What I Did on my Blogging Vacation: Writing the Dissertation and Finding a Job
The last time I posted — about a month ago on Charlie Sheen — I was completing the conclusion to my dissertation, gearing up for SCMS (film and media studies’ annual international conference) and feeling solid about the state of my dissertation. WHAT A DIFFERENCE A MONTH MAKES.
Since then, I have:
1.) Finished and handed in the completed draft of my dissertation, thinking it was (mostly) fine.
2.) Attended, reveled, and left completely exhausted from SCMS (in New Orleans), where I made several new friends who specialize in celebrity gossip, met scholars whose work has been fundamental and inspirational to my own, and presented on blogging, tweeting, and online networking as a media studies academic.
3.) Came home completely without a voice, which led to the very unfortunate cancellation of my presentation on Kanye and Twitter at SXSW.
4.) Took four separate plane trips in four weeks.
5.) Received the final editorial comments from my advisors on the diss…..and went into a five day flurry of final revisions that challenged me in a way (physically and intellectually) I haven’t felt since the beginning of grad school. (More on this below).
6.) Turned in the final final version of the dissertation just in time to allow readers four weeks before my defense….which will in turn allow me to graduate this May and receive my diploma on my 30th birthday.
7.) Accepted an unexpected dream job teaching film, media, cultural studies, and literature at The Putney School in Southern Vermont. More on this below as well.
8.) Received some exciting/unexpected/super promising emails related to the transformation of my dissertation into a book (if you’re ever wondering about the utility of a blog related to your research, THERE’S A GOOD REASON RIGHT THERE).
8.) Spent a ludicrous amount of time in the meantime catching up on sleep, reading fiction, doing yoga, and playing in the 80 degree Austin weather.
Before I return to regular celebrity gossip, academic style blogging, I do want to say a few words about completing the dissertation and my decision to take the job that I did. While most of the posts on this blog address celebrities and pop culture (the “celebrity gossip” in the blog title) it also approaches them from a perspective grounded in academia….and my relation to academia has always influenced my approach to blogging, my own blogging voice, and the type of topics I choose to cover. I also wish that there had been more descriptions of the dissertation process (and job market) in media studies in particular before I started my own journey, if only to make me feel just slightly more prepared.
FIRST, THE DISS.
I should begin with the caveat that I wrote my dissertation in nine months. I ostensibly began my research on June 1st and handed in the final copy in March. THIS IS NOT NORMAL, AND MIGHT EVEN BE RIDICULOUS. There were a few reasons for the brevity of my dissertating phase:
*I had a number of wise advisors at my master’s program who suggested that I try to use my seminars in my Ph.D. program to investigate and write initial drafts of chapters. So I did this, whenever possible. When I started writing my prospectus, I had already written drafts of three of my chapters. OR SO I THOUGHT. (More on this below).
*I was also lucky to have found a topic — even before I started my Ph.D. program — that I loved and that continued to fascinate me. The approach, scope, and argument concerning that topic (the production of celebrity gossip) has changed over the years, but the overarching topic has not.
*Because I needed to be officially ABD when I started my stint as a Visiting Instructor at Whitman College last Spring, I churned out a prospectus in the two months after I had finished my comprehensive exams (August 2009).
*When I was at Whitman, I was teaching three classes that I had never taught before — and knew that I needed to put the diss on the back burner during that time. I submitted and performed edits on articles during this time (at least one of which became a big chunk of the diss) but did not research or write on the diss from January through May of 2010.
*I am a fast writer and a slow reviser. As evidenced by the sheer length of my blog posts, sitting down and writing has never been a problem for me. Writing better — and with more concision and verve — sometimes has. When people ask how I managed to write over 400 pages so quickly, that seems like the easy part. The harder part was doing the initial research (many hours in the basement of the library on the microfiche machine and sifting through Lexis Nexus) and agonizing over revisions over the last two months.
*My dissertation advisor is phenomenally organized, which meant that I received feedback on my early drafts very quickly. Don’t underestimate how important this is.
