Well, I've just gotten through reading everyone's bio's and am fascinated by the wide range of pen collectors/fanatics/etc...out there. I've been lurking much recently (i.e., checking pentrace daily for about a month now) and suppose that posting my bio is as good a way as any to 'officially' join the pentrace community. I've joined the snail mail group, and received a wonderfully inviting letter of introduction from Dave Mason, but have no idea how to access the addresses of other snail mailers--this is most likely due to the fact that i can rarely get a computer to do more than word process, which actually provides somewhat of a segue into my bio, that is to say that my life requires that i do little more with a computer than word process...this is getting a bit confusing. anyways, I digress...
my name is Jason Chang, age 23, penfanaticism severe (though recently toned down) and i am currently a graduate student at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor pursuing a PhD in American Studies (though at U.M. we've renamed the 'discipline' American Culture). I'm in my second year, and have been displaced from my relatively sunny residence in Berkeley, California by the lure of pursuing a life of the mind in what has proven to be an incredibly cold part of the country. My research focuses on post-1945 U.S. history, with particular attention paid to the construction of "Asianness" in popular American discourse throughout the period of the Cold War. I'm interested in reading popular texts, mostly film and literature, as sites where the construction of a fictive "Asianness" is simultaneously used to negatively racialize Asian Americans, while also being a site where Asian American identity is constantly being redefined and resignified in relation to a dominant american identity that is itself unstable, incoherent, and a theoretical impossibility. in other words, my work tries to imagine alternative political, social, cultural, and economic alignments that see beyond those that we assume to be 'natural,' so that the world can be a truly happier, freer, and overall more equitable place for all life. I did my undergraduate work at the University of California Santa Cruz, tucked away in the redwood forest on the California coast 80 miles south of the San Francisco Bay Area.
On pens...I've been into pens for as long as i can remember, whether it was hording cheap diposable ball point pens, accumulating Parker Jotters and vectors as a junior high and high school student, writing with a Tombow zoom roller ball and Lamy Safari fountain pen through college, or writing with a hodge podge of different fountain pens in graduate school, i've done it and will continue doing it. the fanaticism didn't begin until fairly recently. My grandmother passed away in October, and she was a famous Taiwanese novelist and historian. I received a bit of money as an informal inheritance, and decided that as a tribute to her i would spend it on a nice fountain pen (something that until then i had been unable--or at least unwilling--to afford). after much returning i decided to keep my green Stipula Saturno with a medium nib which writes like a dream. it is my home pen, and i use it to take notes, and will use it for snail mail if i ever access those addresses!! A few months and several pen purchases (modern and vintage) later, I've realized that my meager salary as a graduate student instructor is not tailored to this sort of habit, and have moved into the realm of acquiring inks. luckily, I have a bottle of Penman Sapphire from before I was a fanatic (wish I had more), and about ten other bottles all different colors. In my spare time, which is never, I like to read. but that's ok since that's what I'm paid, trained, and capable of doing. I don't get to spend too much time reading fiction--mostly just critical theory and history. The highlight of my days is always taking a brief break from reading to write down a few things--notes, letters, spurts of prose, with one of my fountain pens. with that, I officially enter the pentrace community. I look forward tosnail mailing with as many of you as possible...
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