COMING UP ON THURSDAY: Next week we’ll be discussing historical and archival research, and, in honor of the 50th anniversary of hip hop, we’ll be reading a bit about the hip hop archive. This Thursday, October 12, at 7pm, Bright Bulb Screenings will be, well, screening some films chronicling the history of Philly hip hop and R&B. You might want to check it out!
THIS WEEK: Writing isn’t simply a means of expressing your research “findings”; it’s also a means of finding things out. Particularly in interpretive research, the argument and insight often emerge through the writing (and iterative revision). Writing is itself an investigative and analytic method. It can be a bureaucratic endeavor, or an exercise in engineering or politicking. It can be a creative practice, too; the form and style we adopt can embody our theoretical alignments and aesthetic tastes. Usually, writing is all three at once.
Today, we’ll talk about the kinds of writing that Media Studies invites and needs, the writing and revision process, publishing venues, the publishing process (including peer-review and editing), the values inherent in – and the political-economy undergirding – academic publishing, and various protocols you should know about.
IN-CLASS WORKSHOP: We’ll give you some time in class to work on your Methods Toolkit entries, then engage in a little rudimentary peer review of each other’s work. If time allows, we’ll also discuss “the abstract” as a genre.
To Read for Today:
- What topic of analysis, theoretical frames, and kinds of writing has film studies welcomed over the years? Read Elena Gorfinkel, “Promiscuous Histories, Materialist Theories, Speculative Poetics,” JCMS 57:2 (Winter 2018): 121-5.
- I read several dozen academic writing guides so you wouldn’t have to 😉. Read my “Forms of Scholarship: Writing” [on voice, style, structure, process, citation], which is really more of a commonplace book than an essay with a cohesive argument. You might also be interested in our Arena Channel on “Acknowledgments + Citation.”
- Despite the fact that some academic articles adhere to a formal template — introduction, literature review, methods, discussion, conclusion — we can think more creatively about structure and style. Over the years John McPhee has written several pieces for The New Yorker (later coalesced into a chapter for his Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process) about his rigorous approach to crafting argumentative and narrative structure. See John McPhee, “Structure,” New Yorker (January 14, 2013). Certain venues — particularly more progressive, interdisciplinary scholarly journals and para-academic ones — welcome unconventional work! I’ll share some examples in class. For more, see our Arena Channels on Writing Structure and Prose Parts (titles, introductions, signposting, conclusions, etc.
- Where might we publish our work? We’ll talk about calls for proposals (CFPs), edited collections, and unsolicited submissions. Please skim (as you might’ve already done last week!) the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ list of Film/Media Journals, ScreenSite’s list of media-related journals and blogs, and the International Association for Media and Communication Research’s list of Open Access Journals. If you want to know more, check out our Arena channels on Venues + Metrics and Open Access.
- Given that our work is about various media forms, how do we include or reference those media forms within our publications? Skim PennLibraries’ “Copyright Resources to Support Publishing and Teaching” and its LibGuide for “Finding + Using Images.” Then skim the Society for Cinema and Media Studies’s “Fair Use Policies.” This all probably sounds very complicated and bureaucratic. It is, but it’s necessary to understand these matters in order to engage with our subject matter and exercise our academic freedom. We’ll talk through it together 😉For more, see our Arena channel on Rights Clearances and Fair Use.
- What about the review process? Read COPE’s “Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers” [pdf] (n.d.) and Joy Misra and Jennifer Lundquist’s “How to Slam-Dunk a Revision,” Inside Higher Ed (January 11, 2017). For more, see our Arena Channel on Peer Review, Editing + Revision.
- Finally, if you’d like to think more about the values and political-economic infrastructures underlying this entire “knowledge production” process, skim Alex Ketchum’s Engage in Public Scholarship: A Guide to Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia University Press, 2022). You might also be interested in this New Books Network interview with Ketchum.