My dissertation looks nothing like what I envisioned it as a first year Ph.D. student. It also looks very little like the dissertation I envisioned in my prospectus. Or, rather, the thrust of the argument is the same — but the organization, e.g. the way I went about proving my point, and the language I used in proving that point, has changed rather substantially. What started as a five-chapter consideration of five case studies between 1954 and the present ballooned into a ten chapter look at major shifts in the way that outlets within the gossip industry processed and mediated stars, basically starting at the beginning of the studio system.
[There are various philosophies about how the timeline of researching/writing a prospectus/proceeding through the diss should work. Mine had to be a certain way because of my job at Whitman. If I had to do it over again, it'd be awesome to have had a more thorough grasp of what I'd end up arguing -- in other words, have actually performed more of the initial nitty-gritty primary research. Granted, I had done a fair amount of that nitty-gritty during previous seminars, which saved a lot of time when it came to writing about People, The National Enquirer, Confidential, Entertainment Tonight, Perez, and TMZ. In the end, the way that I did it worked out -- and also helped me keep some momentum, which again cannot be underestimated.]
Even once I figured out how I’d organize the chapters, the diss was constantly transforming before my eyes — especially since I do most specific industrial research for a chapter right before I write it (rather than doing all the research upfront). I didn’t realize that I would be making the arguments about Entertainment Weekly/E!/Extra and their relation to Time Warner that I did, in part because I simply didn’t know as much about them as I thought I did.
Oh, did I mention the fact that only about two or three academics have written about my topic EVER?!? That makes it so much easier to research! Obviously I read just about everything ever written (academically) on Hollywood stars/star theory, but there was very little theorization of the way that these stars were mediated and how the industry that profits from that mediation works/relates to the rest of Hollywood. At times, this lack was painful, as I basically felt like I was connecting dots and forging arguments in the academic wilderness. But then again, I rarely had to pussyfoot around other scholars’ arguments or try to focus on refining a slight argument already made by another scholar. Virgin scholastic territory has its benefits.
My dissertation committee was made of five members, each with specific expertise in an area related to a section of the dissertation (industry, television, 1960s/70s stardom, 1950s stardom, etc.) As such, my chief advisor read every chapter, but an additional committee member also read the chapters that dealt with his/her expertise. Not only did this really help to refine my arguments in subsequent drafts, but also (somewhat) ensures that I won’t have any surprise or major objections when I defend in two weeks.
When I turned in the COMPLETE WHOLE THING at the very beginning of March, I thought things were pretty great. It was done; I would receive a few additional suggestions; I would perform final revisions; there we go. But after returning from Spring Break, both my chief advisor and my other chief reader/editor (who, for those of you who know the person I’m referencing, is famous for his incisive and incredibly editing skills…..that also require a fair amount of work) both basically told me that I had done a very nice job of doing a lot of researching, treading new ground, and forging an argument…..but that the diss, as it was, was merely good when it could be really great. What followed was a whirlwind (read: FIVE DAYS) final editing process in which I cut nearly 50 pages, added 15, and turned the “okay” into something much tighter, compelling, and, hopefully, great. It hurt like a bitch, and I nearly pulled the first all-nighter of my life, but I couldn’t be more grateful that they pushed me to make it better.
You may be asking, “why didn’t this silly girl just take more time?” Economic realities. Last year, the UT RTF program announced that they could not guarantee any funding past the fourth year. Several of my friends in their fifth year were forced to hodgepodge teaching-intensive appointments outside of the department during their fifth years. And while my leave of absence last year (to teach at Whitman) ensured at least another semester of funding, friends, I am sick and tired of accruing loans. I did not go to graduate school in the humanities to amass a loan load similar to that of law and med students who will go on to massive salaries. Yet the realities of living in Austin on our salary have forced continued accumulation of debt, even with my (temporary) Whitman salary to defer costs. What’s more, if the job market this year has taught me anything, it’s that ABDs (people without a completed degree next to their name) are put on the very bottom of the pile, if not entirely discarded, when it comes to job searches. And, as my very sage MA advisor Mike Aronson told me during my second quarter at Oregon, “a good dissertation is a done dissertation.”
