While I certainly agree that reports of the ‘death of the novel’ have been greatly exaggerated, and anxieties about new media technologies and the threats they allegedly pose to literature may reflect fears about larger societal changes, it is difficult to accept the conclusion that critiques of technology always function as covert attacks against identity politics. (Enns)

When I first read Anthony Enns’ extremely long review of my book, published early in March on electronic book review, my initial thought was that he just hadn’t read it very closely, and therefore mistook carefully qualified claims for gross generalizations. But gradually it began to dawn on me: his review may be less a misreading than an enactment of precisely the anxious response that I outline in the book. It’s the best explanation I can come up with for the many conflations, reductions, and misinterpretations in the review: I think I touched a nerve.

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(Crossposted from MediaCommons.)

I’ve hinted over the last several months that big things were afoot for MediaCommons, but haven’t been able to be terribly specific; at last, however, the haps:

Our friends at the Institute for the Future of the Book have today announced their new institutional partnership with New York University (which NYU likewise announced recently).

Happily, the first fruits of this partnership directly benefit MediaCommons; working with the NYU digital library team, we have received an NEH Digital Startup Grant that will enable us to build the social networking backend for the fully-functional MediaCommons network we’ve been planning.

As Ben notes at if:book, we’re all enormously excited, and we’ll be looking forward to announcing more such developments in the future.

Alarmingly, we’ve hit the midpoint of spring break already, and this is the first time I’ve managed to post. I’ve meant to post every day — really, I have — but what with one thing and another…

• One thing: a really nasty cold that began settling in, of course, last Saturday.
• Another: the knowledge that these few days are the only bit of time to work on my chapter-in-progress for the foreseeable future.

Between having a head full of ideas about my project and a head full of best-left-undescribed other substances, I haven’t really given posting a second thought. The chapter is rocking along; I think I’m moving into the home stretch with it. And the cold is beginning to recede, thank goodness.

For now, though, just a quick update on my whereabouts for the coming weeks, partially by way of preemptive excuses for future lulls:

• Thursday and Friday, March 20 and 21: Fresno. I’m giving a talk at a colloquium on the future of the book at Cal State, Fresno, which is drawn from the chapter I’m madly trying to finish; fortunately, the talk will primarily focus on the background materials, which are firmly in place.
• Wednesday to Saturday, March 26 to 29: New Orleans. I’m giving a talk at Tulane on Thursday afternoon, drawn from another chapter of the project, and moderating a panel on Pynchon on Saturday at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.
• Thursday to Saturday, April 3 to 5: San Francisco. I’m giving a presentation at the NITLE Summit on my uses of Drupal and other web technologies in my teaching.

I’ll hope to blog some of the other talks at these events, which promise to be great. In the interim, however, back to preparing my own…

For the last couple of years, I’ve been a member of the executive committee of the MLA’s discussion group on literature and media (a group name that makes me a little bonkers). Each year, we sponsor one panel at the convention; this year’s call for papers is below. If you’re working on Second Life, please send Matt your proposal ASAP!

Session sponsored by the MLA’s Media and Literature Discussion Group
for the 2008 convention in San Francisco:

Second Lives: Reading and Writing Virtual Worlds

Second Life and other persistent virtual worlds, with preference to topics other than pedagogy. 1-page abstract and short vita by March 15 to Matthew Kirschenbaum, mgk AT umd DOT edu.

The symposium was a smashing success, I’m happy to report; the talks were all pitch-perfect and, for a Saturday, we got a respectable turnout. Honestly, though, I’d have been fine if it had just been me in the audience, at least on a certain level — I felt as though I’d thrown myself a day-long party, and if other people wanted to come, it was that much more fun.

All that said, I still feel like I’ve been beaten with a two-by-four for the last several days. It’s going to take a bit for me to recover — and given that I’m flying off to Philly for SCMS at oh-dark-thirty on Wednesday, I’m not going to have much opportunity.

