I'm posting sections of my dissertation here as I write them (my book says I can call this a "zero draft": the first brain-dumping pass through, before I arrive at the revision phase). They're modular and thus often out of order; you can visit the index any time to see the organized outline as it stands.

I very much appreciate your feedback, as always, but you should also feel free to ignore these posts as they scroll by. PDFs of finished chapters will be available at a later date.

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

I have FINALLY finished assembling my basic materials -- cover letter (much revised since the version I posted, and with only two customizable sentences /FAIL), CV, dissertation excerpt, and a brand new teaching portfolio -- and sent applications to all the tenure-track jobs with October deadlines.

Here are the reasons I'm applying to every remotely plausible job, even those I don't seem likely to get (or want), for as long as I can stand it (according to advice from Brown's Center for Career Planning and Placement):
- sending out materials is a great way to spread the word about you and your research
- you never know whether the job ad accurately reflects who the department wants to hire
- the ones that would be cut are also the least time-consuming ones, so why not?

Most of these are still open; search on SCMS (members only), Chronicle, and/or H-Net to find them, or let me know if you need the info.

( list of jobs )

I'm thrilled to be part of the editorial team that brings you the first issue of the new open access, international, peer-reviewed journal Transformative Works and Cultures! You can read the press release or dive straight into the table of contents. Many thanks go to our tireless editors, Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, without whom this project would never have come to fruition.

I'd like to call special attention to the feature I had the greatest hand in, an audio podcast of the presentations and discussion from the post-"fandebate" workshop at Console-ing Passions last Spring. It is our hope that sharing the event virtually will help inspire continuing conversations about gender and other inequalities in fan culture.

TWC is now seeking submissions for future issues including a special issue on video games and gaming. I've included the CFP below; please assist us in spreading the word!

( games as transformative works CFP )

I'm delighted to announce that I have been selected as one of this year's HASTAC Scholars! I will be posting regular videoblog entries about web technologies and participatory learning here starting sometime this week. I encourage you to engage with the work of all the HASTAC Scholars, as well as the organization's other exciting projects.

Also, I will be attending the LA Queer Studies Conference on October 10-11. Allow me to call special attention to my panel, which falls bright and early at 9:00-10:30am on Saturday morning:

Mediated Queer Socialities and Identities
Moderator: Mary L. Gray, Indiana University, Communication and Culture

Julie Levin Russo [my correction], Brown University, Modern Culture and Media
Labors of Love: Economies of Identity in The L Word’s Fan-Driven Online Promotions

Alexis Lothian, University of Southern California, English
Doing Boys Like They’re Girls, and Other (Trans)Gendered Subjects: The Queer Subcultural Politics of “Genderfuck” Fan Fiction

Jill A. Bakehorn, UC Davis, Sociology
Bordering on Activism: Authenticity and Identity Politics in Women-Made Porn

I'd be grateful for any feedback on this first draft of my cover letter template and dissertation description (for my CV, which is now updated). I've annotated the job letter for your edification; Tenured Radical's blog post is also a good place to start for understanding the formula. Please join the Media Studies Job Search facebook group if you're interested in such topics!

( diss description )

( cover letter )

Last night I dreamed a brainstorming session for a "visibility"-themed vidshow, covering invisible characters, queer representation (complete with debates on where subtext ends and text begins), and ending with lim's "Us" as a meditation on "mainstreaming" via its literally effaced footage. (I still don't think this tops my waking idea for a vidshow on cyborgs, which also culminates in vidding self-reflexivity.)

Obviously a sign that I should spend today finally finishing this post.

I rationalized attending vividcon by calculating the time and energy I would save catching up on the deluge of premieres through watching them all in one fell swoop. It certainly lived up to my expectations on that account! I plan for this to be the last recs post for a long while. Keep in mind that my taste in vids is idiosyncratic, and this is intended as an inventory of my subjective favorites, not as an objective hierarchy of craftsmanship.

In this vein, I made an executive decision to exclude stand-alone movie vids from this list of recs. While I saw a number of vids from single-movie source at the con that were individually captivating, I don't find movies very interesting on the whole, and thus I don't find movie vids very interesting as a genre.

Complete playlists for all VVC08 vidshows are helpfully compiled HERE.

