey Levine.

Novels:

 * DIS, Or, in the Shadow of the Dome of Pleasure. (Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox Books, 2008.)
 * Abecedarium. [w/ Carlos Hernandez] (Portland, OR: Chiasmus Press, 2007).
 * Multifesto: A Henri d’Mescan Reader. (New York: Spuyten Duyvil Press. Limited-edition art book, 2006);

Edited Collections:

 * Retaking the Universe: William S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization. Eds. Davis Schneiderman and Philip Walsh. (London: Pluto Press, 2004).
 * The Exquisite Corpse: Collaboration, Play, and the World’s Most Epistemological Parlor Game. Eds. Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, Davis Schneiderman, and Tom Denlinger. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming).

Audiocollage:

 * Memorials to Future Catastrophes (with Don Meyer and Tom Denlinger). (Kansas City, MO: Jaded Ibis Productions, 2008).

E-Books:

 * The City of Omni+Baal, or, Nature is an Infinite Dodecahedron Whose Centre is Everywhere and Whose Circumference is Nowhere. (Buffalo, NY: BlazeVox Books, 2004)