Melody Jue
Biographic Data
| ID | 190030 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melody Jue |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melody |
| FAMILY NAME | Jue |
| SIGNATURE | JUE M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Santa Barbara |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2814-7421 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Informatics of Domination
Ocean memory in abalone stories of the Anthropocene
In this “Practice Bridge” essay, I turn to literary fiction as a source for thinking about interconnected forms of ocean memory that are under chemical threat in the Anthropocene. Focusing on Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s short story duology Awabi (2018), or “abalone,” I examine two forms of ocean memory that concern the lifeways of abalone and the Japanese Ama divers who have traditionally harvested them. In both stories, a future of increased ocean acid…
Technoscientific imaging and the territorialization of ocean depth
Once the last unclaimed solid expanse on Earth, the ocean floor has become one of the most contested spaces in contemporary geopolitics. The data-imagery produced by technoscience serves as the ultimate tool for nations asserting sovereignty in this territorial race. This symposium gathers diverse perspectives on the ongoing expansionist drive on the seabed, drawing inspiration from Abissal ——a film-article featuring the Portuguese modern odyssey…
Recipes for the Future of Seaweed Aquaculture
Climate cuisine is about eating the future you want into being. In this article, I examine how seaweed recipes can be forms of climate fiction through the way that the reader is invited to participate in sustainable foodways. I examine several popularizations of seaweed aquaculture that imagine practices of eating and growing seaweeds. Their formal similarities center on participation: they include the direct address of the reader through the sec…
The Many Ecologies of AI
Nnedi Okorafor’s short story “Mother of Invention” (2018) brings into focus several key thematics in the scholarly studies of ecology and AI. Set in near-future Nigeria, Okorafor imagines a moment when a sophisticated smart home becomes a life-saving extension of an expectant mother’s immune system. The protagonist, Anwuli, goes into labor during a pollen storm caused by a GMO crop of peri grass, a nutritious substitute for rice whose pollination…
Saturation: An Elemental Politics
Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater
Dwelling with the alterity of the deep sea, my dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," considers how the ocean environment produces cognitively estranging conditions for conceptualizing media and media theory. Concepts in media theory have thus far exhibited what I call a "terrestrial bias," theorizing primarily dry technologies through a language whose metaphorics have developed through human lives lived on land, rather than …
Fluid Cuts: The Anti-visual Logic of Surfactants after Deepwater Horizon
While humanities studies of petroculture have focused on the substance of oil, this article considers the role that surfactants play in the remediation of oil spills as forms of anti-visual media. Through tracing the usage of surfactants like Corexit and Dawn, used to disperse oil and clean oiled wildlife during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I develop a theory of the "fluid cut." Whereas photography theory tends to think of the "cut" as the cl…
Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin
Reviewed by: Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin Melody Jue (bio) Seb Franklin, Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015, 240 pp. $26.00 cloth. In Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic, Seb Franklin argues that computer technologies not only saturate our daily lives, but that "digitality" fundamentally shapes the ways that we see ourselves and conceptualize the world. Computer technologies provide a …
Submerging Kittler
This article imaginatively submerges the media theory of German scholar Friedrich Kittler into the ocean in order to show how the ocean changes how one might theorize computational media. Beginning with a description of XL Catlin Seaview Survey's oceanic 'Street View', it plunges into several examples from Kittler's own work that engage sound and the sea. I argue that natural media are always already co-present with digital media; and we have onl…
From the Goddess Ganga to a Teacup: On Amitav Ghosh’s Novel The Hungry Tide
Intimate Objectivity: On Nnedi Okorafor's Oceanic Afrofuturism
This article presents a reading of Nnedi Okorafor's science fiction novel/petrofiction Lagoon (2016) in order to develop a theory of "intimate objectivity" in which marine biology calmly confronts the fantastic. Drawing on traditions in feminist science studies, postcolonial theory, Afrofuturism, and the ocean humanities, I show how Lagoon 's intimate objectivity derives from its dual characterization of visiting aliens as coral reefs and Mami Wa…
