Welcome to a special Oddities-themed week from In Media Res. All the pieces curated this week are from librarians addressing audio-visual archives and other library-based collections. Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, March 24, 2008 – Laurie Taylor (George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida) presents: “Re-contextualizing Archives”

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 – Joel Adams (Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) presents: “The Public Good and Corporate Goodies: A Genealogical Snapshot”

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 – Randall Renner (George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida) presents: “The power of the cliché in Televisionland”

Thursday, March 27, 2008 – Dina Benson (George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida) presents: ” My piece is: Bug vs. Book: The Eternal Struggle”

Friday, March 28, 2008 – Matt Mariner (George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida) presents: “Cream butter? Where’s the milk?!”

Welcome to a special 1970s Masculinity and the Media-themed week from In Media Res. Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, March 17, 2008 – Allison McCracken (DePaul University) presents: “‘The Most Gentle of Men’: Revising the Western Hero in NBC’s Centennial”

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 – Joe Wlodarz (University of Western Ontario) presents: ” Family Affairs: Gay Visibility and Hegemonic Masculinity in ’70s TV”

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 – Elana Levine (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) presents: ” Luke Spencer: General Hospital’s Repentant Rapist”

Thursday, March 20, 2008 – Greg Oguss (University of Southern California) presents: “Righteous Anger and the Fear of a Black Planet in Taxi Driver”

Friday, March 21, 2008 – Avi Santo (Old Dominion University) presents: “Hulk Smash Wimpy White Man Who is Also Hulk: Reasserting Masculine Authority through Masochism”

Please check out these wonderful contributions and offer your thoughts via a comment.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, March 10, 2008 – Robert Arnett (Old Dominion University) presents: “Architecture and Narrative in Michael Mann’s Crime Films”.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 – Lisa Nakamura (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) presents: “What Steven Wants: Gestural Computing, Digital Manual Labor, and the Boom! Moment”

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 – James Daniel Elam (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) presents: “‘Bollywood’s Index: Allusions and Inside Jokes in Om Shanti Om”

Thursday, March 13, 2008 – Craig O. Stewart (Old Dominion University) presents: “No intelligence allowed?”

Friday, March 14, 2008 – Bernard Timberg (East Carolina University Greenville) presents: “The 2008 Academy Awards Best Picture Nominations and Raymond Williams’ ‘Structure of Feeling’ of the Times”

Please check out these wonderful contributions and offer your thoughts via a comment.

Make sure you pop by the workshop on Scholarly Writing in the Digital Age, Saturday at noon. Avi and I, plus Alex Juhasz, Christian Keathley, Tara McPherson, and Jason Mittell will all be there, opening a conversation about the new modes of scholarly discourse made possible by networked environments like this one.

With the media studies community converging on Philly for SCMS this week, there will be no new In Media Res posts until next Monday, March 10th, when we will feature pieces by Robert Arnett, J. Daniel Elam, Lisa Nakamura, Craig Stewart, and Bernard Timberg.

Welcome to a special Regional Media-themed week from In Media Res. Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments and add your own thoughts and ideas about the series as well.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, February 25, 2008 – Victoria E. Johnson (University of California, Irvine) presents: “Revisiting Regionalism: Place-ing the Prime Time Past”

Tuesday, February 26, 2008 – Mark Williams (Dartmouth College) presents: “Burgundy Histories? WEWS-TV “Catch 5!” 1970s promo”

Wednesday, February 27, 2008 – Doug Battema (Western New England College) presents: “Baseball *Is* All It’s Quacked Up to Be”

Thursday, February 28, 2008 – Allison Perlman (Penn State Erie) presents: “Flying Classrooms in the Midwest: The MPATI’s Experiment in Regional Educational Television”

Friday, February 29, 2008 – Jeffrey P. Jones (Old Dominion University) presents: “What Role for Government TV in Community Life?”

Please check out these wonderful contributions and offer your thoughts via a comment

Cross-posted from if:book

A thought-provoking “meta-post” from Noah Wardrip-Fruin on Grand Text Auto reflecting on the blog-based review of his new book manuscript four chapters (and weeks) into the process. Really interesting stuff, so I’m quoting at length:

This week, when I was talking with Jessica Bell about her story for the Daily Pennsylvanian, I realized one of the most important things, for me, about the blog-based peer review form. In most cases, when I get back the traditional, blind peer review comments on my papers and book proposals and conference submissions, I don’t know who to believe. Most issues are only raised by one reviewer. I find myself wondering, “Is this a general issue that I need to fix, or just something that rubbed one particular person the wrong way?” I try to look back at the piece with fresh eyes, using myself as a check on the review, or sometimes seek the advice of someone else involved in the process (e.g., the papers chair of the conference).

