Introduction to Redesigning Modernities I: Infrastructures, Ecologies, and Emancipatory Openings

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article provides an introduction to Redesigning Modernities I, the first of two special issues that grew out of the Redesigning Modernities project led by Penn State’s School of Global Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. The article explains the aims of the larger project, which seeks to encourage complementary and collaborative research agendas among faculty and graduate students, develop new curriculum and innovative course designs, and generate materials for inclusion in the university’s Open Educational Resources (OER) archive. This introduction also situates the first workshop, held in summer 2020, in the context of the pandemic’s early days as a way of explaining the recurring threads that connect the contributions to this issue: infrastructures, ecologies, and emancipatory openings. Finally, it presents the lineup of pieces in this issue: a dossier on Ecologies, Foodways, and Commodity Chains composed of four short pieces; an interview with the Brazilian graphic novelist Marcelo D’Salete along with a prefatory text drawing connections between his Angola Janga (2017) and the U.S. writer Gayl Jones’s Palmares (2020); and four full-length articles on diverse media (short videos/vlogs, a series of experimental novels, the ideas of a feminist philosopher and performer, and a cult classic film).