Roger Whitson

  1. Associate Professor
Email Addressroger.whitson@wsu.edu
LocationAvery 331
Phone509-335-6420

Biography

Roger Whitson (PhD, University of Florida, 2008) teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in nineteenth-century literature, science, and media. He is the author of two books: William Blake and the Digital Humanities: Collaboration, Participation, and Social Media (coauthored with Jason Whittaker, Routledge, 2012) and Steampunk and Nineteenth-Century Digital Humanities: Literary Retrofuturisms, Media Archaeologies, Alternate Histories (Routledge, 2017). His publications include articles on William Blake, steampunk, digital humanities, Charles Babbage, Critical Making, and science fiction published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Victorian Studies, European Romantic Review, Essays in Romanticism, and Vala: A Journal of the Blake Society.

Selected Publications

  • “William Blake and the Time-Criticality of 1804: A Media Archaeology of Milton: A Poem.” Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1800s, edited by Andrew Stauffer, Cambridge UP, forthcoming.
  • “William Blake and the Digital Humanities (Patch 2.02.4).” The Routledge Companion to William Blake, edited by Kathryn Freeman, Mark Crosby, and Jennifer Davis Michael, Routledge, forthcoming.
  • “Algorhythmics and Media Concepts: Ada Lovelace’s Notes to ‘Sketch of the Analytical Engine.’” Victorian Studies, vol. 67, no. 3, 2025.
  • “Towards an Archaeology of Seeing William Blake by Technical Means: A Review Essay of Joseph Viscomi’s William Blake’s Printed Paintings.” European Romantic Review, vol. 35, no. 3, 2024.
  • “Reassembling Visionary Physics: Donald Ault, Bruno Latour, and William Blake’s Mathematical Scenographies.” Essays in Romanticism, vol. 31, no. 1, 2024.
  • “Time Critique and the Textures of Alternate History: William Gibson’s Media Archaeology in The Difference Engine and The Peripheral.” Periodizing the Future: William Gibson, Genre, and Literary History, edited by Mitch Murray and Mathaias Nilges, U of Iowa Press, 2020.

Graduate Supervision Interests

  • Media Studies (history, computational methods, archives, theory)
  • Nineteenth-century British literature (William Blake, visionary and mystical works, cultural and historical studies)
  • Science Fiction (steampunk, utopia/dystopia, weird fiction, time travel)
  • Literature pedagogy (politics of the discipline, adjuncts, digital approaches)
  • Multimodal dissertations (made-objects, digital archives, databases, multimedia text)