My dissertation, which I've been posting here in installments since mid-2007, is finally finished! You can download the finished project here, if you're interested.

With that, there will be no further public content at this LJ. If you'd still like to keep up with my professional life, you can follow jlr_blog

Many thanks to my readers!

I have three more sections of Chatper IV / Labor of Love to post over the next few days, but I'm going to go ahead and put this up now. This will conclude the online portion of my dissertation. I'll make a final entry with information about the complete manuscript by the end of the year.

/ Illustrations

( works cited )

( FanLib )

[ a condensed version of this section appeared as You Write It! Or, The L Word Is Labor at In Media Res ]

( Autonomist Marxism 1/3 )

[ read Lazzarato's "Immaterial Labor" online ]

Once upon a time, when I was but a wee proto-professional in the wide and wondrous field of media studies, I went on the academic job market. Between October and April, I sent out more than 60 applications, and no doubt expended far too much energy in the improbable pursuit of a gainful livelihood. Many times I rejoiced and many times I despaired, and although I learned lessons of patience and humility the uncertain outcome never became easier to bear. I am thus ecstatic to announce a happy ending to this saga:

For the next 2 years I will be serving as Acting Assistant Professor of new media in the Film & Media Studies program of the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University!

I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting my colleagues in person because their search did not allow for campus visits. But all signs suggest a fantastic fit between my academic background and future and the program's composition and goals. I'm thrilled at the prospect of contributing to the evolution of the department's offerings in digital media, television, and contemporary visual culture.

Moreover, the position is absurdly accommodating of my continuing professional development. The appointment begins in January 2010 and comprises a 1-2 teaching load over winter and spring terms in 2010 and 4 courses over 3 quarters in the 2010-2011 academic year. I plan to move to the bay area in December, and until then I will be working to complete my PhD (don't expect to hear much from me over the next 6 months). I leave my permanent residence in Providence in mid-June and will return periodically while living at home in Michigan during the summer and fall.

( MANIFESTO )

Finally, I'd like to convey my deepest thanks to the friends, family, mentors, and peers who have supported me in so many ways through this process.

This entry is crossposted at my web site, and will be the last professional/public installment at this LJ (I'll still post upcoming sections of my dissertation here). Please follow jlr_blog if you're interested (alternately the Indiscrete Media category feed is how I'm actually organizing posts, but they should be functionally interchangeable). I believe I've managed to rejigger the site to allow you to comment there using OpenID or without logging in. I don't plan to create a dedicated account at Dreamwidth.

Oh hi blog, no offense, but I do most of my internettery on twitter these days. One of the keys to twitter's wild success has been the capacity of its stripped-down interface to paradoxically inspire a cornucopia of practices driven by the swarming creativity of its users. Although the update box at the top is still captioned "What are you doing?" people type into it any and all information that can be meted out in 140 characters, including reviews, live commentary, poetry, jokes, links, meme responses, calls to action, and messages to friends. The site's open API and ecumenical attitude has facilitated innumerable hacks and mashups that offer workarounds for some of the features that twitter lacks, as well as illuminating and fanciful ways of interfacing with its worldwide cloud of presence.

( twitterfic.com )

IRL: I have little prospect of a job for next year, although I'm still sending out applications and still hoping a fellowship will materialize. Otherwise I'll take it as it comes. I'm not going to starve, which makes me luckier than many people in this economy. My lease is up at the end of May, and I don't know yet where I'll move.

PHD: I'm unlikely to finish my dissertation on time unless I'm offered a contract that requires me to. But it will be done by the fall, one way or another. I'm doing my darndest to get regular posting going again, so watch this space for the next chapter. In the interest of writing, job hunting, and teaching (proctoring for "Feminist Theories of Sexed Subjectivity"), I've banned myself from all conferences (and other recreational travel) this spring/summer (except for the nearby Media in Transition).

WWW: Likewise, I've largely GAFIAted from online fandom for the moment. My apologies to anyone who misses me -- I miss you too. For the sake of my career and sanity, I have to reduce my internet time and prioritize personal and academic blogs.

But I'm not dead yet! Just thought I might be due for an update to that effect for the benefit of anyone who isn't reading twitter/facebook.

Academic Publishing in the Digital Age
HASTAC Forum, running NOW through November 16

Following from October's discussion of the importance of Fair Use, this forum will offer an opportunity to extend the dialogue about new challenges and opportunities in academic publishing today. As established print journals tend toward expensive and restricted subscriptions in response to current technological and financial conditions, a counter-movement is growing in support of online access to scholarship as a public good, led by open electronic journals and databases. Are traditional journals a relic of a pre-internet era, or does their publication model still have value in academia? How can either system be economically viable? Given that strict liability copyright standards are a hurdle for print journals, do electronic journals provide a necessary haven for the citation and transformation of proprietary artifacts and work? In a context where everyone can have a blog or home page, what do students and scholars need to know about the benefits and risks of self-publishing? And perhaps most importantly, what new possibilities for intellectual and creative work are capacitated by the web as a platform?

This goal of this forum is to explore the shifting definition of academic publishing in the digital age, as well as to consider the intellectual, creative and technical challenges which digital platforms pose for scholarly publication. The conversation will be co-hosted by HASTAC Scholars Chris Hanson of USC, who has worked for the online journal Vectors, and Julie Levin Russo of Brown, who works for the online journal Transformative Works and Cultures. They will be joined by other members of these publications' editorial and creative teams, including Kristina Busse, Tara McPherson, Steve Anderson and Erik Loyer. Vectors is an international electronic journal that brings together visionary scholars with cutting-edge designers and technologists to propose a thorough rethinking of the dynamic relationship of form to content in academic research, publishing works realized in multimedia that expand the rigid text-based paradigms of traditional scholarship. Transformative Works and Cultures is an Open Access international electronic journal on popular media and fan communities published by the Organization for Transformative Works, and invites authors to embrace the technical possibilities of the web and test the limits of academic writing. Both publications are copyrighted under Creative Commons licenses.

We hope to facilitate a venue in which we may all ask and answer questions about the present and future of digital scholarship. Please come join the discussion at http://www.hastac.org/scholars/forum/11-02-08Academic-Publishing-in-the-Digital-Age