I'd like to thank...

As of today, I am done with class indefinitely. 

Ah!! 

While there will be many, many more end-of-grad school posts, today I wanted to share the acknowledgments for my thesis: "Its Own Sense of Verisimilitude": The Lizzie Bennet Diaries As a Transhistorical Adaptation of the Semipublic. 

* * * * *

I would like to thank the professors and faculty at Oregon State for their guidance and support.  I am also grateful to the MA Symposium, the PAMLA and PCA/ACA Conferences where I got to try out many of these ideas.  Thank you to my committee: Bradley Boovy, Jillian St. Jacques, Jon Lewis, and especially to Megan Ward, who so often offered me the vocabulary for what I was trying to articulate.

To the creators whose work inspired this process, I cannot fully express my gratitude. To everyone at Pemberley Digital, who pursued this passion project with excellence and care, and to show runner Bernie Su for your vision, commentary, and responses to my Twitter inquiries.  Most importantly, to Jane Austen whose quietly subversive and effervescently witty work has shaped my life in a myriad of ways.

To all the artists and creators that became a part of my graduate school experience, thank you for making art.  Your work has sustained, invigorated, and fueled me.

To the friends who have supported my work whether in person or hypermediated forms. To my friends and colleagues at Oregon State, and specifically Hannah, Rita, Ethan, Hayley, the Emily’s, Melissa, and more.  To the graduate students from other fields who encouraged me and served as editors: Stephanie Downing and Jordan Cox—I could not have made it through grad school without you.  Thank you to Lois who introduced me to Lizzie Bennet, my kindred spirit Kristina, and dear friend Julia.  My thanks to Hannah Green for her endless enthusiasm about my work.  

I would like to thank my family for all their support.  Mom and dad, thanks for having me read aloud to you at night as a child.  To both of my “squads”…  Jeremiah and Melissa, your humor, encouragement, and love have meant the world to me.  And to my closest friends—Rebekah Gilley and Cami Morrill—thank you for the times you have literally held my hand through this process: you are my stars. 

My sincere gratitude to each of you!

dance your way

I'm three weeks away from finishing grad school - aaaah!

I firmly believe mental work only gets done with the help of dancing.  And I've been dancing a lot - out with my friends when I can, but also in my room and in my car constantly!

I have a whole playlist of dance-y music, including some really moody synth-pop I've been into lately.  Thought I'd share a few with you...

First up?  Troye Sivan.  Oh my word, Troye Sivan.  I'm not sure I would have made it through the last several months without Troye!  I feel guilty for even picking a song--the whole album is incredible!!--but I think this is one of his objectively "best" songs.  It's a collab he did with the imitable Jack Antonoff [of fun., Bleachers, Taylor Swift, etc. fame].



Other stand outs from the album include Bite, Fools, Talk Me Down, and Lost Boy [and the rest of the album!]


Next up?  Halsey.  I know I'm about a year late [shout out to Miss Daydreamer for nudging me over the edge].  Castle is the aural representation of how I felt writing my thesis :)  If you need to tackle something difficult, this is how you do it:




A softer sound... Lights.  She has some peppier songs, but I can't get away from "Portal"!



Of Monsters and Men released a fantastic sophomore album.  This bonus remix is the song I listen to most often:



And most recently, I've added Porter Robinson.  Here's his Divinity...



So that's me lately!  These, with the interspersing of whole albums like Lemonade or Ryan Adams 1989, I'm dancing my way to the end of grad school!

My Thesis...sort of.

Here is my thesis as a word cloud!

It's full title is...

"It’s Own Sense of Verisimilitude": The Lizzie Bennet Diaries As a Transhistorical Adaptation of the Semipublic

Have a long ways to go with this quarter and the defense, but my committee-draft is off to the printers and I'm a bit weepy about it :')

Hello, I have few bits of graduate school news to share with you...