Hopefully there’ll be more blogging, though, recovered or not; I’ve got a serious itch to get back to work, and want to post about it…

I’ve been writing up a storm in whatever stolen moments I can get, and working like a fiend at every other hour of the day, with the exceptions of the ones where I sleep (not enough, and not terribly well) and the ones where I watch season 5 of The Wire, which has completely and totally broken my heart this season by being so devastatingly good that I cannot bear the knowledge that I’ve only got one more new episode to watch ever, and In Treatment, which I began watching out of mild formal curiosity (how long can a narrative series that’s on five nights a week hold up?) but have gotten quite caught up in.

Aside from those bits of narrative pleasure, it’s sheer madness: preparing for class, producing endless amounts of administrative paperwork, responding to ridiculous numbers of email messages. And, not least, event planning.

On the one hand, I hate event planning; I don’t like the kind of organization that it requires of me, I don’t like being responsible for a bunch of details that I honestly don’t care about, and I really, really hate having to wrangle people who temperamentally resist wrangling.

On the other hand, this week’s events — Thursday, the English department’s big annual lecture; Friday, a gala celebration for the Media Studies program, its alumni, and its friends; Saturday, a day-long symposium thinking about the shifts and transitions in media production and consumption being produced by the digital — promise to be amazing.

I intend to sleep all day on Sunday, if I can possibly get away with it. I’ll hope to have something new to say thereafter.

The good news is that I’ve been writing fairly well, am close to a draft on the new article/chapter, and am also close to a draft of the book/project proposal.

The bad news is that I’ve been spending a little more time writing than I probably ought to, and so am horrifically behind on everything else. And I’m a couple of weeks away from five solid weeks of complete insanity.

The good news is that I’m feeling good about my general productivity, and my specific projects.

The bad news is that productivity elsewhere has me posting yet another “why I’m not posting” post.

There will be more good news to come, I’m sure. And no doubt more bad news to follow. Back to work…

Transformative Works and Cultures, an exciting new electronic journal (whose board I’m on) published by the Organization for Transformative Works, has just released its first CFP:

New Journal Announcement/CFP

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is a Gold Open Access international peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works edited by Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson.

TWC publishes articles about popular media, fan communities, and transformative works, broadly conceived. We invite papers on all related topics, including but not limited to fan fiction, fan vids, mashups, machinima, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and any and all aspects of the communities of practice that surround them. TWC’s aim is twofold: to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community.

We encourage innovative works that situate these topics within contemporary culture via a variety of critical approaches, including but not limited to feminism, queer theory, critical race studies, political economy, ethnography, reception theory, literary criticism, film studies, and media studies. We also encourage authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship, hypertext articles, or other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. TWC copyrights under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Theory accepts blind peer-reviewed essays that are often interdisciplinary, with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offers expansive interventions in the field of fan studies (5,000-8,000 words).

Praxis analyzes the particular, in contrast to Theory’s broader vantage. Essays are blind peer reviewed and may apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; or otherwise relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or historical frameworks (4,000-7,000 words).

Symposium is a section of editorially reviewed concise, thematically contained short essays that provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures (1,500-2,500 words).

Reviews offer critical summaries of items of interest in the fields of fan and media studies, including books, new journals, and Web sites. Reviews incorporate a description of the item’s content, an assessment of its likely audience, and an evaluation of its importance in a larger context (1,500-2,500 words). Review submissions undergo editorial review; submit inquiries first to review@transformativeworks.org.

TWC has rolling submissions. Contributors should submit online through the Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org). Inquiries may be sent to the editors (editor@transformativeworks.org).

The call for papers is available as a .pdf download sized for U.S. Letter (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/docs/twc-flyer-US-letter.pdf) or European A4 (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/docs/twc-flyer-A4.pdf).

I have had one of those days that makes me want to run away and never ever be in charge of anything again.

That is all.

Week 1 status report:

– Classes are overflowing, but the overflow seems to have ebbed a bit, at least in one of them.

– 4500 words written on new article draft; 1000ish words written on “book” proposal draft.

– Excitement about classes and writing projects has not abated.

– Nonetheless, I’m really, really happy it’s the weekend.

Have a good one, all.