But with this blog-based review it’s been a quite different experience. This is most clear to me around the discussion of “process intensity” in section 1.2. If I recall correctly, this began with Nick’s comment on paragraph 14. Nick would be a perfect candidate for traditional peer review of my manuscript — well-versed in the subject, articulate, and active in many of the same communities I hope will enjoy the book. But faced with just his comment, in anonymous form, I might have made only a small change. The same is true of Barry’s comment on the same paragraph, left later the same day. However, once they started the conversation rolling, others agreed with their points and expanded beyond a focus on The Sims — and people also engaged me as I started thinking aloud about how to fix things — and the results made it clear that the larger discussion of process intensity was problematic, not just my treatment of one example. In other words, the blog-based review form not only brings in more voices (which may identify more potential issues), and not only provides some “review of the reviews” (with reviewers weighing in on the issues raised by others), but is also, crucially, a conversation (my proposals for a quick fix to the discussion of one example helped unearth the breadth and seriousness of the larger issues with the section).

On some level, all this might be seen as implied with the initial proposal of bringing together manuscript review and blog commenting (or already clear in the discussions, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and others, of “peer to peer review”). But, personally, I didn’t foresee it. I expected to compare the recommendation of commenters on the blog and the anonymous, press-solicited reviewers — treating the two basically the same way. But it turns out that the blog commentaries will have been through a social process that, in some ways, will probably make me trust them more.

Welcome to a special Guilty Pleasures-themed week from In Media Res. All the contributions this week address this concept through texts that we, as scholars, are often conflicted to admit we enjoy watching. Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, February 18, 2008 – Dan Leopard (St. Mary’s College) presents: “Carl Sagan’s Contact”

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 – Barbara Selznick (University of Arizona) presents: “Mothers and Daughters: Watching The Gilmore Girls”

Wednesday, February 20, 2008 – Michael Z. Newman (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) presents: “Transgression, Confession, and Ying Yang Twins’s ‘Wait (The Whisper Song)’”

Thursday, February 21, 2008 – Sarah Kremen-Hicks (Independent Scholar) presents: “A Demonic Ménage à Trois: Audience Participation and Bedroom Politics in Hex”

Friday, February 22, 2008 – Jeremy Butler (University of Alabama) presents: “Guts Don’t Come Cheap in the Cinématheque, Pal: Guilt, Pleasure, and America’s Funniest Home Videos”

Please check out these wonderful contributions and offer your thoughts via a comment.

Last week, Danah Boyd announced that henceforth she would only publish in open access journals and urged others — especially tenured faculty, who are secure in their status and have little to lose — to do the same.

I’d be sad to see some of the academic publishers go, but if they can’t evolve to figure out new market options, I have no interest in supporting their silencing practices. I think that scholars have a responsibility to make their work available as a public good. I believe that scholars should be valued for publishing influential material that can be consumed by anyone who might find it relevant to their interests. I believe that the product of our labor should be a public good. I do not believe that scholars should be encouraged to follow stupid rules for the sake of maintaining norms. Given that we do the bulk of the labor behind journals, I think that we can do it without academic publishers…

Welcome to a special LOST-themed week from In Media Res.

All of the pieces this week have been curated by contributors to the forthcoming anthology Reading Lost, edited by Roberta Pearson and published by I.B. Taurus. Please feel free to respond to the contributors’ comments and add your own thoughts and ideas about the series as well.

This week’s In Media Res line-up:

Monday, February 11, 2008 – Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham) presents: “Lost as TV3”

Tuesday, February 12, 2008 – Will Brooker (Kingston University) presents: ” Man Out of Time: Lost Season 3 Finale”

Wednesday, February 13, 2008a – Stacey Abbott (Roehampton University) presents: “The Conundrum of the Character-Driven Plot in Lost”

Wednesday, February 13, 2008b – Ivan Askwith (Big Spaceship) presents: “‘You Got No Idea What’s Goin’ On On That Island!’: Viewer Skepticism Over Lost’s Long-Term Plan”

Thursday, February 14, 2008 – Julian Stringer (University of Nottingham) presents: ” “*Lost* is a Four Letter Word”

Friday, February 15, 2008 – Jason Mittell (Middlebury College) presents: ” Synchronizing Complexity”