31 October 2019

Prerana Patel
Statement on Proposed Research Area, Ph.D. (English)
IIT Guwahati

I would like to apply to the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Guwahati for their
Ph.D. program commencing January 2020.

I would like to work on the digital and multimedia reception of Gertrude Stein’s works. I want to
work on, one, works of art that have spawned from Stein’s works, that use digital and technological
mediums; and two, Stein’s works that are read using digital tools, such as data mining and frequent
pattern recognition. Distant reading/listening and mining Stein’s texts for aural patterns make Stein’s
texts meaningful and readable. Read this way, Stein is no longer illegible or a woman author writing
gibberish. It is in this recreation of the Stein persona made possible by digital media and tools that I
am interested in.

Experimental theatre groups, performance and sound artists ​use technology innovatively when
reimagining Stein’s works- from creating virtual meta/characters, to increasing options for audience
interface and interaction, to foregrounding cables and computer screens on stage to show how much
of human life in the present day is regulated by processes that often go unnoticed and unseen. The
Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre puts its mission statement in the following words “..(it) aims to
assist the development of new artists and audiences for.. theatre”. This coincides with my working
hypotheses to study Stein reception. The hypothesis- based on Felix Guattari’s theorization of the
Post-Media condition- is that the use of mediums of mass domination, such as digital media and
technology for artistic and creative purposes is essentially subversive, resisting the homogenization
of the masses, creating individual personalities instead. The creation of new individualities for
everyone- from the artist to the viewer- brings together my interest in the rehashing of the Stein
persona through the digitalization of her works, and how digitalization makes her works permeable,
open, and interactive. It allows the readers to enter the space her works creates as agential beings, as
co-creators. I am interested in the question this asks about agency, authorship, originality, genius and
copyrights. In studying Stein reception then, I will be invested in thinking about ownership,
originality and artifice in digitized art; about co-creative, collaborative art practices and the
hierarchies therewith, an about mass and individual subjectivities; about the transience and
permanence of art; and most importantly of what constitutes literature and poetry in a Post-Internet,
Post-Media era.

For my reading on Stein reception culture, ​I read Solveig Daugaard’s dissertation on Stein media
ecologies and reception from the time of Stein’s death to the present. Daugaard falls short of fully
exploring the artistic reception of Stein that use digital media, and my research begins there. Felix
Guattari’s theorization on the Post-Media condition and the Three Ecologies provide a substantial
theoretical framework for my research. Apart from that my readings will draw from the scholarship
in the digital humanities and its intersections with studies in race, gender, postcolonial theory and
ecocriticism.

My research lies in the area of digital humanities and I hope it would be of interest to Prof.
Debapriya Basu. ​I have worked on Stein in my M.A. program; apart from that I have worked on
writings of Jeanette Winterson, Jean Rhys, Stephen Chbosky, Mahasweta Devi, Namdeo Dhasal and
Arun Kolatkar for presentations at seminars during my B.A. and M.A. years; close reading their
writing from a modernist/postmodernist lens, informing my reading with postcolonial, gender and
psychoanalytic theory.

I look forward to the rigour entailed in an intensive P.hD. program, as these years will be formative
to my academic career. I am prepared for an involved commitment to my research at IIT-Guwahati
and I look forward to hearing from you.