Hudson A. McFann

I am a writer, researcher, and editor.
My work explores urban historical geographies, and my research interests include memory and archival theory, oral history, aesthetic politics, violence and displacement, humanitarianism, and the history of technology. I have a PhD in geography from Rutgers and an MA, with a concentration in political ecology and ethnographic film, from NYU. I have been a Beinecke Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. I live in New York, where I am also an artist and typewriter collector, technician, and adviser.

Email

LinkedIn

FUTUREPROOF
Published

My first book, Futureproof: Security Aesthetics and the Management of Life, which I co-edited with Asher Ghertner and Daniel Goldstein, was published by Duke University Press in 2020. Across ten chapters, as well as a foreword, introduction, and afterword, the book’s contributors examine security as a sensory domain, shedding new light on the security practices, infrastructures, and technologies that permeate everyday life. With Ghertner and Goldstein, I co-authored the introduction, “Security Aesthetics of and beyond the Biopolitical,” which develops a conceptual genealogy for understanding three modalities of security aesthetics.

REFUGE IN A BAMBOO CITY
In Progress

I am revising my dissertation, which I completed at Rutgers in 2024, into a book manuscript examining the history and legacies of Khao I Dang, a refugee camp established in Thailand after the Cambodian genocide. The manuscript draws on extensive archival research, dozens of oral history interviews, and analysis of memoirs and autobiographies. As an extension of this project, I am developing an oral history collection called “Recollecting Khao I Dang,” in partnership with interview narrators and the Rutgers Oral History Archives, that will comprise a selection of interview transcripts completed as part of my dissertation research.

Image: “Khao-I-Dang, refugee camp. Aerial view” (1979), photo by Gérard Leblanc, copyright ICRC, Reference: V-P-TH-D-00023-13, ICRC Audiovisual Archives.

IN/OCULATE
In Progress

I am working on a book about war and memory, inspired by family history.

Image: J. A. Barhydt, Crayon Portraiture: Complete Instructions for Making Crayon Portraits on Crayon Paper and on Platinum, Silver, and Bromide Enlargements, Revised and Enlarged Edition (New York: The Baker and Taylor Co., 1892), p. 40, Getty Research Institute / Internet Archive.

IMPASSABLE VISIONS
Published

In 2018, a book chapter I co-authored, with Alexander Hinton, in A Companion to the Anthropology of Death (edited by Antonius C. G. M. Robben), was published by Wiley-Blackwell. The chapter, “Impassable Visions: The Cambodia to Come, the Detritus in its Wake,” examines what we argue was a key dynamic underlying the Cambodian genocide. If the revolutionary society of the Khmer Rouge was “to come,” to borrow Jacques Derrida’s phrase, the aspiration contained the seeds of its own undoing: the detritus—from the physical garbage of the old regime to its corrupt traditions to the contaminating incorrigibles—needed to constitute the imagined pure state to which it was opposed.

THE FORCED TRANSFER
Installed / Published

As a member of the steering committee of the International Working Group on Cambodia and Southeast Asia (IC-SEA) at the Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, I co-led an IC-SEA team of editors contributing to a reparations project endorsed by the Trial Chamber of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Case 002/1. Specifically, the IC-SEA team assisted the Documentation Center of Cambodia with the development of exhibitions on the forced transfer of people during the Khmer Rouge regime. I also co-authored, with Samphors Huy and Kosal Path, “Memories of Forced Transfer,” a short essay published in the exhibition catalog. In 2014, exhibitions were installed at eight provincial museums in Cambodia.

HUMANS-AS-WASTE
Published

In 2014, a short essay I wrote on “humans-as-waste” was published in the “core concepts” section of the Discard Studies Compendium (edited by Max Liboiron, Michele Acuto, and Robin Nagle). The essay reviews literature examining how humans have been cast as a form of waste—often as a condition of colonialism, modernity, and capitalism—and identifies key analytical and conceptual approaches engaged by scholars.

Image: DiscardStudies.com logo.

Photo Series

Paintbrush. Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Balloon. Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Pencil Ferrule. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Beak. Theater District, New York.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Saxophone. Enfants Rouges, Paris.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Basketball Hoop. Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Duck. Park Slope, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Dust Pan. Geneva, Switzerland.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Chair. Tatuapé, São Paulo.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Wing. Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Rat. SoHo, New York.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Vulture. Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Whale. Chelsea, New York.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Elephant. Montmartre, Paris.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Rooster. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Oilcan. Hudson Heights, New York.

FOUND FORMS
In Progress

Since 2018, I have been developing a photo series called “Found Forms” that identifies expressive forms in things lost and discarded on city streets—such as a folded newspaper that’s taken the shape of a bird, a bag of tea that appears to float like a balloon, or a plastic bag that’s curled into the form of a saxophone.

Bird. New York City, 2018.

FOUND FORMS II
In Progress

An extension of the “Found Forms” series, these photos identify expressive forms in stains found on city sidewalks—residues left by spilled liquids, leaking garbage bags, etcetera.

DUMPSTERS AS LANDSCAPES
Exhibited

This photo series, an examination of the surfaces of dumpsters as landscapes, was featured at the 2012 NYU Gallatin Arts Festival. An image from the series was also exhibited at the American Association of Geographers 2012 Annual Meeting in New York.

Typewriter Design Archive

TYPE SAMPLES
Ongoing

A collection of typewriter-related artifacts with type specimens, including dozens of typewriter catalogs, pamphlets, advertisements, and other items showing typefaces once offered by typewriter manufacturers.

Image: “Multiplex Hammond: New ‘Petite Gothic’ Type Shuttle No. 180 (English Universal),” Hammond Typewriter Company, Collection of Hudson A. McFann.

MACHINES & LETTERFORMS
Ongoing

A collection of vintage typewriters with distinctive typefaces. Presently, the collection includes about forty manual typewriters, which I regularly use for writing, correspondence, and creative projects. Nearly all of the machines are fully functional, though some I am still in the process of reconditioning. I previously trained and worked professionally as a typewriter technician at Gramercy Typewriter Co. in New York.

Image: Remington pica typeface. Sample typed, in black ink with a silk ribbon, on a Remington Model 5 (Streamline) portable typewriter, manufactured ca. 1936. Collection of Hudson A. McFann.

GEOMETRIES OF GIOVANNI PINTORI
Ongoing

An archival project examining the work of graphic designer Giovanni Pintori for Olivetti. For several years, as part of this research, I have been assembling a large collection of Olivetti ephemera, including catalogs, advertisements, instruction manuals, and typewriter-ribbon boxes.

Left Image: Olivetti 82 Diaspron [instruction manual] (Olivetti), Collection of Hudson A. McFann.

Right Image: Instructions for the Use of the Underwood-Olivetti Lettera 22 Typewriter (Olivetti, printed in Italy), Collection of Hudson A. McFann.