Amy Pierce
Amy Pierce, an interdisciplinary artist, born in Yonkers, New York, integrates performance, installation, textile, sound, photography, videography, text, and audience engagement into her creative practice. Pierce’s research efforts span art, anthropology, sociology, psychology, history and women’s studies, as she explores the elasticity of what is perceived as “normal” behavior within the temporary boundaries created by ritual activities. Pierce has exhibited photography throughout the New York area, including the Brooklyn Museum and New York City's Museum of Sex. Her short film Maypole, was included in the Independent Feature Project’s, Buzzcuts short film screening series, in New York City. Recently, Pierce created and performed 12 Steps to Planning the Perfect Wedding as part of the Bad Feminists Readings, in conjunction with New York City's Fringe Festival. Pierce received a BFA in studio art from the University of Connecticut. She just completed her MFA in Intermedia and is currently a candidate for an Interdisciplinary PhD at the University of Maine.
Anne Collins Goodyear (Co-director, Bowdoin Art Museum) is former curator at the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. As president of the College Art Association she presided over its first THATCamp in 2013.
Ari Epstein (Terrascope, Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT) devises innovative settings for project-based, team-oriented education, from youth radio to exhibition design.
Nicole Starosielski (Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU) focuses on the global distribution of digital media, most recently on how transoceanic cables from telegraph to Internet have affected the geopolitics of islands and coasts. Her new media project Surfacing inspired the conference's title.
Andrew Stauffer (Department of English, University of Virginia) is renowned as a digital historian of 19th-century literature and for his leadership of NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship).