And so, it will be done — dependent, of course, upon the committee’s approval on April 22nd.
SECOND, THE JOB.
I’m not going to go into super detail about the media studies job search. Suffice to say that I applied for around fifty jobs — with varying degrees of fit — and received several “bites” (request for additional materials, phone interviews, MLA interviews) but nothing past the first round. From speaking with others in my situation, my lot seems to be very typical. The jobs that used to go to ABDs are now going to those at visitings/postdocs/those fleeing the California schools and downsizing departments. UT has no opportunities for adjuncting or postdocs. In other words, around the end of February, the future was looking very dim. Would I delay the dissertation? Would I defend and try to make ends meet by returning to nannying? (Which, JUST SAYIN’, paid three times what I make as a grad student — at least when I lived in Seattle). How in the world would I get health insurance? On a whim, I Googled a school that had long resided in my recesses of my mind, where rigorous academics met with a dedication to the experience of the natural world. Over the years, I’ve met a handful of people who’ve attended this school, each of which were remarkable, unique, and intellectually confident in a way I cannot quite put in words.
This school — The Putney School — happened to be advertising an opening in English. My undergraduate and M.A. degrees qualify me to teach English; my five years of teaching experience qualify me to teach; my two summers teaching gifted and talented high school students qualified me to teach high school students. I also thought my upbringing in history with the natural world (hiking, mountaineering, climbing, alpine and cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, gardening, horseback riding) as a child and student in the Pacific Northwest might make me an even more attractive candidate. But high school? Did I really want to do this? Didn’t I pursue a Ph.D. so that I could teach college level kids?
Fear for my future led me to apply. Two weeks later, I received a request for an initial phone interview, which later turned into a Skype interview and an on-campus interview in Vermont. The school flat out bewitched me. There were three feet of snow on the ground — a reality with which I knew I would have to grow accustomed, if I was offered the job — but the students, the campus (on a beautiful farm on dozens of acres atop a hill, just a few miles from Brattleboro, Vermont), the landscape, the confidence and intelligence and overarching energy of the place……I fell in love. I had the opportunity to teach a class of seven students, and they were, no joking, more engaged, engaging, insightful, and straight-out *hungry* to learn than any other students I have encountered, whether at Whitman, Texas, or Oregon. Putney was founded as a progressive school, which means that it builds on the philosophy of John Dewey — who believed, as Putney and its community does, that education is all that you do. Whether waking up at 6 a.m. to milk cows, participating in a small seminar on Existentialism, or learning how to blacksmith, it’s all part of education and the subsequent cultivation of character and intellect.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the reason I had decided to get into academia was not to get a job, but to teach — and to teach at a small liberal arts college where I could help reproduce the type of education that I myself had received at Whitman. The publishing, the networking — all of that was done in service of that greater goal. But when I stepped back, I realized that Putney was a liberal arts college in a smaller package, with even more of the philosophy and adaptability (and lack of red tape) that could create an invigorating and sustaining learning environment for both teachers and students. Did I mention that I get ridiculous breaks? That it’s gorgeous? That I’ll use about a tank of gas a year? The yoga studio looking out into the mountains? There’s a second breakfast built into the day called “MILK LUNCH,” complete with fresh baked bread! The lack of grades and subsequent lack of grade-grubbing? The small (read: 5-10) class size?
But will I end up teaching English? No, or at least not traditionally. Part of the reason Putney was drawn to my application was, indeed, my background in media studies. (And, I’m guessing, the fact of the Ph.D. — they received over 300 applications (a testament to the trickle-down from the academic market). Yet the English Department had recently decided to perform a dramatic overhaul of their 11th grade curriculum, transforming a course that had previously focused on American literature into one more broadly concerned with American culture — essentially an American Studies/Cultural Studies course. Which is exactly what I do: even when I teach Film History, it’s part industrial history, part cultural history. Star/celebrity studies would not exist without movies and television and other forms of media, but the disciplines are not about the texts in which stars/celebrity appear so much as the ways in which those texts contribute to the star or celebrity’s cultural reception and significance. In other words, this is perfect. For next year, I’ll also be teaching “elective” courses (for upperclassman) in Post-Katrina Media (Treme, When the Levees Broke, Zeitoun, etc.) and Modernism and Modernity, both of which I designed myself.