So, the most significant thing this week is that I turned in the first drafted chapter of my thesis!  It's actually not the first chronological chapter--I'll probably be writing that last; it's a chapter from the body and will probably chapter 3 of 4. It ended up being about 18 pages long and just over 6,000 words.  I can't believe it's there. actually there. on the page.  There were many times this spring and summer where I looked at many aspects of my life and thought "I don't know how I'm gonna make it..."  I definitely wondered how I could possibly do the necessary research and write this chapter.  But here it is.  I don't know if it's any good yet, but it's here :)  I'll be meeting with my adviser next week and hopefully will have some good feedback because...

That chapter is doing double-duty as a conference paper next month, PAMLA.  I've already shared my paper proposal on here, but the official schedule has come out and I now have the link to the comparative media panel I'm on!  I am also super grateful to have won their (small, but significant) graduate student scholarship.  One can kind of wonder if they were accepted to a panel just because there was no one else applying, but this wonderful honor makes me feel like they actually want me there, which is lovely!

This week I also heard back from a similar proposal I made for an adaptation panel at the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA).  Their national conference is in March and it's in Seattle, plus this particular conference is almost like an academic conference meets a fan convention - so I reeeally wanted to present at this conference.  Well...I'm in!  The panel chair sent such an encouraging email and I'm so looking forward to attending in the Spring.   Here was my PCA/ACA proposal:

“Novel” Media: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Horizontal Adaptation 

 This paper explores the definition of adaptation as a horizontal, formal move by looking at The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  This Emmy-award winning, transmedia retelling of Pride and Prejudice set as a vlog in modern day California—told in “real-time” across platforms including YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr—provokes questions about our framework for adaptation.  

Until now, most adaptation theory has been defined in the vertical terms of “layering texts” or of “palimpsest.” While the vertical is significant, this paper argues for a definition of adaptation that include the horizontal dimension, that of narrative’s historical continuum.  Bolter and Grusin refer to new media as “refashioned…versions of other media” (Remediation 14). For new media adaptations, they refashion, thereby reclaiming the novels that inspired them.  They repurpose the novel forms of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, such as fictional autobiographies and epistolary or serialized novels.  This allows us to re-experience both the plot and what was once an emerging, “novel” media. 

Just as Austen’s novel was not only arguing for proto-feminism and against classism but also for the very form of the novel, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is not merely making claims about female friendships or stereotyping but that adaptation through transmedia is a valid form, participating in what John Fiske refers to as “culture making” and Robert Stam calls an “ongoing dialogical process.”  As a new avenue for adaptation opens, it sheds light on the horizontal facet of adaptation.

So grateful for every chance I get to dialogue through these intriguing questions.  Here's to many more conversations about Jane Austen :)

Day 1. Year 2.

On repeat:

Sipping: a black & white mocha from the Beanery

First day classes: French 211, Film Noir

Wearing:

Mode of transportation: Bus

Writing: a chapter of my thesis and a proposal for a conference on pop culture

Reading: Double Indemnity (school), Watership Down (pleasure)

Last film I watched: Casablanca

Last tv episode I watched: Gilmore Girls 6x13

Highlight of my day: a friend in French class unexpectedly

Hoping for: a good year

Grad School: Term 2 of 6

First week of the term: 

Last week of the term:

Hi!  Just a little late-night update on my final papers...

So yesterday I submitted my 2nd grad paper on the Lizzie Bennet Diaries - I still can't believe they let me do that.  I was writing about it for a film class, applying theories of form, gender, and reception.  It seemed a bit messy even when I turned it in, but it did give me some ideas I want to expand into my thesis project :)

I'm now working on a really interesting paper going in all sorts of crazy directions: Victorian standardization of time, Hesiod's socieconomic perspective in Works and Days, postcolonial theory, Hamlet, a bit of Foucault, and Odysseus's sirens... I told my brother: "Right now they're like a bunch of sheep running in different directions and I need to become Babe! #BahRamEwe" I'm about 1/3 of the way there and it is pretty fun.  The text I'm working with is also a favorite--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

But now I should get some rest so I can scribble out some more good ideas tomorrow. Bonne nuit!