The marvelous clouds: Towards an elemental theory of media
In his lyrical Water and dreams: On the material imagination of matter (1942), Gaston Bachelard wrote that, “A material element must provide its own substance, its own rules and poetics” (p. 3). Al
Proteus and the Digital: Scalar Transformations of Seawater’s Materiality in Ocean Animations
This article analyzes the discursive and conceptual equation of the ocean and the database. Considering how the chemical and vital properties of seawater serve to transform what is ‘stored’, the language of flow and fluidity is inadequate to describe what seawater actually does to things – it encrusts them, rusts them, adheres burgeoning life-forms to them. Seawater asks us to rethink terrestrial notions of the archive or database as informed by …
Vampire Squid Media
October 01 2014 Vampire Squid Media Melody Jue Melody Jue Melody Jue is completing her dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University. Her work has previously appeared in Animations: An Interdisciplinary Journal and Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article …
Proteus and the Digital: Scalar Transformations of Seawater’s Materiality in Ocean Animations
This article analyzes the discursive and conceptual equation of the ocean and the database. Considering how the chemical and vital properties of seawater serve to transform what is ‘stored’, the language of flow and fluidity is inadequate to describe what seawater actually does to things – it encrusts them, rusts them, adheres burgeoning life-forms to them. Seawater asks us to rethink terrestrial notions of the archive or database as informed by …
Vampire Squid Media
October 01 2014 Vampire Squid Media Melody Jue Melody Jue Melody Jue is completing her dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University. Her work has previously appeared in Animations: An Interdisciplinary Journal and Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article …
Submerging Kittler
This article imaginatively submerges the media theory of German scholar Friedrich Kittler into the ocean in order to show how the ocean changes how one might theorize computational media. Beginning with a description of XL Catlin Seaview Survey's oceanic 'Street View', it plunges into several examples from Kittler's own work that engage sound and the sea. I argue that natural media are always already co-present with digital media; and we have onl…
Technoscientific imaging and the territorialization of ocean depth
Once the last unclaimed solid expanse on Earth, the ocean floor has become one of the most contested spaces in contemporary geopolitics. The data-imagery produced by technoscience serves as the ultimate tool for nations asserting sovereignty in this territorial race. This symposium gathers diverse perspectives on the ongoing expansionist drive on the seabed, drawing inspiration from Abissal ——a film-article featuring the Portuguese modern odyssey…
Fluid Cuts: The Anti-visual Logic of Surfactants after Deepwater Horizon
While humanities studies of petroculture have focused on the substance of oil, this article considers the role that surfactants play in the remediation of oil spills as forms of anti-visual media. Through tracing the usage of surfactants like Corexit and Dawn, used to disperse oil and clean oiled wildlife during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I develop a theory of the "fluid cut." Whereas photography theory tends to think of the "cut" as the cl…
Intimate Objectivity: On Nnedi Okorafor's Oceanic Afrofuturism
This article presents a reading of Nnedi Okorafor's science fiction novel/petrofiction Lagoon (2016) in order to develop a theory of "intimate objectivity" in which marine biology calmly confronts the fantastic. Drawing on traditions in feminist science studies, postcolonial theory, Afrofuturism, and the ocean humanities, I show how Lagoon 's intimate objectivity derives from its dual characterization of visiting aliens as coral reefs and Mami Wa…
Proteus and the Digital: Scalar Transformations of Seawater’s Materiality in Ocean Animations
This article analyzes the discursive and conceptual equation of the ocean and the database. Considering how the chemical and vital properties of seawater serve to transform what is ‘stored’, the language of flow and fluidity is inadequate to describe what seawater actually does to things – it encrusts them, rusts them, adheres burgeoning life-forms to them. Seawater asks us to rethink terrestrial notions of the archive or database as informed by …
Vampire Squid Media
October 01 2014 Vampire Squid Media Melody Jue Melody Jue Melody Jue is completing her dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University. Her work has previously appeared in Animations: An Interdisciplinary Journal and Green Planets: Ecology and Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article …
The marvelous clouds: Towards an elemental theory of media
In his lyrical Water and dreams: On the material imagination of matter (1942), Gaston Bachelard wrote that, “A material element must provide its own substance, its own rules and poetics” (p. 3). Al
