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. 

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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!

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 :)

Lately I've had Ryan Adam's 1989 on repeat.  I've also been working on a chapter for my thesis on The Lizzie Bennet Diaries...

And it hasn't been lost on me that I'm indulging a full-scale adaptation while writing about adaptation.  I love it!

Adaptception!! 

"Pride and Prejudice joins Twitter"

I've had a second paper accepted to a conference!  This November I'll get to present on the "Comparative Media" panel for the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association in Portland.  This is an exciting move for me as the audience will be made up of both grad students and professors from around the western region.  Here's the proposal:

Pride and Prejudice joins Twitter: Transmedia Adaptation on a Narrative Continuum

This paper explores 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 reworking the 200-year-old novel in “real-time.”  While the creators simply update certain aspects for the 21^st century—Mr. Bingley is now Bing Lee—other concerns are completely reinterpreted—the Bennet’s entailed estate is now a faulty mortgage; Collins “proposal” is for a job, not a marriage.  Enabling and encouraging audience members to interact with the story through multiple modalities, this transmedia adaptation provokes questions about its relationship to the source material.  While it can be read vertically as palimpsest, a retelling layered on top of the original, might we also consider the transmedia web series as part of storytelling’s historical continuum?  Do the novel and web series share more than a familiar narrative arc and a handful of characters? 

 In the historical moment of their emergence, both of the novel and the transmedia adaptation have been discounted for reasons such as the demographics of those participating, its reproducibility, their creators being perceived as amateurs, etc.  In her landmark Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon discusses the constructed strata of high and low culture revealing the economic arguments attached when she says, “we tend to reserve our negatively judgmental rhetoric for popular culture, as if it is more tainted with capitalism than high art” (31).  As an example, she notes academia’s tendency to deride the commercial-driven choices of a blockbuster, often ignoring that Shakespeare made similarly calculated artistic moves based on economic principals.  In a similar vein, some scholars may overlook a web series adaptation because it seems “tainted” by the enthusiasm of teenage girls, the advertising that funds it, the commonality of its chosen platforms, or a myriad of other “low culture” tags.    

However, my paper suggests that exploring these social conditions highlights The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as not only an adaptation of plot, character, and setting, but of the historical emergence of a narrative form.   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.”  By placing the interactive web series on a continuum, we recover the emerging status the novel held in the past and are also able to look forward at part of the burgeoning future of narrative form thanks to new media.

I'm in the throes of research and have had some setbacks, but I am really excited to tackle the LBD from the angles of high/low-culture arguments, adaptation of form, and the question of interpreting it vertically/horizontally...  I don't have many conclusions yet, but a lot of intriguing questions!  

And now... back to the work in front of me. :)

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!

New Life

I remember first watching this episode... I was all ready for another cutesy episode, maybe an update on Bing or Darcy........what I was not expecting was for a cute little vlog series to ask "tough questions" about my life choices.  At the time I was 22, living at home, working a safe job.  And sweet as can be, Jane waltzes in asking "What's keeping you here?"  I think I gasped.  I remember feeling like I had walked into a wall.  For the next year, I was asking that question of so many areas of my life.
Living at home (which is not at all bad but sometimes, as Jane points out, a defense mechanism)?  I moved out and into a flat with a my best friend.  I spent time and money on crafting a space.  I learned a little bit of how to live with someone - it's an art!  There were Doctor Who marathons and parties and so many late night conversations ending in simultaneous laughter and tears.
Stuck in relationships running on separate tracks?  I made new friends and realized that being single did not mean I couldn't have fun.  There were road trips and "Galentines" and endless movie nights.  And my friends were amazing on days that weren't.  When I was visiting a friend and received some bad news, she ran the whole gamut in caring for me - tissues, talking, going out on the town, cozying up in sweats to watch Once Upon a Time.  On a particularly bad night I walked into my flatmate's room, showed her my phone screen and her response was, "I'll go get the wine and dark chocolate."  My sister took me out one day and just sat with me in a silence that acknowledged things were not "okay" - and that it was "okay" to feel that way.
And then the big one... What about going back to school?  From the time I was rejected from Oxford, it took me a year and a half to answer that question.  I wrestled with it.  I so badly wanted back into that world, but was so afraid at the same time.  Afraid of spending more emotional energy only to hear "no."  Afraid of moving away.  Afraid of how much work it would take.  But one day, I was sitting across from my boss and I just knew the answer.  I had to go back to school.  And it was grueling.  This time a year ago... whew.  Let's just say, I am still shocked I am in grad school.  Shocked, but so grateful.

