Finally, I found his page for the Department of Sociology at Florida Atlantic University, where he’s an assistant professor.
I found no picture to prove it, but apparently, his students love him and think he’s pretty hot [link].
And Sells like Teen Spirit (2009) has a Facebook page.
“Anarchy in the USA”
Pivoting on the emergence of punk and hip-hop as reactions to the collapsed attempts at social change spurred on by earlier forms of music, Moore situates the evolution of these musical scenes against a backdrop of postmodern critiques of meaning and culture, as well as a Marxist critique of their contemporary economic contexts. He states that “such changes cannot merely be described as ‘economic,’ for they have given rise to a whole way of life where time and space are compressed, social relations are more fluid and ephemeral, and the commodity form infiltrates every aspect of everyday life” (p. 7). All of three are necessarily bound to each other if he is to form a full sociological examination of music as a line of cultural force in late 20th century western capitalist societies. Read more
Mark Poster is an emeritus faculty member at the University of California, Irvine. You can find his faculty page here, although he is not listed in his department’s current faculty listing.
Wikipedia has the only extensive bibliography of his I could find. His last major publication appears to be his book, What’s Wrong With the Internet (2001).
His faculty homepage trumpets an award from Lycos (seriously…).
Interestingly, his output seems to have tailed off right about the time the internet started to turn much more participatory in nature.
“Postmodern Virtualities”
Poster constructs an analysis of the then-still-emerging internet in the mid 1990s as a vehicle for exploring the dynamic nature of subjective identities and relationships that inhere to postmodern culture. He quickly narrates the development of mass media as a (mostly) one-to-many system of information distribution falling under the hegemonic control of those with the financial resources to manufacture the necessary equipment and distribution infrastructure. The “bidirectional communication systems” constituted by the internet asked for a reassessment of media consumption and production as relatively cheap means of production/distribution could be more widely disseminated to the average consumer. Read more
Currently the William A Lane Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University.
His list of publications is downright mind-boggling, officially listing nearly 150 journal articles.
Our reading, published in 1984, would form the basis for Jameson’s 1991 book of the same title.
Here, you’ll find a YouTube video of a keynote lecture that “Fred” gave at Duke in 2008(?). [Would have embedded it, but Duke disabled the option.]
“Postmodernism…”
Where to even begin? The article is encyclopedic in its scope, both in terms of art objects discussed and in terms of the different valences that postmodernism had taken by 1984. To risk VASTLY oversimplifying this, the basic principle Jameson explores is the one most often attributed to postmodernism: namely, that a postmodern culture is one unmoored to any referent beyond itself, or one of its own creation. The results, Jameson suggests, stem from 4 “constitutive features of the postmodern” (p. 487): Read more
Below is the paper proposal I’ve written up for CMP10. At the end you’ll find a YouTube video of a LBP level I’m discussing.
This paper argues for the synthesis of media studies with theories from professional writing to establish richer frameworks for the critical evaluation of participatory cultures and the mediascapes that materialize around them. As media production, distribution, and consumption are increasingly remediated through readily available consumer technologies like computers and mobile phones, a number of theories have been adapted or put forward to establish frameworks for critical and cultural analysis of media content. The most important observation to emerge from this scholarship is that such content is no longer simply an object of study, but a site of practice for the audience in convergent media systems (Jenkins, 2006 & 2009; Booth, 2008). The technologies available to consumers and the material work or play they support unmask the audience’s reception of media content by fostering audience activities with that content. Meaning is recast not only as interpretation, but as motives and goals enacted by the audience. The distribution supported by the participatory web places the products of the audience’s work or play into their own dynamic streams of activity, as well.
By fusing methodologies from professional writing and information design — deconstructed information architectures (Johnson-Eilola, 2006); activity theory (Engestrom, 2000; Spinuzzi, 2003) — with media convergence (Jenkins, 2006), we can map a method for analyzing convergent media experiences as emerging from activities that persistently repurpose and rehistoricize media content through computer supported collaborative work (CSCW). In doing so, we can bolster critical media studies scholarship by understanding the underlying capabilities and limitations that support convergence within the audience’s work.
I demonstrate the value of this hybrid method by tracing the audience work and play surrounding the level creation tools of Media Molecule’s Little Big Planet (2008). Specifically, I will focus on the licensing of Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986 & 1987) as downloadable content offered by Media Molecule for players to use for their own creative projects. Content provided on the company’s website will be analyzed in conjunction with video of player-created game levels that make use of this content by recreating and adapting events from Moore’s original story and its film adaptation (2009). This will be bolstered by an activity theory analysis of Little Big Planet‘s level and character creation tools to understand the design (and hence narrative) capabilities afforded to the player. Examining both the visual and narrative themes of the game design as well as the graphic novel, in conjunction with the work analysis necessary to create player-generated levels, will unveil new insights into the concept of audience practice as meaningful cultural engagement.
In recognition of the growing call for audience empowerment in media experiences, the final section of the paper will take up the common professional writing strategy of offering design solutions so as to better foster participatory engagement in media systems by looking at Little Big Planet and its community as an example of the successes of such systems.