From the Goddess Ganga to a Teacup: On Amitav Ghosh’s Novel The Hungry Tide
Intimate Objectivity: On Nnedi Okorafor's Oceanic Afrofuturism
This article presents a reading of Nnedi Okorafor's science fiction novel/petrofiction Lagoon (2016) in order to develop a theory of "intimate objectivity" in which marine biology calmly confronts the fantastic. Drawing on traditions in feminist science studies, postcolonial theory, Afrofuturism, and the ocean humanities, I show how Lagoon 's intimate objectivity derives from its dual characterization of visiting aliens as coral reefs and Mami Wa…
Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin
Reviewed by: Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic by Seb Franklin Melody Jue (bio) Seb Franklin, Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015, 240 pp. $26.00 cloth. In Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic, Seb Franklin argues that computer technologies not only saturate our daily lives, but that "digitality" fundamentally shapes the ways that we see ourselves and conceptualize the world. Computer technologies provide a …
Submerging Kittler
This article imaginatively submerges the media theory of German scholar Friedrich Kittler into the ocean in order to show how the ocean changes how one might theorize computational media. Beginning with a description of XL Catlin Seaview Survey's oceanic 'Street View', it plunges into several examples from Kittler's own work that engage sound and the sea. I argue that natural media are always already co-present with digital media; and we have onl…
Fluid Cuts: The Anti-visual Logic of Surfactants after Deepwater Horizon
While humanities studies of petroculture have focused on the substance of oil, this article considers the role that surfactants play in the remediation of oil spills as forms of anti-visual media. Through tracing the usage of surfactants like Corexit and Dawn, used to disperse oil and clean oiled wildlife during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, I develop a theory of the "fluid cut." Whereas photography theory tends to think of the "cut" as the cl…
Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater
Dwelling with the alterity of the deep sea, my dissertation, "Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater," considers how the ocean environment produces cognitively estranging conditions for conceptualizing media and media theory. Concepts in media theory have thus far exhibited what I call a "terrestrial bias," theorizing primarily dry technologies through a language whose metaphorics have developed through human lives lived on land, rather than …
Saturation: An Elemental Politics
The Many Ecologies of AI
Nnedi Okorafor’s short story “Mother of Invention” (2018) brings into focus several key thematics in the scholarly studies of ecology and AI. Set in near-future Nigeria, Okorafor imagines a moment when a sophisticated smart home becomes a life-saving extension of an expectant mother’s immune system. The protagonist, Anwuli, goes into labor during a pollen storm caused by a GMO crop of peri grass, a nutritious substitute for rice whose pollination…
Recipes for the Future of Seaweed Aquaculture
Climate cuisine is about eating the future you want into being. In this article, I examine how seaweed recipes can be forms of climate fiction through the way that the reader is invited to participate in sustainable foodways. I examine several popularizations of seaweed aquaculture that imagine practices of eating and growing seaweeds. Their formal similarities center on participation: they include the direct address of the reader through the sec…
Informatics of Domination
Ocean memory in abalone stories of the Anthropocene
In this “Practice Bridge” essay, I turn to literary fiction as a source for thinking about interconnected forms of ocean memory that are under chemical threat in the Anthropocene. Focusing on Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s short story duology Awabi (2018), or “abalone,” I examine two forms of ocean memory that concern the lifeways of abalone and the Japanese Ama divers who have traditionally harvested them. In both stories, a future of increased ocean acid…
Technoscientific imaging and the territorialization of ocean depth
Once the last unclaimed solid expanse on Earth, the ocean floor has become one of the most contested spaces in contemporary geopolitics. The data-imagery produced by technoscience serves as the ultimate tool for nations asserting sovereignty in this territorial race. This symposium gathers diverse perspectives on the ongoing expansionist drive on the seabed, drawing inspiration from Abissal ——a film-article featuring the Portuguese modern odyssey…
Computer Science (8 works) · Geology (7 works) · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature (5 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (5 works) · Oceanography (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Art (4 works) · Cybernetics and Technology in Society (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works)