Defining The Intermodernist Sex/Gender System: Beginning Steps Using The Mortal Storm & Three Guineas

(almost done clearing out the graduate school queue)

For Dr. Bluemel’s seminar on Intermodernism, I wrote my seminar paper in an attempt to define some sort of “sex/gender” system for Intermodernism, beginning with her own full length George Orwell & The Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism In Literary London. To do this, of course, I relied heavily on Gayle Rubin from a theoretical standpoint. From a literary point of view, my focus was on Phyllis Bottome’s The Mortal Storm and Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas.

Signifying Nothing Episode Twenty Two

https://signifyingnothing.net/uncategorized/signifying-nothing-episode-twenty-two/

Playlist

Discharge-Protest & Survive (Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing)
Black Flag-Thirsty & Miserable (Program: Annihilator)

Pisschrist-Plastic Security (Split With Framtid)
Avengers-The American In Me (Self Titled)

Face Value-Someday (Only The Strong)
Floorpunch-No Exceptions (Division One Champs)

Brotherhood-The Deal (Words Run As Thick As Blood)
Mind Eraser-Wrote Off (Glacial Reign)

Bl’ast!-Look Into Myself (It’s In My Blood)
Minutemen-Shit From An Old Notebook (Double Nickels On The Dime)

Shitlickers-Armed Revolution (Cracked Cop Skulls)

• Shitlickers sleeve gallery from Shit-Fi

• Shitlickers article from Crust War Fanzine (done by member of Disclose)

• New Vulgate on the pre-Minutemen band The Reactionaries

• Double Cross interview with singer of Bl’ast! (Part One) (Part Two)

• Face Value discography

Authority & Linearity In Classic Literature

My final graduate school paper was on the role of linearity in classical literature and how women subvert and become subverted by it. My primary focus was on The Descent of Inanna, but I also discuss The Rig Veda, the Persephone myth from The Homeric Hymns, and the Hebrew Bible. This paper was an extension of what I had written about the entire semester.

Patriarchal Authority & “Coming Home” In Tragedy

(trying to clear backlog of graduate school writing)

For Dr. Evarts’ seminar on tragedy, I wrote my seminar paper on the role of “coming home” in tragedy and how that affects the power and authority of women. I focused on The Oresteia, The Homecoming, and A Doll’s House, with some references as well to the plays of Dacia Maraini. Critically, my focus is on Kristeva, Prentice, Moi, and, of course, Rubin. Overall, I am not that happy with this paper. We got sidetracked a LOT in this class, so class discussion of some works was unsubstantive. At best. Add a bit of interlibrary loan bad luck, and my best work was not done. I am still pretty proud of the angle I took, especially since it seemed to make some people in the room uncomfortable.

Guest Blogging: Prof Hacker + Blogging Woolf

I want to highlight a few guest blog posts I have contributed in recent weeks:

First, I contributed to Prof Hacker’s big #mla09 wrapup about the role of social media at the conference. There is a lot of great information and ideas in that post. I tried to come at it from a different angle that hopefully supplement the other ideas.

Secondly, I wrote a post about the role of intertextuality in Mrs. Dalloway for the Blogging Woolf weblog. This coincides with the Mrs. Dalloway Online Discussion Day that happened a day later as part of Woolf In Winter. Hopefully, in the future, I will be writing a few more posts for Blogging Woolf.

(Re)Framing Transmedial Narratives

The absolute highlight of my time at MLA09 was the night panel on transmedia narratives. I finally got to meet my friend Christy Dena and also catch up with some other friends. Here are my notes:

Marc Ruppel

• The biggest shift in storytelling has been multiplatform narratives
• What are they? digital/analog, oral/audio, etc
• Examples of transmedia narratives: Lost, Buffy The Vampire Slayer series eight comic, etc
• Connectivity: Edges as transactional spaces
• Reading paths, instead of just left to right now…(It’s refreshing to hear this; I’ve been saying this for a long time!!!)

Migratory cues:

• Direct-URLs, books, phone numbers, business cards (the series Heroes was the example for some of these)
• Intermedial-Direct prescence of one site’s content in anothers
• Intersectional-One site reflects and approximates momentary events of another
• Often used in combination
• Visualize network as a whole

Christy Dena

• Presence of narrative and non-narrative
• Jenkins transmedia storytelling definition
• Transmedia fiction definition: stories and games
• Distributed narratives, Jill Walker-Rettberg definition
• Jane McGonigal/Ubiquitous Gaming
• Jesper Juul/Definition of “game” (I wrote about that once)
• Fictional world is transmodel

After this, I just sat and listened to everything Christy was saying. Her work is fascinating and close to what I originally wanted to write about in my Master’s Thesis before sliding to something more “Englishy” (see my first symposium presentation about Distributed Narrative)

I also asked a question to Marc and Christy about the role of canon in fan culture. Specifically, I was curious how they regarded fan fiction and spinoff noncanonical media in regards to their examples of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. The BTVS series eight comic is pretty established as canonical, but what about Doctor Who where there are numerous comics, Big Finish audios, and other things where their place in the canon is murky at best. Both Marc and Christy said that trying to decipher between all of that just wasn’t worth doing, so they regards everything in the same manner. I can certainly understand that.

Afterwards, while catching up with Christy, we also talked about the defining of new terms which she does in her work. While writing my Master’s Thesis, I had trouble enough with resistance to terms like ergodic, distributed narrative, hypertext, etc. Christy is creating new terms as she goes.

Links & Kinks In The Chain: Collaboration In The Digital Humanities

One of the best panels I attended was on the role of collaboration in the Digital Humanities. I got to meet up with some friends from Prof Hacker and Twitter like Jason Jones and Bethany Nowviskie, who were both on the panel. I also caught up with other friends who I have known for some time as well.

My notes aren’t really detailed, I suppose, but here is what I wrote down during the panels:

Jason Jones

• What does collaboration mean?
• Social media role
• Twitter is a crowd sourced search engine
• Institution based models of collaboration are 20th century

Laura Mandell

• Two point of views about collaboration
• Hybrid scholar: Interdisciplinary scholar who begins in English, but ends up in computer science
• Hybrid field: Experts in discipline come together (Example: An English professor and a java scriptor) to work on a project
• Hybirds don’t have fit in modern university
• Modern universities prioritizes those in ensconced fields

Bethany Nowviskie “Monopolies of Invention”

• Consider institutional status (staff, adjuncts, etc) “can’t afford to make trouble”
• Digital Humanities can fix intellectual property problems
• UVA must tell patent office about new patentable DH