Counter-Heroics & Counter-Professionalism in Cultural Studies
Posted on May 31st, 2006, under Publications
To my utter delight, this issue of Continuum, the culmination of a collaboration between Jean, Kris, Jane and I, finally arrived in my pigeon hole today. It feels good to be able to hold an object I helped produce, especially this week, as I finish a really positive teaching semester only to face the nightmare of my book proofs.
The conference where we first gave the papers seems a long time ago now, but its significance still resonates strongly for me on a number of levels. Perhaps most of all, it makes me believe in the power of acting collectively rather than individually to bring about the kind of relationships you need, whether personal or professional. I am grateful to everyone I met and spent time with at the conference who also believed in that, and helped to make it happen.
Essentially we had to double the length of our conference papers to fit the journal’s new requirement for 6000 word articles. The irony of this is not lost on me - the issue is about the effects of professionalism on cultural studies, and the newly expanded word count has a somewhat transparent relationship to the impending RQF and the ranking of ‘quality’ journals. Anyway. My article in the issue - ‘Feeling Ordinary: Blogging as Conversational Scholarship’ - is very much based on the experience of having this blog for the last two years, and it talks explicitly about the ambivalences I feel and the contradictions I see in cultural studies’ institutional practice. If you’re still reading this blog now, you might find it interesting.
Kris and my papers were originally written at a time when blogging scholarship was still kinda nascent - what a difference 18 months makes! It is probably ok for me to say now that one of the peer reviewers for Kris’s paper commented (only a few months ago) that it was the most intelligent and sophisticated thing they had ever read about blogging. I hope I don’t need to add that Jean, Jane and Will’s papers are all terrific too. Let me know if you can’t get access and want to.
On May 31st, 2006 at 11:36 pm, jean said:
Yay! I got mine today too. The fruit (but hopefully not the end) of a collaboration that was a genuine pleasure from start to finish. Even the writing-and-editing part, mostly.
On May 31st, 2006 at 11:43 pm, jean said:
PS That link doesn’t seem to work unless you’re logged in as a subscriber, try this one? http://www.journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/openurl.asp?genre=issue&eissn=1469-3666&volume=20&issue=2
On May 31st, 2006 at 11:55 pm, creativity/machine » Counter-Heroics said:
[…] Thanks so much to Mel, Kris, Jane and Will for one of the most energising and productive collaborations I’ve been involved with so far. More at Mel’s blog. […]
On June 1st, 2006 at 8:45 am, melgregg said:
Thanks - changed the link, it didn’t even work for me this morning. Also worked out how to change the write box in wordpress so it doesn’t edit as you go… finally a help dialogue that told me how to do something I wanted to do. Woo.
On June 2nd, 2006 at 2:40 pm, ann said:
Your article (the only one I have read thus far
is totally inspiring to this PhD student looking for reflection in the academy on the academy - THANKS!
On June 3rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm, laura said:
I’m having problems getting access. Through my institution’s subscription I seem only able to view Continuum issues prior to 2005
I’ve asked the library to look into that. Can’t be right.
On June 3rd, 2006 at 11:47 pm, melgregg said:
Yay Ann! & Laura - let me know if I can help?