My name is Craig Messner, and I am a recent PhD graduate from the Department of English at UCLA where I studied nineteenth century American literature and produced a digital first dissertation that employed custom Python-based computational textual analysis and a visualization system written in Vue.js. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Digital Humanities.

Beyond my specializations in programming and literature I have an abiding interst in pedagogical theory and instructional design. Throughout my career as a teacher, curriculum designer, and educational IT consultant I have produced and employed a number of pedagogical materials intended to engage with learners in an interactive fashion. Two of these materials -- a small game used to aid in the teaching of narrative concepts based off of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "William Wilson," and an interactive simulation of the Numarete object recognition machine developed by the University of Illinois Biological Computer Lab -- are available above. Both were written in Javascript/Vue.js, and were designed to aid in the understanding of complex concepts through engaged activity.