I received the job offer half-way through SCMS, which was both discombobulating and incredibly fortunate. I was able to talk through the possibility with basically all of the scholars/friends that I admire and who have provided guidance in the past, and the overarching consensus was that taking the job at Putney did not mean forever foreclosing my future as an academic. Sure, I’ll probably never get a job at an Research-1 university. But that was never the goal. So long as I continue to publish, get my diss out in book form, choose my applications carefully, and concentrate on teaching, I could potentially parlay my time at Putney into a job at a liberal arts school. Who knows: maybe I’ll stay at Putney for 20 years, maybe I’ll stay for 3.
If you asked me a year ago if I would’ve ever considered taking a job at the high school level, I would’ve said absolutely not. But opportunities sometimes do not arrive as advertised, and embracing this opportunity took a significant amount of paradigm shifting — and thinking about what I really wanted and needed to be happy and stimulated, whether intellectually, psychologically, or academically. Miles and miles of running/hiking/cross-country trails out my backdoor! Fresh milk and organic vegetables at every meal! MOUNTAINS! Kids who LIKE LEARNING! Those things might not make you happy, but few things make me happier.
To conclude, I’m thrilled to be back on the blogging train and rest assured have no plans to discontinue Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style when I begin at Putney in the Fall. I do hope that I’ve in some way shed light on my own journey through the dissertation and job search process, and would be happy to answer any questions you might have, either in the comments, on Twitter, or via email.
(If you haven’t hopped on the bandwagon, I encourage you to join the Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style Facebook page, where I post the MVP gossip/celebrity/star bits on a daily basis — at least check it out. Not spammy, just awesome.)
Scaring Off The Grad Student Twitterati
First, a caveat: My apologies for authoring a third post on Twitter over the course of two weeks. I promise: we’ll get some good J-Lo gossip soon. What’s more, the post that follows deals with my experience this past weekend at an academic conference and how Twitter both accentuated and ‘scandalized’ those proceedings — while it will certainly be of interest to anyone who’s ever been concerned with how junior professionals grapple with how their name/image is bandied about in public spaces, there will be a little bit of ‘inside baseball’ academic talk.
With that said, I’ve just arrived home from a long weekend spent in Eugene, Oregon at the 2010 Console-ing Passions Conference. The funky name is a vestige of the 1990s, when pun-y, hyphenated names and titles were all the rage in academia — basically it’s a feminist media conference that deals with many of the texts, approaches, and concerns that have long been marginalized by mainstream media studies (although that situation is gradually changing). In other words, this was a conference with a ton of panels that dealt explicitly with identity politics (race, class, sexuality, gender, etc.) and also dealt with texts, such as my own objects of study (gossip, stars, celebrity et. al.), that are still eschewed by some in the academy. (At SCMS, the ‘big dog’ of media studies conferences, I had a senior male scholar visibly recoil and scoff when I told him that my dissertation was on the history of celebrity gossip).
For various reasons, there was no internet access at SCMS, a situation that rightly infuriated many participants (myself included), mostly because it prevented any sort of live Twitter coverage of the panels. Hello: MEDIA STUDIES CONFERENCE. This situation will of course be remedied at SCMS next year, but it also left many of us media studies scholars who are regular users of Twitter. Thus, when Console-ing Passions rolled around six weeks later, anticipation for what live-tweeting would like like — and how it would be received — was high.
Indeed, as both Jason Mittell and Max Dawson pointed out (through Twitter) almost immediately, one morning panel of CP had inspired more Tweets than the whole of SCMS. I myself live-Tweeted most of the panels I attended (if you follow me on Twitter, this was obvious); I greatly enjoyed being able to look back on what was live-Tweeting about my *own* presentation — not to mention participating in the back-channels that emerged during several panels and the plenary.
