David Mertz, Ph.d.
[email protected]
413-824-9414
Education
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Department of Philosophy. Doctorate, September 1999. Dissertation under direction of Professor Ann Ferguson. Title of Dissertation: The Speculum and The Scalpel: The Politics of Impotent Representation and Nonrepresentational Terrorism.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Department of Philosophy. Master of Arts, May 1991.
University of Colorado at Boulder. Bachelor of Arts, December 1987. Major in Philosophy; Minor in Mathematics. Graduated with Honors: Honors Thesis directed by Professor Steve Fuller.
Publications
Note: Approximately 200 articles by me, about computer programming, computer science, algorithms, and related technical topics, that were published by IBM developerWorks, Intel, O'Reilly and similar publishers from 2000-2009 are indexed at http://gnosis.cx/publish/tech_index.html
"Cyborg" (entry), in International Encyclopedia of Communication. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405131995 (2008).
"Privacy Issues in an Electronic Voting Machine," in Katherine J. Strandburg and Daniela Stan Raicu, Privacy and Technologies of Identity: A Cross-Disciplinary Conversation. New York: Springer Science+Business Media. ISBN 0387260501. Coauthored with Arthur M. Keller, Joseph Lorenzo Hall, and Arnold Urken
"A Voting System with a Modular Voting Architecture and an Electronic Audit Trail," Threat Analyses for Voting System Categories: A Workshop on Rating Voting Methods (VSRW 06), John Kelsey and Poorvi Vora, eds., Washington DC, June 8-9, 2006. Coauthored with Arthur M. Keller, Alan Dechert, Karl Auerbach, David Mertz, and Amy Pearl
"Review of Steve Martinot's The Rule of Racialization, for Socialism and Democracy. 18(1), November 2004
Text Processing in Python. Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 0-321-11254-7 (2003).
"Compression and Streaming of XML Documents: The Entropy of Documents". Intel Developer Network, 2001.
"Optimizing xml2struct Processing for Embedded Applications". Intel Developer Network, 2001.
"The Net's New Enclosures," Review of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, for Radical Philosophy Review. 3(1), February 2000.
Review of Renata Salecl's (Per)Versions of Love and Hate, for Red Pepper. June, 1999.
"Women and AIDS: The Ethics of Exaggerated Harm (reprint)," Monash Bioethics Review 16(2), April 1997.
"Sex Wars: The New Left's AIDS-related Scientism," Rethinking Marxism 9(1), Spring 1996/1997.
"Women and AIDS: The Ethics of Exaggerated Harm," Bioethics 10(2), April, 1996. Primary Author. Coauthored with Mary Ann Sushinsky and Udo Schueklenk.
"Student Forum-Proposed Federal Gun-Control Amendment," Update on Law-Related Education 19(3), Fall 1995. American Bar Association Special Committee on Youth Education for Citizenship. Coauthored with Gayle Mertz.
"The Bioethics Tabloids: How professional ethicists have fallen for the myth of heterosexual AIDS," Health Care Analysis 3(1), 1995. Coauthored with Udo Schueklenk and Juliet Ricther.
Review of Slavoj Zizek's Tarrying with the Negative, and Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter, for Radical Philosophy Review of Books. Fall 1994.
Review of Cornel West's Keeping Faith. In Canadian Philosophical Reviews. 14(4) August 1994.
"The Racial Other in Nationalist Subjectivations: A Lacanian Analysis," Rethinking Marxism 8(2) Summer 1995.
"Cyborg Bodies from Haraway to Bataille: Two Ways to Lose a Self," Alterity, Excess, Community: Strategies of Critique VII conference proceedings; York University 1993. Paper delivered in April, 1992.
"Christliche Kirchen und AIDS," coauthored with Udo Schueklenk, in Die Lehren des Unheils. Edited by Dahl, Edgar. Carlsen Verlag: Hamburg 1993. ISBN 3551850127.
"Thelma and Louise, Saturation, and The Poverty of Causality," Technologies of the Family. Edited by Alison Brown and Dianne Rothleder. Article accepted, volume under review.
