What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.
- David Foster Wallace

Meaghan Skahan is a third year graduate student from the Comparative Literature program at UCSB. Her masters thesis, of 2008, examined the significance of the flâneur figure in the poetry of OULIPO. Her general fields are French, Spanish, and English, with an emphasis on spatial studies and postmodern geography in particular. Her dissertation, tentatively entitled "Tactics at Work: Subversive Strategies in Corporate Spaces" will examine the variable strategies in place in the presence and representation of corporations in film, blog/new media, and literature post 1973. The different types of media will be considered as distinct spaces in and of themselves, and certain texts that have already been incorporated (but in no way represent a definitive list) are DFW's The Broom of the System and The Pale King, Scarlett Thomas's PopCo, and a range of 'blockbuster' films from the seventies through now including Office Space, Blade Runner, and Avatar. Meaghan is interested in the mapping of real and fictional spaces/places as both an exploratory and pedagogical tool. She grew up in a small town on the ocean in Maine, and graduated from Pomona College with a double BA in French and Spanish. Outside of her academic life, Meaghan is an avid swimmer and runner, and cooks up a storm every night except for when there are deadlines to make.