Melissa Click authored a great wrap-up of the conference over at Antenna, and Amanda Ann Klein has a great piece on the uses and mis-uses (including several Twitter highlights). As Amanda emphasizes, Twitter can create really productive conversation — but the particular interactions on the backchannel (and their ramifications) at this conference leads us, as scholars, to think about how Twitter will be used in the future — and if we should come up with some tentative ‘guidelines’ to guide us towards a proper conference Twitter etiquette.
Now, Amanda also draws attention to what might be the most controversial use of Twitter at the conference — an event that took place at the plenary. Here’s Click’s succinct recap of the plenary itself:
“The CP plenary was Friday’s anticipated event. The plenary, titled “Publishing What We Preach: Feminist Media Scholarship in a Multimodal Age,” included Bitch’s Andi Zeisler, the Queer Zine Archive Project’s Milo Miller, and scholars Michelle Habell-Pallan and Tara McPherson. While Zeisler discussed blogging’s utility in feminist activism, and Miller discussed the web’s utility for archiving “twilight media,” Habell-Pallan discussed the importance of new media in American Sabor, the first interpretive museum exhibition to tell the story of the influence and impact of Latinos in American popular music. All three speakers communicated important messages for feminists wishing to bridge activism and scholarship, but it was Tara McPherson’s polemic, “Remaking the Scholarly Imagination,” that captivated the audience and had conference Tweeters typing like crazy. McPherson challenged the CP audience to adjust to the changing nature of the humanities by engaging with “the materiality of digital machines,” namely code, systems, and networks.The CP plenary was Friday’s anticipated event. The plenary, titled “Publishing What We Preach: Feminist Media Scholarship in a Multimodal Age,” included Bitch’s Andi Zeisler, the Queer Zine Archive Project’s Milo Miller, and scholars Michelle Habell-Pallan and Tara McPherson. While Zeisler discussed blogging’s utility in feminist activism, and Miller discussed the web’s utility for archiving “twilight media,” Habell-Pallan discussed the importance of new media in American Sabor, the first interpretive museum exhibition to tell the story of the influence and impact of Latinos in American popular music. All three speakers communicated important messages for feminists wishing to bridge activism and scholarship, but it was Tara McPherson’s polemic, “Remaking the Scholarly Imagination,” that captivated the audience and had conference Tweeters typing like crazy. McPherson challenged the CP audience to adjust to the changing nature of the humanities by engaging with “the materiality of digital machines,” namely code, systems, and networks.
Now, what Click doesn’t mention — and perhaps rightly so — is that part of what had Tweeters typing like crazy was a potentially incendiary phrase uttered during the Q&A session. Discussing where media studies needs to go in order to remain relevant during the next century, McPherson pointed out that “as lovely and elegant as Lost is, it doesn’t really matter.” This particular phrase echoed through the Twittersphere, Tweeted by myself and others, reaching hundreds of scholars following the conference remotely. This particular point was one of the most circulated (at least virtually) of the conference, and inspired Jason Mittell to author a response of sorts on his blog entitled “Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do.” (For those of you not in media studies: there’s tension in the academia between those who think that studying actual texts is important and others who find it not as crucial to the future of the discipline. See McPherson’s response to Jason’s piece for more conversation on that point.)
Importantly, the comment simultaneously was and was not taken out of context. Sure, without actually hearing all of the talk — or the specific wording of the question to which McPherson was responding — it’s difficult to know exactly what she meant. But at the same time, myself and others were diligently live Tweeting snippets and key concepts from her address — which, to be very clear, I *loved.* Here’s just a sampling of what I tweeted from the talk — this was probably written over the course of about 3 minutes:
Thus, when I and others Tweeted her comment on “Lost doesn’t really matter,” it wasn’t without already having worked diligently to establish the other ideas and concepts that she was forwarding. McPherson herself was disappointed that a single comment — one that Nina Huntemann appropriately termed “media studies bait” was what many took away from the talk. Again, I’d like to emphasize that there were many other ideas taken away from the talk — especially the ‘silo-busting’ phrase — and that McPherson is correct to be disappointed if that’s what people remembered from the otherwise inspiring, challenging, deeply insightful address.
