#phd update

[bucheressofbudapest]

Doctoral office: Now all you have to do is to defend it

Me: Like with a sword?

[alltruedreamersdied]

I have an A on my thesis!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All my paper work and my thesis are handed in, and in two weeks time i have my defensio!

With today, this marks my last month in vienna!

Tomorrow I am signing the contract to a really beautiful flat!

how is everything running so.. semi-smoothly?

[bucheressofbudapest]

already at 143 pages asdkjakdljskja::::::::::::

I'm starting to believe that I'll actually get my phd... So that's what it feels like for people not suffering from impostor syndrome.

man what a trip *pikachu face*

[bucheressofbudapest]

Not even 24 hours of a ~90% effective social media detox (still popping by), and I managed to prove two of my research hypotheses within a day after months of zero (0) productivity. To celebrate, here's a photo from the library I was studying in today ✨

(might be familiar from The Alienist 👀)

[theancientgeekoroman]

An important life update!

I sing a bit, too, and I’m not sorry at all.

[red-jamie]

PhD update: Chapter 2 - Becoming a Feminist Fan (July 2019)

Well, having intended to post rather regularly (let’s say monthly) about my PhD progress, it goes without saying that this plan soon fell by the wayside. A quick search on my blog reveals that I haven’t updated since April 2018! Yikes!

If I were to summarise my 2018 in one word it would be “depression”. The second year PhD blues well and truly hit, and my productivity thesis-wise soon became, well, non-existent. I did, however, get some stuff done in 2018. Namely, I presented a conference paper about Skam fandom and Muslim girlhood in June 2019, and presented a more comprehensive version of the same paper again this February in the USA. I also submitted a rather complex and theoretical journal article (still waiting on the final decision), wrote an encyclopedia entry (which I did mention in my last post), and wrote two book reviews. I also have done quite a lot of teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level over the past two years, which I absolutely LOVE. I teach in the Politics dept. at my uni, but most of my teaching is in gender studies, cultural studies, and media and comms.

I finally returned to the results of my survey on Tumblr, fandom, and feminism in late 2018 and was, to say the least, a little overwhelmed (in a good way). Over 350 of you completed the survey and contributed more than 250,000 words worth of responses. I was deeply moved by the stories that unfolded throughout the survey responses, and have spent a great deal of time and emotion fretting about the ethics of my position as the custodian of this data, of the stories and experiences documented within it. I have laughed and I have cried while reading the survey responses. I won’t lie in saying it took me a good six months to properly read through the responses and to really let myself soak up your stories. The responses are so rich and varied, and it’s been really hard figuring out the best way to tell (and analyse) the stories held within. A lot of this work of analysing the responses is still yet to come. I am certain I will work with this data after my PhD, too. 

I’ve spent the past six months or so working on analysing and writing-up one of the central themes of the survey: Becoming. In the chapter I’ve (tentatively) completed, I focus on the self-narratives of becoming a feminist fan that you described in your responses to my survey. Firstly, I explore the accounts which describe explicitly encountering feminism for the first time through fandom/fannish spaces/fannish practices, and the way this impacted the process of coming to identify oneself as a feminist. Secondly, I explore the accounts from fans who position themselves as having always been a feminist* and examine the ways that you report carrying your feminism across into fandom. Throughout these accounts, I note how identity categories such as race, gender identity, sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity impact this process more broadly. There isn’t a singular or universal experience of this process of becoming a feminist fan. Finally, I explore the broader emphasis you placed on the fact that you’re in an ongoing and continuous process of becoming a feminist (fan). Lots of you talked about trying to unlearn white feminism and practice intersectional feminism through fandom, for instance, while others emphasised that your feminist trajectory has only just started. Writing this chapter was really fascinating, and I hope that I’ve managed to convey the complexity of the stories of becoming a feminist fan that you so wonderfully described.

In the chapter I’ve just started working on, I’m exploring the notion of “Belonging” within feminist-fannish spaces. As an extension of this, I’ll in turn explore the idea of not belonging. This will involved lending a more critical eye to fan practices that we often all too readily position as progressive (lots of responses, for example, talked about the whiteness of a lot of fanworks).

As always, if you have any questions about my research (particularly if you responded to my survey last year), please don’t hesitate to contact me. I promised I’ll update more regularly from now on. 

* = some people prefer to describe themselves as associated with social justice politics more so than feminism or feminist politics, while others tend to see them as interlinked if not identical. I myself tend to fall in the latter group. Nevertheless, the notion of a distinction between the two is interesting.

[red-jamie]

PhD update: Chapter 1, Fan Girls, Surveys, and Conferences... (April 2018)

It’s been just over a month since I launched my “Fandom, Feminism and Tumblr” survey as the first stage of my data collection for my PhD (side note: if you’re not aware, I’m doing a PhD about the intersection of digital feminism with media fandom on Tumblr!). In my survey, I promised to post regular updates about the progress of my thesis with you all under my “#phd update” tag, so here we go...

Those of you in the UK may well know that many lecturers and university support staff have been engaging in industrial action over a pension dispute over the past few months. As a member of university staff (I teach on undergraduate courses in gender studies and digital media and supervise MA dissertations), I have been on strike. My refusal to cross the picket line has inevitably disrupted my PhD research, so I haven’t been as productive as I’d have liked.

Nevertheless, I have now completed my first draft of the first chapter of my thesis. The chapter’s working title is “Scrapbooks, Zines, and Blogs: A History of Fannish Feminisms”. In this chapter, I examine the history of the relationship between feminism, fandom, and media-making practices from the late nineteenth century until the present day. I argue that the history of fannish and feminist media-making - from the creation of scrapbooks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to the creation of zines in the mid to late twentieth century to contemporary blogs and websites (and, of course, everything we post to our blogs and websites) - are intertwined. In this chapter, I’m trying demonstrate how the use of fandom to engage with feminist issues is not a “new” phenomena unique to the age of the internet, but has in fact been occurring for well over a century!

Last month I launched a survey as the first stage of my data collection, and this has been very successful so far. This week the survey reached 300+ responses!!! I’m currently putting most of my time into the theoretical component of my methodology chapter, but once that’s more-or-less complete I’m going to begin analysing the survey responses (that being said - the survey will still remain open until the end of summer). I’ve been so overwhelmed and moved by the enthusiastic response to my research so far, and I can’t wait to begin analysing everyone’s responses to my survey. 

I recently finished working on a 2000 word entry for the International Encylopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication that’ll be published in 2019. I wrote a definition of “Fan Girls”. My entry is split into three sections - “A History of the Fan Girl,” “Fan Girl Stereotypes,” and “Fan Girls’ Cultural Creativity.” In the coming weeks I’ll also be working on a conference paper that’s due in late June. I’ll be presenting a paper about the way that Skam fans discussed social and political issues through the lens of the Muslim character Sana Bakkoush (who I love deeply!!).

In the meantime, when I’ve not been working on my thesis I’m really loving hand embroidery right now. You can find some of my work on my Twitter.

As always, if you have any questions about my research please don’t hesitate to contact me.