This is happening :D

It is based on the paper I wrote last term.  Here is the abstract:

Adaptation Theo(re-) and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

My paper examines the current environment of adaptation studies as applied to new media forms of storytelling.  Evolving from a word vs. image debate, the adaptation theories produced by Robert Stam and Linda Hutcheon are opening a space for dialogic exploration, with Hutcheon suggesting adaptation is about “repetition, but repetition without replication.”  Both suggest that the aim of re-telling a story is not direct translation, but re-interpretation and re-creation, and are interested in viewing these re-creations as palimpsest, investigating how adaptation allows people to see the original work in a new way.

After a review of the shift in adaptation perspectives, this paper turns to look at The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a transmedia retelling of Pride and Prejudice set as a vlog in modern day California.  Across platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest, this Emmy-award winning web series spent a year re-working the 200-year-old novel in “real-time.”  While completely re-interpreting certain concerns—the Bennet’s entailed estate is now a faulty mortgage; Collins “proposal” is for a job, not a marriage—the creators of this series simply update others.  In this paper and PowerPoint presentation, I argue that far from detracting from the core narrative, these changes were made in order to better explore the question at the core of both Jane Austen’s novel and the web series.

In the final turn of my paper, I examine how centering the climax of the story on their interpretation of the Lydia-Wickham scandal, the creators of this series take Lizzie’s empathetic lesson a step further, extending her repentance to include both her misunderstanding of Darcy and of a fully realized Lydia Bennet.  In doing so, they not only work against stereotype, but also encourage viewers to re-examine their assumption of Pride and Prejudice, creating the type of palimpsestuous learning moment adaptation studies strive for. 

Grad School: Term 1 of 6

Orientation Week, before the term:

Last week of the term:

I survived my first term of grad work and you guys... I love school!

Teaching is a lot of work, but has been very rewarding thus far. 

I've produced two essays on adaptation that I am proud of,

and that my professors have encouraged me in pursuing further.

I've said this before, but... grad school is hard.

But if I'm going to do something hard, I want it to be what I love.

And I really love school.

Guys! Guys!  Today I got to present my paper on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and it went reeeally well!  My professor said the paper it was based on was "compelling" and I got to have discussion about the form of new media adaptations--"So...the characters can tweet at you?"--and it was amazing!  Also, I had been planning to expand this project into my MA Thesis (a 60 page, 3-chapter document due April 2016) and today my professor told me, "Yah, I think you really should."  I just had to note this small victory.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear Samara from one year ago,

Keep. going!  Your crazy idea is just crazy enough to be "compelling"!  I know it seems--especially in the coming weeks--that grad school is unattainable and that you'll never be allowed back in that world.  I know that you're going to go to bed exhausted, bleary-eyed and emotional far too many times.  I know that the future seems very dark--that you'll be waiting eternally and that what you've hoped for will never happen.  But have faith and take courage, because your hard work will open doors and your faith will be answered.

I know that even now you are considering giving up on OSU--it's the most expensive choice and has the earliest application date.  But thank you for not giving up on it, because God knew this interdisciplinary school was exactly where you needed to be.  I know that you are going to hear voices--both in your head and from other people--that this idea isn't "academic enough" and that you just don't have it together.  But by immense grace and running hard after a dream, somehow it does come together.  So don't give up.

As for me, I have to get back to this other crazy paper on Heart of Darkness, Impressionism, and the Lost World (I'm on page 13 of 20 - woohoo!).  But keep your chin up, "When the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer." :)

Cheers,
Samara Surface
Graduate Teaching Associate
MA Candidate - Literature and Culture
School of Writing, Literature, and Film
Oregon State University

So, I guess you could say paper writing is going... well?

#SO #MANY #IDEAS!!!

If you're looking for me this week, I'll be paper writing next to this crackling fire...