But not only would I say that it’s not what those in actual attendance took away — it’s also not what those in the Twittersphere took away…..unless they tuned in for a single 3-minutes of Tweets and refused to look before or after. And for better or worse, McPherson knew she was being live-Tweeted, and that that phrase, no matter the context ,would read as incendiary. As Bethany Nowviskie points out, most of those critiqued on Twitter at academic conferences are also *present* on Twitter and able to respond; appropriately, Tara McPherson regularly tweets from conferences and even live-tweeted the speeches leading up to her own.
Which all brings me to my overarching point and title of this post: how criticism of how scholars are Twitter has the potential to scare grad students away from using it — especially in the conference setting — altogether.
Because our conferences are (relatively) small and the number of people Tweeting them is even smaller, those who are participating in the backchannel are highly visible. Many people *follow* the backchannel on their smartphones, but participate little or not at all — in part because it’s too cumbersome to update swiftly and eloquently on such devices. Yet those who are updating frequently, as I was, in part because I had a computer, but also because I’m a ridiculously fast typist (thanks to an Apple IIe program called ‘PAWS’ that I played non-stop from age 5-8), my handle and name was incredibly visible on the feed. Looking at the stream now, I’d venture that 75% of the Tweets came from non-professors.
Put differently, those who are in some ways most vulnerable to rumor and word of mouth — e.g. graduate students — are not only doing most of the labor in making the conference visible to the rest of the world….but also exposing ourselves to criticism and visibility by those who think that a.) Twitter doesn’t have a place at conferences or b.) we’re ‘getting it wrong.’ What bothers me about these particular critiques is their passive aggressivity: if I’m doing it wrong, tell me so, either in real life or on Twitter. Part of why I like Amanda’s recent post so much is her willingness to think through what worked and didn’t work with Twitter at CP — but I think that we need to have more frank conversations, especially with those who not only don’t Tweet, but don’t read academic blogs. To put it plainly: we need to have conversations with those who are most critical and dismissive of Tweeting, who are most often (but certainly not always) senior scholars, and who are often in charge of whether or not we, as graduate students, get hired.
Of course, scholars, whether professors or grad students, shouldn’t write things on the backchannel that they wouldn’t say in the Q&A session, and I was very careful to craft my own comments according to that maxim. Twitter shouldn’t be a gossip session — it should be an opportunity to better formulate responses to what’s being said…and also to help open up the conference to those not in attendance. I’ve had several non-academics on my Twitterstream tell me how fascinated they were to see the ‘innards’ of an academic conference — and that’s *exactly* the sort of positive exposure that we, as scholars whose work is often undervalued or ridiculed by those outside of the academia, should be looking for.
But if our legitimate responses to a panel — whether in the form of transcribed a quote that struck us as particularly incendiary, asking for more attention to race/class, or simply bemoaning the fact that a scholar seemed to be dismissive of a topic — become a liability, then it’ll certainly discourage us from continuing to cultivate the back channel in the future. Junior scholars should be encouraged to participate in discourse, both critical and affirmative, about scholarship — whether in spoken conversation or Tweeted @s. But the visibility following this particular conference, especially as I’m about to enter the job market in the Fall, makes me think twice about whether I’ll be live-Tweeting again.
Meta-Blogging: How to Maintain an Academic Blog…Tell your secrets?
When I posted the other day on George Clooney, my friend Colleen, who studies Japanese Film at UO, posted the following on my Facebook page:
Annie - I’ve been going back through the history of your blog and I have a question: how long do you spend writing your posts? I’m amazed at your loquacious and detailed narratives and although I imagine it gets easier as time goes by, you both inspire and daunt me. Particularly, regarding your very first post, I found myself thinking, “Yeah! The blogs in my field are COMPLETELY dominated by men…why the hell don’t I do something about it?!” So, could you talk about the process a little?