The people I look up to have moved boldly to disentangle themselves from anything keeping them safely nestled in the status quo.  They embrace change without fear and keep working through the mundane and the high-pressure without losing sight of their goal.  I want to live like that.  I want to be with people who live like that, and for me that question begins with "What's keeping you here?"  Now, I feel like I am in the place and doing the work that is not "keeping" me back, but propelling me forward...and it's one wild ride!

Adaptation Week: Emma Approved

Hello!  So... "Adaptation Week" got hijacked earlier - sorry about that.  But I am really excited to jump back in with a few more.  The types of adaptations I am highlighting will be the actual focus of my Master's research.  I've started following quite a few adaptations and keeping tabs on others.  In this digital renaissance, there are so many exciting possibilities in storytelling.  So, back to it:
 
See previously featured adaptations: Mansfield Park and Classic Alice.

Ok, so if you haven't started watching Emma Approved yet, it's time to get on it!  Pemberley Digital's 2nd full-length series recently returned from hiatus and 57-episodes in feels stronger than ever,

Emma Approved is: "A lifestyle brand and documentary of life coach and matchmaker Emma Woodhouse."  When the series begins, Emma & her long-time family friend Alex Knightley have recently formed a subdivision of the "Highbury Group" to focus on match-making, event planning and lifestyle excellence. 

This modern day Emma is no Cher Horowitz. She's more a combination of ruthless Kardashian business skills meets Mary Fiore's event coordination. She is talented but unwilling to compromise one ounce of her vision of the world. She goes to great (questionably illegal) lengths to accomplish her plans. 

This series, even according to its creators, started a little weak for a couple reasons. The biggest issue was fans adjusting to a very different format than it's predecessor, the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Where Lizzie shot vlog-style videos & knowingly posted them on the internet where other characters could find them & viewers could interact with them, Emma Approved videos (minus the Q&A) are told almost "mockumentary" style. While the in-world reasoning for this didn't make much sense, anyone familiar with the story will know that telling Emma the way PD told Pride & Prejudice wouldn't work. Aside from the risk of in-world characters viewing the episodes, it would be highly implausible for high-society Emma Woodhouse to vlog.

One of the stronger parts the show has been Brent Bailey's Alex Knightley.  He is the perfect Knightley - counteracting Emma's (sometimes misplaced) enthusiasm with doses of reality and delivering his lines with a blend of humor and care.

And there's just something to love about a grown man who can still look like a five year old when the occasion calls for it:

They've done rather well with the rest of the casting, too, with highlights being Harriet Smith, Bobby "B-Mart" Martin, Annie Taylor-Weston, and Maddie Bates.  In addition, Frank Churchill has made a few appearances and Jane Fairfax just re-joined Highbury.

Thus far, Emma Approved has taken 2, month-long hiatuses (hiati?).  Though it's sad to go a month long without Monday and Thursday pick-me-ups, both times the team has returned to take their game up a notch.  After January's hiatus, they achieved an Emma Approved-Lizzie Bennet Diaries crossover that just blew me away by combining/replacing the character of Mrs. Augusta Elton with the LBD's Caroline Lee.  Brilliant move!  And following the May hiatus, they had not only the long-awaited reveal of Jane Fairfax but introduced a both in-world and real-world charity drive to fight modern day slavery.  These kind of game-changers combined with the heightened anticipation have made the hiatuses more than worth it!  So, Pemberley Digital, while I hate to be without you, take all the time you need to make it awesome!

The show has had a few detractors - mostly the ones I mentioned early on.  Some things, like Jane Fairfax's character development, will just take time or others like myself, who initially disliked Emma, will have to be won over.  Personally, the two biggest obstacles for me have been the format and certain production choices.  As I mentioned earlier, I understand that vlogging wouldn't work for this story, but full-time surveillance in an office doesn't make sense either.  I also felt that the strength of LBD's transmedia was really missing from the first 1/3 of this story, though I feel that's improved recently with twitter conversations about Knightley offering to carpool with Jane Fairfax and especially with the charity drive. 

My second - and even bigger - frustration has actually been with the costume department for Emma herself.  I understand that she is in event planning and that she's supposed to be trendy.  But more often than not I inwardly cringe at her costumes because they are so not office appropriate.  Short shorts, mini dresses, and midriff just do NOT belong in her world of high-profile clients.  I know they are working with sponsorships from trendy places like mod cloth - which is great!  But even Harriet looks more trendy-but-appropriate than Emma does and honestly I find it distracting.  Okay.  Personal rant over.

