Introductions

[forthwritten]

If you'd like to introduce yourself you can do so here. What's your subject area? What are your research and/or teaching interests? What do you do to relax?

Comments

[luciente]

Hi, I'm Clare. I'm coming to the end of my 2nd year, studying media convergence and transmedia storytelling. On the one hand, my PhD involves months where I can do nothing but watch Doctor Who and call it work; on the other, it involves a degree of theoretical work and poking at concepts that makes my brain ache (I'm basically developing pretty much from scratch a critical theory and method for studying character in transmedia fiction). My research interests generally are in the relationship between fictional texts and their media, processes of translation or extension of fictional works across media, sf&f studies (the subject of my MA), videogame studies, and fan studies.

Researching texts and media I love and enjoy sounded like a great idea at the time, but it does make relaxation awfully difficult; everything I used to do for fun now feels like work :( I've developed a love of cooking, though, which never fails to calm me down when I'm in a thesis-stress, and I swim a lot.

[rhivolution]

I know the feeling regarding 'yes, studying fun things that I like!' turning into a mindsucking inability to relax with them; see my inability to watch most of this series of Doctor Who or Leverage. Also, your academic interests sound relevant to my interests and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

By the by, does your username refer to Woman on the Edge of Time?

[luciente]

It is! Luciente made quite an impression on me when I first read the book, and I've used the name as a screenname on and off for a good 6 or 7 years (there's some appalling early attempts at Harry Potter fandom under it somewhere ¬_¬).

Yay, another media/cultural studies person :) Although I'm a fairly recent convert - I used to be one of Those People who are snobbish about media & cultural studies, but I've very much seen the error of my ways :D Trying to get people to realise what valuable subjects they are has actually become a bit of a soapbox of mine, heh. I do wish I'd started studying it earlier, though; my BA is a super-traditional English Lit degree, and while that's useful in many respects, it means I'm missing a basic familiarity with media studies that sometimes kicks my PhD in the shins a bit.

Your dissertation sounds AWESOME, btw. I love the idea of presenting dissertations in non-traditional forms; I really wish I was able to do mine as a hypertext project, but there's not much support for that kind of experimentation in my uni.

I don't really use Dreamwidth other than to read and comment on friends who don't want to use lj, but if you ever want to chat more, I'm fanbeatsman at livejournal :)

[rhivolution]

I think the important thing with media studies is to have a sort of click moment where you realise that everything, no matter how vapid, is a product of time and place and culture, and therefore something you can learn from. And that sentence ended with a preposition. Augh. Too lazy to try and rework it, it's hot today.

Anyway, my diss is video based as a requirement of the course; it's a combination of academic and vocational (e.g. production work) media studies, so learning to construct a documentary is considered important. Of course, then I've got the defence paper to write, god help me. Not that I'm a bad writer, but it's so hard to find theory that backs up my work.

Friended you on LJ if that's okay, no obligation to friend back. (I'm rhipowered if you wonder who the heck that person is.)