Now, the purpose of publishing Colleen’s comment for the world to see is not to prove that someone besides my mom and best friends read the blog. Or find me by turns daunting and inspiring. But I think that Colleen brings up a good point — and one that I’d like to discuss more with other academic bloggers — as to how best to start and sustain an (academically rooted) blog.
My Tactics:
- Figure out what kind of blog you want to have. I wanted to have an academic blog — but something that dealt specifically with my own research interests and was accessible to a general reading audience. I knew that my posts wouldn’t elaborately or perfectly researched, but they’d touch on things that had caught my attention. I also knew that I wanted the blog to be something regular — a living document, as opposed to one that comes to life a once a month. I wanted a readership. As such, I had to….
- Set a goal for posts a week. And try and stick to it. I think most bloggers try and do this; most also feel guilty when they fail. I don’t feel ‘guilty’ so much as pressed. If I indeed wanted the blog to perform as described above, I’d need to provide that many posts. I’d need to put it on my to-do list — and not necessarily last. If, as so many of us in the academic community are attempting to advocate, our ‘accomplishments’ as scholars are beginning to expand to include well-maintained blogs, columns at FlowTV.org, and ‘proctoring’ clips at inMediasRes, then I had to treat it as just as important as other things on the to-do list. This wasn’t just for fun or amusement — it’s part of my development as a scholar. But to make that tenable, I had to….
- Really like blogging. If you don’t like working through your ideas in writing, if you don’t like bouncing them off people or risking putting yourself out for critique, if you don’t like typing or working with something like WordPress, if you feel you don’t have enough to say but that you should have blog because other people do….it’s going to be tough to motivate, and you’re probably going to feel bad.
- More specifically: I ask my friends to write guest posts, which means that I can ‘provide content’ even when I don’t have as much time to write. I’ve also posted a few posts that draw heavily on things I’ve written in other contexts — in part to receive feedback, but also because it’s automatic content. I also write when I’m not on my ‘A-Game’: one thing I’ve learned in my years in grad school is to protect my ‘prime productivity hours’ as much as possible. When I’m most concentrated and alert, I do my ‘real’ writing. When I’m a little tired after dinner and can’t motivate to do any other work — that’s when I blog. Finally, I publicize it. At first, I felt really self-conscious about announcing new posts at Twitter or Facebook. But the best way to feel excited about your blog = other people reading your blog. And commenting, and making you think about what you’ve written, and what you’d like to write in the future. I’m curious about how other people feel about this — I, for one, feel oddly validated when a post generates readership (which you can track via your host’s dashboard) and/or comments.
For those of you who regularly blog, either ‘academically’ or on a more personal level, I’d really like to hear your own strategies — and I’m sure many others would like to as well.
Plea for Suggestions: Emblematic Stars of 1990 - The Present
JTT and Christian Slater: Two ’90s Stars I Probably Shouldn’t Write About
This post is a bit different, in that it’s not really a post so much as a plea.
Amidst all of my reading/prepping for my comprehensive exams in August, I’ve agreed to write a chapter in my Whitman mentor’s current book on Hollywood industry from 1990 - the present. (It’s not a collection — my contribution is kind of like the one-off chapters in the decade series, for those of you familiar with media studies texts). I’m to focus specifically on stardom (changes in, industrial concerns, etc. etc.) from 1990 - the present. Someone (CBD, I think?) suggested that I could arrange the chapter around case studies: stars whose paths encapsulate the various ways stardom has changed and been negotiated through the spread of new media, the indie early ’90s, the Weinsteins, the continued expansion and importance of the blockbuster, etc. etc. (Each star doesn’t have to relate to all of those topics, but I do need to touch on all of them at one point or another). He/she also doesn’t have had to be a huge star from 1990 to now — his/her career could have petered off, or just become a star in the last ten years, you get the picture.
I have a few ideas, but I’d really love/need to hear yours as well — I’m thinking I’ll want a total of three somewhat complimentary studies.