My Winner's Circle
For all my disclaimers, I imagine this resembles many con-goers' top three (1 and 2 were the selections for in-depth review). The marked similarities here are telling: in addition to Summer Glau, all these vids feature perverse relationships, cleverly manipulated and/or external footage, and a gradually emerging reveal. The latter strategy has a particular payoff in the reception context of VividCon. Typically, one would click through to a vid motivated at minimum by the framing information in the author's post, and often by the supplementary comments of a reccer as well. A premieres show, by contrast, guarantees a captive audience "unspoiled" by any paratexts, creating different narrative opportunities from the internet's temporal and spatial dispersion. And yes, I am about to spoil you.

vidder(s): sweetestdrain
title: Gloria
music: Patti Smith
fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
focus: Sarah/Cameron
availability: download (xvid), imeem
summary: People say beware, but I don't care.
comments: The premiere of this vid alone was worth the price of admission: watching surprise lesbian robot porn unfold was an unforgettable encounter. Already thrilled with butch Sarah at the beginning (remember how dualbunny taught us that Starbuck IS Pink? well sweetestdrain makes a convincing case that Sarah Connor IS Patti Smith), I may never recover from how thoroughly I was bowled over by my own kinks as the story developed. jagwriter78 recently coined the term "vidfic" -- I think we have here an exemplar of that mode. I'd venture that this is the greatest femslash vid made to date.

vidder(s): obsessive24
title: Climbing Up the Walls
music: Radiohead
fandom: Supernatural, Heroes, Firefly/Serenity
focus: Sam/Dean Winchester, Nathan/Peter Petrelli, Simon/River Tam
availability: download (xvid, wmv), imeem
summary: Siblings. "I am the pick in the ice."
comments: My lack of patience with either Winchesters or Petrellis had me rolling my eyes when this started. My date whispered, "I don't think this is a vid about 80% boys, I think it's a vid about INCEST." Well THAT I can certainly get behind! As the author notes, this is open to multiple readings (and various commentaries are linked) -- personally I experience it as gleefully cracktastic, but I'm aware that there's a darker morality tale lurking within if one takes it seriously. For the uninitiated: these are three wildly popular pairings in fandom, not simply three random pairs of siblings -- this is a metavid about a topical fannish phenomenon. Here's to the queer frontier.

vidder(s): bradcpu
title: Tear You Apart
music: She Wants Revenge
fandom: Firefly
focus: Simon/Kaylee (River)
availability: download (xvid, wmv), imeem
summary: It feels so right.
comments: This vid is fiendishly disorienting until the POV coalesces. Exquisitely edited, deliciously disturbing, and perfectly River. Smart notes by bradcpu: "I tried to make a vid that would look and feel fractured, but not really tell the viewer why it looks fractured until the final segment of the vid. Hopefully the first 2/3 of the vid looks different on a second viewing. I tried to push the River POV by using lots of jump cuts and medical shots (tons of secondary source); and by connecting sexual desire to violence and Reavers, because I would imagine it would have all looked the same in River's head." It worked.

( top ten lists )

It's important to us that Media Fetish: The Vidshow! be not only a fleeting local event, but a permanent virtual installation that the community can share. To that end, I have much belatedly transcribed excerpts of our remarks on the vids to post here. The full playlist is in the original entry; cut are a handful of vids where our observations are already more or less documented online, as well as familiar background information. Apologies for the abridgements, and for the sustained inelegance that comes of translating our extemporaneous performance to text. We were having a great time!

~ Julie Levin Russo and Francesca Coppa

( on with the show! )

The problem with becoming a vidding fan, as an obsessive person, is that there will always be more to watch. I seriously have a SPREADSHEET of vids to catch up on. Thanks to par_avion, veni_vidi_vids is now compiling recs via delicious, which is invaluable for keeping tabs on the buzz. I also have charmax's A-Z of women-centric vids, geekturnedvamp's girls girls girls playlist, and laurashapiro's IBARW vids of color list queued up to go through. But I'm about to be deluged with vividcon, so this is it for my back-catalogue at the moment. Except I do still have ambitions of making the rounds of Torchwood (as a preview, run don't walk to fan_eunice's Papa Don't Preach for the boys and sapote3's The Test for the girls). NB: fanworksfinder is being buggy, so I haven't ported over any of this recent spate of reviews.

( 3 newish vids )

( 3 oldish vids )

( 3 cyborgean Sarah Connor Chronicles vids )

In a perfect world, I would have had time to write something about all the following vids as well. In this one, I'm just going to rec them and leave it at that.

( other groups of 3 )

BREAKING: I just officially got into VVC!!!!!!!!!!!

In keeping with the networked structure of our collective brain, this post forks off from heyiya's Cylon meta and virtual vidshow (you can read my reviews of the older vids she picked in my previous BSG recs post). It's my rendering of an emergent BSG vidding meme that has been circulating between heyiya, beccatoria, kiki_miserychic and I, building on work already underway in the fandom at large. ( OUR VIDS )

( more techno-futuristic BSG vids )

( BSG female character studies )

The BSG vids I've enjoyed but not reviewed are in this playlist -- let me know if I've missed anything important (that's not hetshippy or boy-focused)?

