PhD Student, Visual and Cultural Studies
tracy.stuber@rochester.edu
Education: BA, Binghamton University, Art History and German Studies, 2011
Biography: Tracy Stuber is a fifth-year Ph.D student in the Visual and Cultural Studies program and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Digital Humanities.
Her graduate work on modern and contemporary photography examines the locus of activities, attitudes, and expectations at the crux of the analog/digital debate. Focusing particularly on the 1970s, she examines the material conditions of photographic technology and the cultural landscape with which it interacts. Her dissertation explores how photographers in the 1970s responded to artistic uses of the medium in the previous decade by placing themselves in the American landscape.
Recent projects include “Postcards from Uncommon Places,” a paper presentation at the 2016 ACLA Annual Meeting; “Not an Image But a Breakdown: Anne Collier and the Rephotographic Survey Project,” a paper presentation at Media Materiality: Sixth International Conference on the Image, and a talk on the history of photographic appropriation as part of “Found, Shared, Liked,” a symposium at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY.
Research Reports
Prime Time: Diving Into TV Guide
In its first semester, Televisual Time encountered some of problems that face many DH projects, specifically around securing a data set; after all, the time-sensitivity of TV Guide epitomizes the ephemerality of the weekly magazine. Case in point: we procured the first few decades on microfilm, but they were reproduced at such a small scale—up to 4 pages vertically per 35mm reel—that they were difficult for us to read, let alone a computer…. more »
Recap: Psychasthenia 2
The term “psychasthenia” originated in turn-of-the-century psychology as a counterpart to hysteria, broadly recognizable in more contemporary discourse as introversion and extroversion, respectively. Where hysterics seemed overly sensitive to and affected by their experiences, magnifying their presence in the process, psychasthenics appeared to disappear into their surroundings, choosing to withdraw rather than react…. more »