Profile

April 5, 2013

My Faculty Web Page.

I have broken down and signed up for Facebook (here) because my university is encouraging us to use social media. Feel free to follow me if you wish (or friend) (or like) (or whatever--I'm still not totally FB literate).

I received my doctorate in English at the University of Washington in 1992. I have a master's in creative writing, and second master's (from the Bread Loaf School of Literature) in English. I came to A&M-Commerce when it was East Texas State University in 1993. My areas of of scholarship include fan studies, speculative fiction, corpus stylistics, and adaptation studies in film (specifically, Peter Jackson's live-actions films).

My teaching areas are creative writing, critical theory (critical race feminism, gender/queer theories, and sociolinguistics), and new media (which means considering the ways that the internet is changing the creation, production, and circulation of content. I have been teaching online courses since 2006, and am currently working on initiatives to consider new ways to integrate social networking sites in classrooms, especially in relation to cultural studies topics.

My past publications include editing the first encyclopedia on women in science fiction (2008 Greewood Press), and essays on feminisms in sf, The Lord of the Rings (novel and/or film) and fan fiction. My current work falls under the area of digital humanities and corpus stylistics, both in fan studies and Tolkien Studies. Current works in progress include collaborative efforts with colleagues in linguistics and social sciences to create research networks and multidisciplinary methodologies in relation to the internet; the development of a Tolkien Corpus; and two novels that can best be described as queer paranormal fictions. I regularly attend the national Popular and American Culture conference where I present in the fan theory and culture area, and the Tolkien at Kalamazoo track at the International Congress on Medieval studies at Western Michigan University.

I have begun in the last couple of years to work on scholarship on racism imbroglios and colorblind racism in online media fandom(s), and while I talk generally about it under my fan pseudonym, and post more stuff locked to my friends list/reading circle, I've been struggling with the ethics of open access, the need to not keep the scholarship in the vacuum. Fandom has always been quite happy to analyze and critique academics who are analyzing fandom, and that's important.

I've realized that while I cannot post the actual drafts in progress openly online (I did a quick and dirty survey of academic journal editors of fantastic journals on whether they would publish a completed essay that grew from, say, a presentation that was posted openly online, and their answers varied, but it seems that there are additional pressures (economic, databases, etc.) on editors to print only "original" (never previously published, even online) material. But I decided that I can post abstracts, and the occasional handout, of the pilot project data analysis, and that my academic DW/LJ would be an appropriate place to do so.

I'm currently working on various grants, and the importance of open access is clear in all U.S. federal agencies these days: open access in this context means that if US taxpayers are paying to support research, they should have open access to it (without having to go through for profit and locked down databases/journals). Part of my grant proposal will be a wiki or equivalent online space for the Racefail Corpora that will make the material available for others to analyze (no material that is not publicly available on the internet will be in the corpora). The corpus stylistics project I'm working on demands a group/collaborative effort. Now, academic time being what it is, we're talking several years down the road *even if* the first grant application is funded (they rarely are).

This space, therefore, will be my public discussion space during these early stages of the process.

A few notes:

1. Identity, naming, pseudonyms

While I have the privilege of being able to be fairly open among fans and academics about linking my offline name and my online fan pseudonym, I prefer not to post the two together, publicly, on the same page. So I will not use my fan pseud in this space or in any other public posts or comments. I cannot control what others do, and I have been outed before. It happens. However, I will moderate comments to be sure that no outing (connecting of offline name and fan pseudonym) is done in this space, and anybody who outs anybody in the comments will be banned.

2. Comment moderation, anonymous comments, deletion policy

I have set both journals to allow anonymous comments, and comments both at LJ and DW, but for now, I am screening all comments from registered users who are not on my flist/access list as well as anonymous comments. We'll see how things work out over time.

I am tracking IP addresses on all comments, registered users or anonymous.


PAST INFORMATION KEPT FOR ARCHIVAL PURPOSES!

March 6, 2010: I am moving this account to Dreamwidth because of my unhappiness with LiveJournal's actions over the last few years. This account will not be deleted, but it will no longer be updated, nor will I be reading over here.


July 2, 2007

LiveJournal is, for me, a perfect example of process and change, a way to track some strands of the web of languages, interests, and communities that interest me.

I first came into LJ in 2003, having had no experience with online fandom or social spaces or electronic communication beyond email and listservs (primarily related to my academic work). I wanted to stay in touch with friends I had met at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (www.iafa.org). On the plane home, I started writing my first slash story.

I then realized my LJ would be a fan journal although I also used it as a personal diary, a place to rant (locked down) about work, and, increasingly, as an extended support group and sounding board for my academic work. It wasn't enough that I started writing fanfic: I went one step further (maybe ten) and began writing scholarship on fan fiction.

Since spring 2003, I have not only written reams of fan fiction, I have learned new technical skills, written academic essays collaboratively with friends here in LJ, and begun teaching online.

This LJ is one I've set up as my general academic one, under my full and legal name.

I have more specialized ones (for my academic work on fan fiction and my teaching online journal, as well as communities, not too active at the moment, relating to some of my work).

My original reason for starting *this* LJ was in response to an imposter journal set up by a disgruntled student at MySpace (which was been removed when I notified them that it was a fake account). Then, debate over acacdemic/fan splits in terms of weblogs versus LiveJournal began to occur, and I decided that I wanted to stay in LJ under my academic persona rather than move into the "blogosphere."

Since part of my interest in teaching online involves the issue of online literacies, I plan to use this blog in two ways: first, as a way to explore ideas relating to my teaching and scholarship; and second, as a way to track some of what I observe in academic spaces and cultures. For some years, the issue of academics exploring ideas in more general and public spaces has been debated; while the debate has been going on, the world wide web offers an opportunity to do exactly that. So we'll see how it works.