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.

I face something of a dilemma: it makes me uncomfortable to put myself in the position of speaking about or for vidders as an academic, since I'm decidedly NOT a vidder (an irresistible bunny, however, that someone should really take off my hands: a series of 21 vid-flashes to They Might Be Giants "Fingertips," which are on average 10 seconds long it's been done! by vyra -- thanks heresluck). I've always been a creature of words, not a visual artist, and fanfiction is intimately contiguous with how I work professionally. Visual media is my project, though, and it fits so undeniably for me to explore vidding as my pathway toward the intersection of fan cultures and convergence. The immediate motivation behind this massive remedial education is that this spring has turned into a sort of mini-tour, and I decided I should just follow where my obsessions lead (while, of course, trying to be as informed and respectful as possible):

• this weekend I'm attending 24/7, a DIY Video Summit at USC, and participating in a sekrit film eta: Laura Shapiro has the scoop
• March 4, I am giving a campus talk on "queer" vidding within the larger context of internet video negotiations at Swarthmore College, 7pm @ Science Center 199 (and also visiting Bob Rehak's class earlier that day)
• March 7 is my presentation at SCMS: "The Shape of Things to Come: Online Promotions, Fan Videos, and Other Queer Technologies in the Progeny of 'Battlestar Galactica'" (an excerpt of the chapter)
• I'm organizing the April 6 panel/screening "Media Fetish: The VIdshow!" as an event in Brown University's Pride Month
• April 24-26 is Console-ing Passions, where I'm part of a fandebate follow-up workshop -- I'm signed up to speak about The L Word's online promotions and NOT vidding, but you never know what might happen!

In preparation, I have now finished watching every vid in kbusse and jarrow272's recs posts -- phew! The remaining ones that I've chosen to re-review are below. jarrow's VVC07 picks are copious, but if you think he missed any crucial entries please let me know! The reason I haven't been trolling all over for vidrecs is that, in the course of this undertaking, I quickly discovered that taste in vids is quite subjective. I typically don't get much out of traditional, sincere vids about characters/pairings/fandoms I'm not invested in, no matter how shiny they are. That said, I'm in the market for recs and reccers that share my kinks:
a) a focus on women (especially girlslashy ones)
b) interesting thematic attention to the mediation of bodies, subjectivity, and technology
c) humor (especially in the form of juxtapositions of funny with serious/disturbing)
d) innovations in form, meta and/or self-reflexivity

( absolutedestiny )

( Dexter )

( miscellaneous )

much of this copied from the outsides of notebooks:

the Big D
it seems inevitable, at this point, that my diss is going to be structured around online fandom. a little backstory: when I was writing my undergrad thesis I felt like it wanted to be a book, but afterwards (2001) I also said I was DONE with fandom. hahaha. I plan to use the topic so near and dear to my heart as a springboard to a set of broader issues. the question is how exactly to do this coherently. the political angle is especially thorny, because I don't want to go anywhere near asserting that fandom is a radical or even progressive practice. so, by what tangent can I get to sex radical politics? I don't think it's as much of a longshot as it might sound -- but definitely tricky.

• public sex -- fan communities >> LJ; lesbian subcultures; sex/identity as ground for political awareness action; question of visibility (http://afterellen.com)
• "real" people -- Oliska Hargeson, RPF, "privacy"; virtual identity/virtual sexuality of fans; instability of sexual "knowledge" (as queer project?)
• private property + ownership -- legal issues of derivative writing; legal issues of TV downloading/P2P; theoretical issues of the boundaries (or lack thereof) of texts; tensions of mass media vs. distributed media consumption

I have this fantasy of launching each chaper from a single fanfic story -- it would be hard to find the ones, though, that are exactly perfect. maybe. harder still to write them.

it occurs to me that if I want to tie in radical sexual subcultures via LJ, I should really start following some related communities. oy, I tried that once, and it was tiresome. where oh where is my one really fantastic dyke/trans/queer sex community that I can write about?

---

probably I'm also going with my original idea for a course: TV on the Internet. it has the advantages of being concrete and timely; I just have to figure out how to highlight the theoretical issues above (plus public/private spheres).

potential topics:
• what is a "medium"?
• other theoretical background, like liveness and "window on the world"
• bittorent vs. video iPod rumble! legal issues, intellectual property
• TV News vs. political bloggers rumble! who makes the news?
• TV shows/networks with web tie-ins:
- mega-media corporations like MSNBC.com
- interactive TV: shows with online voting or other components (Big Brother)
• independent web-based TV (existing and/or possible)
• online TV fan communities (TWoP, TV blogs, LJ)
• fan production (fiction, vids)

any further suggestions?

---

my fields:
• politics of sexuality [theory area] (a hybrid of political theory and queer theory, focusing on public/private sphere)
• TV something-or-other [history area] (emphasis on reception/fandom)
• internet studies something-or-other (the media archaeology side is now covered, but I have to get up to speed on online communities/social software stuff)

The Plan for the Rest of My Life:

( xposted )