I'm thrilled to be part of the editorial team that brings you the first issue of the new open access, international, peer-reviewed journal Transformative Works and Cultures! You can read the press release or dive straight into the table of contents. Many thanks go to our tireless editors, Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson, without whom this project would never have come to fruition.

I'd like to call special attention to the feature I had the greatest hand in, an audio podcast of the presentations and discussion from the post-"fandebate" workshop at Console-ing Passions last Spring. It is our hope that sharing the event virtually will help inspire continuing conversations about gender and other inequalities in fan culture.

TWC is now seeking submissions for future issues including a special issue on video games and gaming. I've included the CFP below; please assist us in spreading the word!

Special Issue: Games as Transformative Works
Transformative Works and Cultures, Vol. 2 (Spring 2009)
Deadline: November 15, 2008
Guest Editor: Rebecca Carlson

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) invites essays on gaming and gaming culture as transformative work. We are interested in game studies in all its theoretical and practical breadth, but even more so in the way fan culture shapes itself around and through gaming interfaces. Potential topics include but are not limited to game audiences as fan cultures; anthropological approaches to game design and game engagement; on- and off-line game experiences; textual and cultural analysis of games; fan appropriations and manipulations of games; and intersections between games and other fan artifacts.

TWC is a new Open Access, international peer-reviewed online journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. The first issue of TWC (September 2008) is available at http://journal.transformativeworks.org/. TWC accepts rolling electronic submissions of full essays through its Web site, where full guidelines are provided. The final deadline for inclusion in the special games issue is November 15, 2008.

TWC encourages innovative works that situate popular media, fan communities, and transformative works 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. Submissions should fit into one of three categories of varying scope:

Theory: These often interdisciplinary essays with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame offer expansive interventions in the field of fan studies. Peer review. Length, 5,000–8,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Praxis: These essays 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. Peer review. Length, 4,000–7,000 words plus a 100–250-word abstract.

Symposium: Symposium is a section of concise, thematically contained essays. These short pieces provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures. Editorial review. Length, 1,500–2,500 words.

Submission information: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/about/submissions

I'm delighted to announce that I have been selected as one of this year's HASTAC Scholars! I will be posting regular videoblog entries about web technologies and participatory learning here starting sometime this week. I encourage you to engage with the work of all the HASTAC Scholars, as well as the organization's other exciting projects.

Also, I will be attending the LA Queer Studies Conference on October 10-11. Allow me to call special attention to my panel, which falls bright and early at 9:00-10:30am on Saturday morning:

Mediated Queer Socialities and Identities
Moderator: Mary L. Gray, Indiana University, Communication and Culture

Julie Levin Russo [my correction], Brown University, Modern Culture and Media
Labors of Love: Economies of Identity in The L Word’s Fan-Driven Online Promotions

Alexis Lothian, University of Southern California, English
Doing Boys Like They’re Girls, and Other (Trans)Gendered Subjects: The Queer Subcultural Politics of “Genderfuck” Fan Fiction

Jill A. Bakehorn, UC Davis, Sociology
Bordering on Activism: Authenticity and Identity Politics in Women-Made Porn

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. [NB: I am part of TWC's editorial team]

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 or European A4. Please feel free to link, download, print, distribute, or post.

I'm thrilled to announce the publication of "Re/Producing Cult TV: The Battlestar Galactica Issue" at the online journal <a href="http://flowtv.org">FlowTV</a>!

I am the Guest Associate Editor of this special issue, in collaboration with Guest Editor Lynne Joyrich. It includes seven essays (including pieces by me and lj users theorynut, alistern, and _mesk), plus Lynne's illuminating introduction. Perhaps most exciting, though, is a full-length interview with Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin), in text and audio form!

You'll see the issue on the journal's front page now, and there's also a <a href="http://flowtv.org/?cat=127">table of contents</a>. Please leave us comments and spread the word!

Television Conceptions: Introduction to "Re/Producing Cult TV: The Battlestar Galactica Issue"
By Lynne Joyrich / Brown University
How has the cult television program Battlestar Galactica been conceived, generated, produced, and reproduced? An introduction to the questions of textuality and technology, history and futuricity, production and reception, love and aggression that are addressed in this special issue.

