In the coming year, I’m going to be going up for a promotion review, and along with all the other attendant stress work, I need to develop a list of potential outside reviewers for my case. (I’m replacing “stress” with “work” here in no small part because this review has far lower stakes than the last; if it doesn’t go well, the worst that will happen is that my feelings will be hurt.)

Here’s the thing, though: for this particular review, all the outside reviewers have to be full professors. And while there are a fair number of full profs in media studies, broadly construed, most of them are in film studies on the one hand, or have come out of communication on the other — which is to say that either their object or their methods bear very little in common with mine.

So I need to develop a list of full professors who are working in digital media studies from a humanities-based critical/theoretical viewpoint, and I’ve decided to attempt to crowd-source this list, not least because I know that there are several folks out there not far behind me who will have need of this list in the not-too-distant future.

The more inclusive and extensive the list, the better, I think, so I’m including folks whose work literally grows out of media studies along with those whose work (like mine) has come to media studies from a more traditional humanities discipline. I’ll begin with a few that occur to me right off the bat:

Cathy Davidson, Duke University
N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University
Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California
Anne Balsamo, University of Southern California
Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara
Anna Everett, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jeffrey Schnapp, Stanford University
Neil Fraistat, University of Maryland
Jerome McGann, University of Virginia
Johanna Drucker, University of Virginia

I know I’m missing some obvious names, and there are probably many less obvious ones as well. Who should be added to this list? Are there other ways to approach such a list that I’m not thinking of?

The good news is that I’ve gotten my exercise today: after dragging the suitcase to the train station, and up and down the various flights of stairs between its entrance and the entrance to the airport, I was sent by the monitors to the far end of the airport to check in, only to find that in fact I needed the near end of the airport after all. And then, after the appointed wait, I walked the half-mile to the gate, only to find that my flight’s been delayed by an hour and a half, so I’ve now walked the half-mile back to the lounge.

The other good news is that my 4.5 hour layover in Houston is now something more like a 3 hour layover. (Though bizarrely the Continental website is saying we’ll only be 15 minutes late, which will be something of a feat!) And the other other good news is that I’ve still got room to spare, in the event of further delays.

And there’s plenty of coffee, and hot and cold running internet. So I guess it’s all good news from here.

I’m standing in the airport, after the usual delirious experience of waking up at 3.30 am to be ready for my 4.30 am cab. The flight I’m about to board, as usual, will take me to Houston, but then from there, I’m on first to Amsterdam and then to Trondheim, Norway, where I’m serving as first opponent on a dissertation defense. Last night, I went back into Jill’s archives to remind myself of what this process is like; it sounds like it ought to be a fascinating experience.

And that’s aside from the fact that it’s taking place in Norway. Unfortunately, given the time and the distance, I won’t be able to pop in on folks I know there, but I hope to see a little bit of the place.

And to relax some. Given that I just wrapped the draft of the book up on Friday, this trip is pretty much what constitutes my summer vacation, and I intend to make the most of it. I have a tiny bit of work with me, but 80% of the reading I have with me is for nothing but fun.

More from the other side.

Oh. Hi there! Gee, um… long time no see.

So I’ve just five minutes ago submitted the book manuscript that I’ve been working on for the last bit. (And just FYI, the deadline was today. And I took the last two days to fiddle with formatting, proofreading, screenshot collection, and the like. I’m stunned to be on time, because honestly, I never thought I’d make it.)

Anyhow, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking to myself, you know, one of the nice things about finishing the manuscript will be that I don’t know what I’m doing next. I’ve got some projects in the pipeline, don’t get me wrong, but no big, focused Project. Which means that I’m actually going to get to pay attention to the small things — which is to say that I’m going to get to be a blogger again.

The first order of business, however, is knocking a few things off the to-do list, where they’ve languished all summer while I sprinted for the finish line. And then I’m going to be working on getting the manuscript posted online, at MediaCommons, for open review. I hope that participating in the discussions coming out of that review process will constitute my primary scholarly work for the fall — and so I hope that you’ll come by and read and leave me whatever feedback you have to share.

Which is to say that I’ll be haranguing you to do so. But hopefully I’ll be able to pay attention to other things going on in the world, too…