Peer Commentary on Eric Dietrich's "Computationalism," Social Epistemology 4(3), Fall 1990.
Review of Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless, Subject 2, 1989.
"Hattiangadi's Langue-ing and Ours," Social Epistemology 3(1), Winter 1989.
"Writing, after Bill Burroughs," The Decline 1, October 1988.
Papers
"Open Source Voting," presented at Open Source Convention (OSCON 2006). Portland Oregon, July 26, 2006.
"Two Lacans and the Immanent Negativity of Gender," delivered at the conference, Politics and Languages of Contemporary Marxism. December 7, 1996.
Commentary on Richard White's "The Future of Romantic Love," delivered at the Eastern Division American Philosophical Association Conference (Boston). Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love session. December, 1995.
"Cyborg Bodies Revisited: The Poststructuralist Remedy to Postmodernism," delivered at the conference, Marxism and the Politics of Anti-Essentialism. April 21, 1995.
"Sex Wars: The New Left's AIDS-related Scientism," presented with a panel I proposed entitled "AIDS and the Genealogy of New Modes of Social Regulation," at the Radical Philosophy Association First National Conference, Uniting for Social Change: Setting a Radical Agenda for the Next Decade. November 3-6, 1994.
"Transgression, Deviance and Knowledge," delivered for the Society of Women in Philosophy Eastern Division meeting. April 8, 1994.
"Three Economies: Hyper-real, Real, and Hidden," delivered for the Association for Economic and Social Analysis. October 5, 1993.
"Some Remarks on Racism and Nationalism," delivered at the Marxism in the New World Order Conference, sponsored by Rethinking Marxism, November 12-14, 1992.
"Sexual Epistemology: Everything You Always Pretended to Know about Sex," invited speaker at the University of Massachusetts Forum for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Concerns, September 28, 1992.
"Are There Any Lesbians in the Film Henry and June?", delivered at the Fifth Annual Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference, Rutgers University, November 1-3, 1991
"Epistemology," delivered at the 1989 Umass Philosophy Alternative Track Spring Dissertation Workshop, Commentary by Steve Fuller, Virginia Polytechnic University.
Awards
Puryear Fellowship, University of Massachusetts Philosophy Department, 1988-1989 Academic Year. This fellowship, which is awarded to three incoming Ph.D. candidates of exceptional merit per year, carried a stipend, tuition-waiver and the guarantee of three years subsequent departmental funding.
Graduate School Fellowship, University of Massachusetts, 1989-1990 Academic Year.
Academic Employment
Visiting Lecturer, North Adams State College - Summer 1994. Instructor for Contemporary Moral Issues. Topics included areas of sexual harassment and philosophy of biology/medicine. Responsible for all aspects of the course.
Instructor, University of Massachusetts - Winter Intersession, 1994. Instructor for Medical Ethics (catalog title); course title: AIDS: Ideology and Social Policy. Responsible for all aspects of the course.
Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Hartford, Hartford College for Women - Fall, 1993. Instructor for an introductory level course: Knowledge and Reality. Responsible for all aspects of preparation of curriculum, teaching, grading, tutoring a general-education course.
Teaching Associate, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts - Spring 1993. Instructor for upper division philosophy course: Philosophical Approaches to Politics. Responsible for all aspects of preparation of curriculum, teaching, grading, tutoring for a class of primarily undergraduate philosophy majors.
Research Assistant, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Massachusetts - Fall 1992. Responsible for various research tasks for IASH, under the supervision of Directors Robert Paul Wolff and Esther Terry: Primarily researching grant funding for several IASH projects, from both private and public funding sources.
Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts - Fall 1991. Grader for Introductory Logic, and responsible for tutoring students. Supervised by Professor Edward Gettier.
Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts - Fall 1991. Lead sections of Introductory Philosophy. Responsible for grading and instruction of approx. 90 students in three discussion sections. Supervised by Professor Bruce Aune.
Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts - Fall 1990. Lead sections of Introductory Philosophy. Responsible for grading and instruction of approx. 90 students in three discussion sections. Supervised by Professor Robert Paul Wolff.