Archive for the ‘Academia’ Category
I’m spending the next few days in Chicago at the Society for Cinema & Media Studies conference, the annual gathering of scholars that I rarely miss (save for last year’s European stay). Below the fold is the paper I’m presenting Thursday on a panel about the state of television studies as a field – it’s […]
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Media Studies, Publishing | Leave a Comment
The Scared Is Spread
I have a video to share with you: If you haven’t seen it, take the eight minutes to watch & enjoy. But there’s a good chance you’ve seen it, as it’s been viewed over 72,000 times (and counting) in the three days it’s been online. It’s been written about on Buzzfeed, Jezebel, CBS News, CBC, Yahoo!, Mashable, and many other […]
Filed under: Academia, Middlebury, New Media, Not Quite TV, Teaching | 10 Comments
Tags: spreadable, viral video
In my 18 years in academia, I’ve never been to the MLA convention – until now. For those who don’t know, the Modern Language Association is the largest humanities organization, and their annual convention is an iconic event, known as a massive academic job meat market and an object of mockery in the press for […]
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Film, Narrative, Not Quite TV, Television | 2 Comments
Tags: David Lynch, MLA, MLA13, Mulholland Drive, seriality
Like most people I know, I’m sad, angry, and numb in reaction to the massacre of children and their teachers on Friday. While I feel helpless to affect change in a meaningful way, I do what I can via the small contributions to organizations like the Sandy Hook School Support Fund and the Brady Campaign […]
Filed under: Academia, Media Politics, Media Studies, Television, TV Textbook, Videogames, Viewers | 10 Comments
Tags: cultural studies, media effects, media violence, violence
Lately I’ve become more and more intrigued by Digital Humanities as a subfield/movement/trend/etc. within academia, in large part because the people who are actively driving much of DH are super engaging & welcoming via social networks like Twitter and various blogs. As I am committed to open access publishing, public-facing scholarship, and innovative modes of […]
Filed under: Academia, Fair Use, Film, Media Studies, New Media, Technology, Television, TV Shows | 4 Comments
Tags: captions, digital humanities, text mining, The Wire
For anyone keeping track, this blog’s hiatus is a sad signal that it’s been a busy couple of months for me re-entering to real life in Vermont, what with teaching, chairing my department, taking care of lots of personal projects, and obsessing over the election. (And thankfully, Super Storm Sandy had little personal impact on […]
Filed under: Academia, Conferences, Media Studies, Teaching, Television, TV Textbook | 2 Comments
Tags: Flow Conference
Back to the Classroom
Summer is over (even though it remains in the 80s in Vermont this week), which means my sabbatical is completely over. It was a great one, with a wonderful fellowship in Germany, a lot of writing, travel for lectures & conferences, and lots of quality family time. But yesterday, I returned to the Middlebury classroom […]
Filed under: Academia, Books, Complex TV, Film, Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, Teaching, Television, TV Shows | Leave a Comment
Tags: Homeland, How to Watch TV, Mildred Pierce, Phineas & Ferb, syllabi
Recently, my friend Annie Petersen took advantage of one of Twitter’s best functions for academics: crowdsourcing syllabus recommendations. Annie was looking for readings that provide a good introduction to semiotics, but are not impenetrable to novice students. I recommended this online visual essay by Tom Streeter (another friend of mine), which I’ve found quite useful for […]
Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Middlebury, Not Quite TV, Teaching | 12 Comments
Tags: cultural studies, pedagogy, theory
In my pre-Germany post, I mentioned that one of the goals of the year was to provide some “productive disorientation” on the aspects of life I take for granted back in Vermont. Now that I am in my last week in Germany, I can see it has certainly achieved that goal in a wide range […]
Filed under: Academia, Not Quite TV, Sabbatical | 2 Comments
Tags: Göttingen, germany
Unmotivated Reading as Work
One of the most circulated and discussed articles in online academic circles last week was Bruce Henderson’s Chronicle piece arguing for the importance of acknowledging reading as a key part of our scholarly labor. I really liked this article, less for his coining of the awkward neologism “consumatory scholarship” to describe the practice of academic reading, […]
Filed under: Academia, Complex TV, Media Studies, MediaCommons, Not Quite TV, Open Access, Publishing, Reading | 2 Comments
Tags: peer review
As regular readers know, I’ve been serializing my new book, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, in a pre-publication draft at MediaCommons. One of the goals of publishing the manuscript online like this is to challenge some of the norms of academic publishing and peer review, as advocated & modelled by Kathleen Fitzpatrick […]
Filed under: Academia, Books, Complex TV, Media Studies, MediaCommons, Open Access, Publishing | 2 Comments
Tags: complex television, MediaCommons, survey
Complex TV: Evaluation
It’s time for another chapter of Complex TV – this one focuses on questions of evaluation in television scholarship. Here’s the abstract: Television studies, as forged by the influence of cultural studies, has been loath to include critical evaluation in its toolbox, as television’s own spot on the receiving end of numerous aesthetic condemnations has […]
Filed under: Academia, Complex TV, Media Studies, Narrative, Taste, Television, TV Shows | Leave a Comment
Tags: breaking bad, Mad Men, The Wire
Complex TV Launches!
I am pleased to announce the launch of my book Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. As I’ve written previously, I am a firm believer in open-access publishing and experimenting with new forms of peer review and digital publishing. And even though I’m still in Germany, I’m participating via Skype in a workshop […]
Filed under: Academia, Complex TV, Media Studies, MediaCommons, Narrative, Publishing, Television | 1 Comment
One of my academic hobby horses is Open Access, the movement to make scholarship freely available online. I’ve tried to model what embracing open access looks like through my own choices of where to publish, my practice of posting essays here pre-publication (and pulling the print publication when necessary), and my work with MediaCommons. I […]
Filed under: Academia, New Media, Not Quite TV, Open Access, Publishing | 6 Comments