Signal to Noise: The Paradoxes of History and Technology in Battlestar Galactica
By Melanie E.S. Kohnen / Brown University
Battlestar Galactica remixes pertinent questions and concerns about the war on terror with varying degrees of verisimilitude and with varying degrees of predictability.

Toaster-Frakkers and Remote Controls: Technophilia, Cylons, and the Archival Drive
By David Bering-Porter / Brown University
Within the on-screen space of Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons illustrate questions of technophilia through the representational work that they perform both in relation to the remnants of humanity and in and of themselves.

Cataloging Knowledge: Gender, Generative Fandom, and the Battlestar Wiki
By Sarah Toton / Emory University
Thinking about the wiki as fundamentally generative brings the Battlestar Wiki much closer to fanfic and other the creative endeavors classified traditionally as “female fan initiated.

Hera Has Six Mommies (A Transmedia Love Story)
By Julie Levin Russo / Brown University
Television is learning that its offspring can be most fruitful when, like Hera, they&#039;re orphaned: disseminated outside their biologically, technologically, and patriarchally authorized families and adopted by their audiences.

Exogenesis: Mind Children and Cultured Images in Battlestar Galactica
By Alanna Thain / McGill University
As cultured images, Cylons both evoke and exceed biological and media technological reproduction alike, a viral infectious non-human form of reproduction.

Ownership and Desire: Fans' and Producers' Polymorphous Triangulations
By Anne Kustritz / University of Michigan
Battlestar Galactica's use and abuse of its viewers' affections offer one lens for thinking about the way that audiences interact with producers' intentions and genre conventions in a media environment increasingly characterized by postmodern genre hybridity and convergence.

Downloads, Copies, and Reboots: Battlestar Galactica and the Changing Terms of TV Genre
By Bob Rehak / Swarthmore College
What's striking about the many iterations of Galactica is how cleanly the coordinates of its fantasy lure have flipped over time, illustrating the ability of genre myths to reconfigure themselves around new cultural priorities.

Battlestardom: Conversations with Mary McDonnell
By Julie Levin Russo / Brown University
With Lynne Joyrich and Stephanie Nicora
FlowTV welcomes acclaimed actress Mary McDonnell in this event summary and extended interview about her perspectives on Laura Roslin and Battlestar Galactica.

<a href="http://pics.livejournal.com/cyborganize/pic/0001r6s2/"><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/cyborganize/pic/0001r6s2/s640x480" alt="" height="480" width="409" border="0" /></a>read more »

fearless leaders,

This is your fall update on my progress! I'm dismayed to report that it's much slower than I'd planned. I swear you don't have to lecture me: I do understand the importance of protecting time for my dissertation, it's just a learning process to actually put that in practice. about 50% of my distractions are of direct professional usefulness, at least. And one heartening trend is that I get miserable when I'm not moving forward at least a little, so that's an excellent motivator. I am writing, and I'm very aware that I need to figure out how to write faster.

I'm working on my Battlestar Galactica/media archaeology chapter, which has three body sections: the theoretical scaffolding, analysis of the show's text and context (much of this repurposed from earlier talks), and new discussion of fan videos (plus a short intro and conclusion which I'll write last). I have one more bit to go on the latter, which will be finished by the 15th. [links] After wrapping us this third I'm jumping back to the theory section (even though the TV section is easier/faster), because I realized that it's difficult sorting out how to frame my discussion without having hashed that out. I'm meeting with [whkc] soon so that should be an invaluable kickstart!

[redacted: Jenkins post, plans for publication, conferences]

Finally, as I understand it, it would behoove me to apply for some external fellowships for next year (some of which may have november deadlines). Last I heard the funding situation was optimistic but still uncertain, with precedence definitely given to 6th year students with some outside money. Other than the UCLA film/TV archive research stipend, which I'll probably apply for despite the difficulty of making the case that I need to do archival research, I have no idea how to go about this. I was going to start with these links: http://del.icio.us/tag/fellowships. Help?

Plus [LJ] and I are organizing a Flow special issue. See how this month is crazy?? I will try to a more vigilant dissertator in future. Schedule-wise, I'm planning to be in LA November 9-December 14, then back on the east coast for the holiday season.read more »