Karen Head is the author of Disrupt This! MOOCs and the Promises of Technology (UP New England, 2017).
From UPNE: “In this smart and incisive work, Karen J. Head describes her experience teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) and the attendant pressure on professors, especially those in the humanities, to embrace new technologies in the STEM era. And yet, as she argues, MOOCs are just the latest example of the near-religious faith that some universities have in the promise of technological advances. As a teacher of rhetoric, Head is well versed at sniffing out the sophistry embedded in the tech jargon increasingly rife in the academy. Disrupt This! is a broader-based critique of the promises of technological “disruption” and the impact of Silicon Valley thinking on an unsuspecting, ill-prepared, and often gullible university community grasping for relevance, while remaining in thrall to the technologists.”
Karen Head is also the author of Lost on Purpose (Iris Press, 2019), Sassing (WordTech Press, 2009), My Paris Year (All Nations Press, 2009) and Shadow Boxes (All Nations Press, 2003). She also co-authored the anthology, On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year (Poetry Atlanta Press, 2014). Her poetry appears in a number of national and international journals and anthologies.
As a artist, and as a scholar of contemporary American Poetry, she has begun to explore the connections between traditional text-based poetry and digitally-enhanced poetry, an exploration that involves her in a number of creative projects being conducted in the Wesley Center for New Media at Georgia Tech. Her first digital poetry project, Poetic Rub, was featured at the E-Poetry 2007 Festival in Paris.
Her most recent digital project was a collaborative exquisite corpse poem created via Twitter while she stood atop the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Antony Gormley's One and Other Project; her poetry project, "Monumental" was detailed in a TIME online mini-documentary. Her poem "Three Moments" was the winner of the 2011 Oxford International Women's Festival Poetry Prize.
She has held writing residencies at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts-France, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts.
She is the editor of the international, award-winning, poetry journal, Atlanta Review. She serves as Secretary on the Poetry Atlanta Board.
Books
Disrupt This! MOOCs and the Promises of Technology
Lost on Purpose
Order from Iris Books, Amazon
Sassing
"The narratives of Karen Head's Sassing are mournful but defiant tales, seeking a place of repose "somewhere between/the smoldering ruins of Atlanta/and a base near the Berlin Wall." Read more...
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On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year
"Four friends, colleagues, and poets--Karen Head, Blake Leland, JC Reilly, and Robert E. Wood--gave themselves an extraordinary year-long assignment: write a poem each month based on a holiday or seasonal event. On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year is the thrilling result." Read more...
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My Paris Year
Awarded the Editor's Choice Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2009.
Shadow Boxes
Karen Head's first collection of poems and prose poems.
Poetry
A selection of Karen's poetry is available online.
Click here to view the selection.