Remember in April when I announced the first in a series of Battlestar Galactica season 4 crack vidlets? beccatoria and my Plan was to mashup each episode with audio from the Prelinger Archives of mid-century sponsored films, thereby creating our own archive that chronicles the season against the backdrop of our own cultural and technological history. Months later, the project is complete! Part one, at least, with the rest to come when BSG returns in 2009.

Length: 9:20 (10 parts, mostly under 60 seconds each)
Stream: youtube or imeem (embedded under the cut)
Download: 61MB AVI
Links: original posts @ beccatoria or @ thearchive2 / xposted @ vidding + bsg_crack

( watch it now )I'm absurdly proud of how these vids emerged as a collaborative artwork, and I think you can witness our skills improving as the series progresses.

For a more sober portrait of season 4.0 (or as a reference point for anyone who might be arriving at this post without a sense of what a more typical fanvid looks like), let me recommend beccatoria's Tricks (to Bruce Springseen's "Magic"). In addition to its elegant distillation of S4's key moments and themes, this vid is notable for contrasting them with a heartbreaking montage of earlier BSG scenes, and for an ingenious use of the final episode's final shot (interspersed throughout on the refrain). It's also technically dazzling, and could be taken as an exemplar of Windows Movie Maker vidding. WMM offers a very limited palette of capabilities, but Becka pushes them to their limits, perfecting the rhythm with extensive time toggles. I had the pleasure of doing some light beta duty on this.

Finally, one of the perks of selecting concepts for Tomorrow was having an excuse to plumb the depths of the remarkable Prelinger collection. Here's a sampling of the sort of deranged gems found therein. They may be of special interest to media studies professors, as many would make excellent teaching tools. FYI, the archive also includes myriad promotional/educational narrative films and musicals, which I skipped over.

( Top Ten Prelinger )

I'm gearing up to draft my chapter on The L Word, which (with the exception of two preliminary salvos seen at fandebate) consists of entirely new research and writing. Yikes. My listing herein is largely for my own reference, but I'd treasure any bibliographic pearls of wisdom that you can cast before me, dear readers.

First of all, I'm trying to familiarize myself with interesting published work on the show, so let me know if you've seen any? I've got Reading The L Word as my proverbial beach reading, plus Candace Moore's article in a recent Cinema Journal.

Also, I'm sorting out whether this is the place to bring in radical queer political thought, like Warner, Berlant, Edelman, and Puar, which I desperately need to catch up on.

But mostly, I'm giving myself a crash course in Autonomist Marxism. Some of my fellow grad students are generously joining me in a summer reading group, and here's our ( 8-week syllabus )

Meanwhile, thanks to Wendy's excellent advising, I have exciting plans to move much of the BSG chapter's theory section to the diss's digital-focused conclusion, and lead into media hybrids instead with an expanded framework for hybridity incorporating both racial and queer notions of passing. For the former, I'm looking at Homi Bhabha, Gloria Anzaldua, and Chela Sandoval; for the latter, Judiths Butler and Halberstam -- who am I missing? I'm woefully subliterate in both queer and race theory. Oh, and apparently I should go to Tom Foster to learn more about technicity (he wrote The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory, but I think I can start with his essays in a couple anthologies that I already own). And I probably shouldn't leave out Haraway.

The recently-completed SVU chapter was a puzzle. I feel like it needs something more about the closet and/or queer representation, but in poking around I didn't turn up anything useful. Help?

Finally, I proposed to David the thought experiment of listing one's Top Ten Essays. This category is somewhat flexible, but the idea is that they have to be self-contained short works rather than books or book chapters. Here's mine: not necessarily my Top Ten Best, but my ( Top Ten Favorite )

I'm about to order a huge pile of books...

The draft of Chapter II / Private Eyes is now complete! I should add illustrations at some point, but there are none at this time.

My most recent feedback on the original essay was by email, more than a year ago, from Sam/itsnotaword/NW. I finally replied last week (what? a year is not an unreasonable turnaround time on a non-essential email in my world, srsly) and the address is dead. So I'll share the response with you here. She informed me that SVU and Xena share Liz Freidman as sometime producer -- good detective work.

I'm finishing up a dissertation chapter update of the Olivia project, and I did add some later events in the saga, including the infamous Baer quote and the speculation about Mariska. It's really interesting to hear that there might be a material (as opposed to just a stylistic) connection to Xena. Overall, I tried to highlight the potential commercial advantage of "subtext" in this version, particularly in the context of TV/internet convergence. The whole massive debate remains fascinating, but it all seems very long ago, now. I really do appreciate hearing from you about the essay, though! While I'm sure I didn't succeed in making it entirely accessible, it is very gratifying that fellow fans read it and got something out of it.

( Works Cited )