MIT5: Day 3

29Apr07

First off, a couple more links to MIT5 bloggers: Snurb, redline, and Henry Jenkins’ post inviting comments about the conference this year & planning for MIT6.

Today’s conference was compressed but high-quality for me. My panel about Lost kicked off at 9am with MIT grad student Ivan Askwith’s walkthrough of the show’s transmedia environment with some provocative reflections on what transmediation means anyway. Joanne Morreale from Northeastern analyzed the debts Lost has to The Prisoner, as well as the differences stemming from era & national context. And then I did my version of the spoiler fan analysis I’ve previously blogged about. The three papers went together well, with a nice coverage of industrial, textual, and reception practices.

The crowd was decent for Sunday morning (and being put in an inconveniently located building that was literally off-the-map in the conference program – clearly aiming to achieve the panel title “Getting Lost“…), and the 20ish group of us started conversing through all the papers… and then we just kept going. I invited people to leave to attend the next plenary, but offered that we could keep chatting if anyone was interested. Around 15 folks stayed and talked for an hour, working through a host of issues raised by the panel & beyond, musing on the future of television and more. It’s the type of engaged collaborative conversation that academic conferences should foster but rarely do, as we typically must hustle from panel to panel. But today it happened, so thanks to all who participated.

Then I drove home, listening to the first place Red Sox beat the last place Yankees. Life is good…

Filed under: Media Studies   |  2 Comments
Tags: Lost