Overall, I do love the show, but not nearly as much the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  That is probably due to the fact that I love Pride and Prejudice far, far more than Emma.  But if the LBD was a 5/5, this is still 4.5.   I really enjoy the interaction between these actors and several of the modernizations they have made with Bobby Martin, Mr. (Senator Scum-bag) Elton, and especially with the Caroline Lee - LBD crossover.

And I can't review it without mentioning that the show has received an extra spark thanks to a very "Emma Approved" real life pairing: Joanna Sotomura and Brent Bailey, who play Emma and Knightley in-world, are in a real-life relationship.

I told you he was perfect. :)

Be sure to check out Emma Approved and in the mean time, I'll leave with a recent video from the stars goofing around on the Tonight Show. 

Next Steps

Have you ever told yourself that this thing you love is just a side thing, a hobby, something you will only love amateurly? And then one day you woke up and realized that all along it was the thing?

Well, I have.

If you've read much of anything I post on here, you know I can boil down quite a few of my favorite things to stories, narrative, adaptations, novels, films, that sort of thing...  Last fall, I began really wrestling with what these passions are for and how they might all fit together.  Graduate school had been weighing on my mind for some time - but grad school for what exactly?  Somehow, I didn't think, "I just really love stories - will you let me back in?" was going to cut it for a personal statement. But, there were times sitting at an office desk when I couldn't help but whisper to myself, "I don't belong here..."

When I finally did allow myself to believe that maybe I could actually pursue this thing I love so deeply, it became clear that going back to school was the necessary step.  So I entered this marathon of applications, I put a label on what I want to research - "transmuted adaptation" - and I started asking for a lot of help.  After a very grueling application process, a lot of prayer, too many vague posts, and anxiously waiting...

I am very excited to announce that I am returning to school this September. I will be pursuing a Master's in English and Film at Oregon State University and, thanks to their generous funding package, I'll also be teaching English composition.

Thinking about graduate school makes me feel like I'm returning home and that I'm venturing into some wilderness all at the same time.  And I'm so excited!  Though I try again and again, stories matter more to me than I can articulate.  So for the next two years, I'm going to give myself to stories, to the power of a classic novel told in a new way, and to inspiring others why we need to keep reading these narratives.

I am going back to school.

Adaptation Week: Classic Alice

Welcome to day 2 of Adaptation Week!  You can check out Day 1 (BBC's Mansfield Park) here.

Today's featured adaptation is a new web series called Classic Alice [which, turns out, is sadly not a modern adaptation of Alice in Wonderland - still waiting on that one!]  But what it is is pretty cool! The show's synopsis, according to their website: 

It is the story of Alice Rackham, a college student with a huge drive to succeed. When she gets a bad grade on an essay because she isn’t emotionally connecting to material, she decides to take it a step further and live her life according to classic novels. Her friend, Andrew Prichard, uses the opportunity to make a vlog-style documentary about the process, and together they create ‘Classic Alice’.

This "adaptation" is different in a couple of ways. Unlike other adaptations where actors directly assume the characters and attempt to convince you of the life-likeness (or "verisimilitude" ;) of the played out narrative, Alice drops the pretense of meta and just lives it: she is actively emulating characters rather than pretending to be them.  Also, the construct of why they're filming makes this adaptation more believable than many others.  These strengths allow the series to avoid forced plot points, feel more realistic, and (best of all) explore more than one story within the same series.  Their first book was Crime and Punishment - an arc they played out over 7 weeks.  They are currently working on the next book/mini-series, due to air in June or July.  

While it may seem like a weakness to dedicate only a few months to a summarized view of the story, I think this could turn into a show strength in that this team will be able to tackle books that would be much harder to focus a whole series to.  Pemberley Digital, for instance, has chosen stories that adapt rather well across the years.  But Classic Alice has the potential to take less accessible stories (like Crime and Punishment) and explore it's application without forcing certain aspects that wouldn't fit in today's setting (e.g. no down-and-out prostitute, thus far). 

Alice is a fun and engaging character.  [Though, I may be biased because when I showed these videos to my flatmate, she just kept saying "Oh my gosh, she's you!"  I'll let my friends be the judge of that :]  She is played well by the show's creator, writer, and executive producer: Kate Hackett.  The show also has a fun sub-plot in (and many BTS videos dedicated to) her "friendliership" with Andrew.

Classic Alice is currently on hiatus, but you can catch up on both the Crime and Punishment episodes along with a host of additional content here.  You can also follow on FaceBook [source for all of the above pictures] or Twitter.  If you get a chance to check out the show, let me know what you think in the comments below!

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Update: 7/2/14

Classic Alice will return on August 5th with Season 2 / Book 2 - Pygmalion!  Could not be more excited!!