This is our common room.  They've decorated it up for the holidays and someone stokes the fire every hour or so.  It's marvelous!

As for the papers themselves, I'm working on a 10-page piece that is half-review of theories of adaptation and half-application to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  Then I have a 20-page piece for next week looking at the use of impressionism in Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now--also using adaptation theories.   Those are the biggies between now and break.  Wish me luck!

And, finally, Happy Advent!

*******

Update: Just submitted the first paper of my grad school career!

Also, who ever decided the term for "approaching something as a whole" should be "holistic" rather than "wholistic"?  Lame.

[via]

I know I've been a bit neglectful on here.  I'm sorry - I really do miss it.  Due to the pace of the next few weeks, I probably won't be here as much as I'd like.  But I'm determined not to turn this space into a complaint over how much I have to do.  It is a lot.  But I had a good conversation with a colleague about how we may be stressed out, but over things we actually care about.  We chose school over a million other things we could have done.  And we aren't stressing over a bosses concerns.  For the most part, these are our own passions and instead of performing for someone else, our job is simply to make other people care.  So, as I go off and try to be productive, I'm trying to keep that mentality.  I may have a lot to do, but I chose this and I love this.  And for that, I count myself lucky.

Today Samara Learned... [Day 24]

all about rhetoric & composition studies.  Her MA is another track (Literature & Culture), but she got to attend a conference celebrating the current movements in the field.  It was fascinating!  Shout out especially to Aspasia, one of the first, prominent, female rhetoricians.

Today Samara Learned... [Day 16]

that she wouldn't necessarily die if she rode her bicycle to class with the basket laden with heavy books.  Heretofore, she had ridden her bike when only bearing smaller burdens, but today she ventured to make the journey with her full satchel.  And she survived.

And she doesn't know why this post came out so archaic-sounding.

Today Samara Learned... [Day 14]

that Heart of Darkness is even more intertextual than she had previously imagined.  Whether intentional or not, Conrad includes some references that heightens his own brilliant writing.  His famous novella - seriously, he packs the punch in just 77 pages - is a frame narrative, with the life of one central character relayed by a sailor named Marlowe to a group, including an unnamed narrator who is relaying it all to the audience.  This layered narrative creates a powerful sense of uncertainty and ambiguity that is as central to this book as its plot - perhaps even more so.
Anyway, that's not what she learned, what she discovered today is the book's possible connection to another famed, framed-narrative.  The first line, the first two words of the novella, indicate the ship on which the story is being relayed is called "[t]he Nellie."  Nelly just happens to be the name of one of the main narrators in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and, infamously, one of the most unreliable narrators in pre-1900 English literature.  Coincidence? She likes to think in literature, there is no such thing.*


* See "Tradition and the Individual Talent" by TS Eliot.  [I think, to an extant, the literary tradition bleeds into each new generation of authors.]

Reason #127 why it's fun to date a fellow English Major! 

Today Samara Learned... [Day 13]

all about the "Paramount Decision" and Hollywood history at a lecture she attended at the Humanities Center.  To sum up, a US Supreme Court Decision in 1941 ruled to end Studio monopolies, which had multiple consequences.  Due to this decision, in conjunction with the rise of television in the post-war era, movie sales slumped dramatically, starting in 1941 and lasting all the way till 1972 when "The Godfather" single-handedly saved Hollywood.  But that time of transition just after the war was a dark and fascinating time for the film industry and the lecturer illuminated it's history in an enticing way.  She can't wait to learn more!

Today Samara Learned... [Day 9]

that she saves cards and letters from people for a reason.  Because some days are just too frustrating or saddening to go alone.  Reading or re-reading letters remind her of the things that truly define her and of the courage she had forgot she had.  And even hundreds of miles away from people who love her, she can feel close to them through those words.

Today Samara Learned... [Day 7]

that her couch has bewitching properties.  If she attempts homework on it, at some point she *will* be taking a nap on there - intended or otherwise.  Reading theory is especially conducive to zzzzz...