Food For Thought | Tess McNulty and Alex Shakar

Food for Thought: A series of public events featuring research and creative projects by recent CAS Associates and Fellows.

We are delighted to showcase the work of some of our most productive and creative faculty in this informal series of intellectually and spiritually invigorating presentations. You are invited to drop in when you can to learn about the exciting projects undertaken by our faculty.

11:00am-11:45am: Tess McNulty, CAS Fellow 2025-26, English

Content Culture: The Forms of the Viral Era

For almost two decades, we’ve been living in the era of viral content, from listicles to AI slop. But while much academic work has addressed this new media as information (conveying facts) or communication (coalescing communities), far less has considered its operations as imaginative, aestheticized entertainment. In this talk, Professor McNulty presents work from a book project that provides the first overarching cultural history of viral content from an aesthetic perspective, defining what she calls this new media's five major genres and interpreting the significance of their ubiquity.

Noon-12:45pm: Alex Shakar, CAS Associate 2019-20, English

Play the Void, a novel

A mutant mushroom virus has jumped tracks to spark a human pandemic. A fateful presidential election looms. And the legendary singer Vic Vibes has been found dead. Now, an uncanny impersonator, Vic Voids, leads a chameleonic music tour across the land. Its mission: “unite the vibes” by playing to all sides of an increasingly violent culture war and topping one musical chart after another. But who’s behind the tour and to what ends? Why is a trove of Vic’s secrets pouring out: a tale shadowed by a crime, a love, and a nation’s troubled history? And who—or what—is Voids? In this talk, Professor Shakar will read from and discuss his forthcoming novel.