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 :')

PCA/ACA

Hey!

So last month I got to present a paper at the national conference for the Pop Culture Association / American Culture Association (the PCA/ACA).  The conference was huge and they had a bunch of panels on adaptation.  My paper was part of a panel (along with 3 other great speakers) on "Transmedia Adaptation."  Here's the proposal I wrote last fall:

* * * * *

“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 18th and 19th 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.

* * * * *

The panel was well-attended by 20 or so people [including my younger brother :] and I made a couple of useful great connections with people already in the field.  Even more exciting to me is that many people said "I'm new to adaptation, but I'm beginning to see it connecting with ________ [this thing they were already doing]."  And that makes me so exciting because I think we are seeing adaptation of one sort or another everywhere right now!  It's so great to watch the field expanding and to feel like a small part of it!




In other news, my thesis is written!  The intro, 2 chapters, and conclusion have been drafted, revised, and re-revised.  Due to some bureaucracy I'm still waiting on a thesis defense date, but I have this 70-page document and I'm amazed it's even done!  Thanks for all the encouragement, friends--8 more weeks!

Well... this will be a first...:)

Jones

candlelit steam and dreaming 

of waking up next

to someone... 

i'm about to be raw, 

let you decide

and wondering should I be 

bracing for sanitation or

a salve? and will you still

want the brokenness 

of me? will you

walk out of my life just as 

easily as "are you dancing

with someone?" or can i

cut in. 

is this you cutting out?

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. :)

Set
     backs


Dear Spring,
For a season of new life, why so many set
backs?  Why the confusion and self-doubt? 
To be honest, why all the tears?

Mentally, I know these are not life-ending, but
they are life-altering--
so many decisions; so many do-I-dares1.
My composure is wearing thin,
my strength is waning, in their place
only well-worn seams struggling with the tension
of holding this self together.

Primavera.  "Springtime."
Prima vera.  "First real."
I think broken apart, like myself, 
those words offer a better answer
to my initial question.  
Why all the set
backs?  
Because of all the realities.
Ones I'm experiencing for the first time. 
Realities I thought would skip me.  Set
backs I had hoped to avoid. 

Yet a wise philosopher2 conjectures, "Pain is 
what you experience when you bump into reality."
For some aspects of life, this is the "first
real" of a Spring where to become whole,
one must be broken; to move forward, one must be set
back.


1 "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot
2 Definitions by Dallas Willard

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

#SO #MANY #IDEAS!!!

Wait + Hope - 1000

Welcome to 1,000.

Yes, this is my 1,000th post!!

I wrote a bit on this blog's journey recently here.

But this space has been a gift to me and I hope, in one way or another, it's been a gift to you too.

But just to be sure it has - I'm hosting a giveaway!!

The winner will receive a framed print of my favorite Obvious State poster:

[via]

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

- John Keats

To win this gorgeous poster and simultaneously help celebrate 1000 posts on my blog,

you can earn entries 4 possible ways:

- Leave a comment below, sharing one of your favorite posts

- Re-gram my insta and tag me @iwaitandhope with the hashtag #waitandhope1000

- Share this post on facebook with the hashtag #waitandhope1000

- Tweet this post tag me @iwaitandhope with the hashtag #waitandhope1000

The drawing for the print will be next Friday, 5/2.  Good luck!

Metamorphosis, Pt. 3

It is late, dark, wet and I'm trying to get home as fast as possible.

I am cruising just fine, wipers on their highest speed when an accident up ahead brings traffic to a halt and I decide to detour on back roads to get around this obstacle.  Even though this takes me through an unfamiliar part of the city, I dismiss the map on my phone. So what if it takes a few extra turns.  I should be able to figure it out if I dare to call myself a Seattlite. 

And I do.  Soon enough I'm taking a left at the genesis of Interstate-90.  This bridge will take me home.  If I let it, it could take me all the way to Boston.  I've followed it that way before.  The ends of a road fascinate me.  It's an inexplicable sense that I find every time I go there - where that long of a road runs into the water.  I think it's the Hobbit in me; "The road goes ever on and on..."

And then I'm in the tunnels, moving fast under lights.  Like the movies, I'm driving and weighing decisions - but they're nothing compared to the weight of my heart.  My heart is trying to say so many things at once.

I'm thinking of the future. And past. And of the film I just watched. Of how much heartbreak we can handle. Of the music. Of the parking ticket that's drying on my dash. Of how difficult relationships are. Of what it would be like to get to know different mountain ranges.

Of how things can be light and dark at the same time.

Speaking of... I don't know if this is unique to Seattle, (but I like to think it is) we get these schizophrenic spring days where you can be in golden light, needing your sunglasses and yet at the same time be rained on.  Usually just a system rolling through.  But the phenomenon seems an apt description for the melancholy beauty I see in things.

Thoughts keep rushing by faster than my wheels.

But then, I turn into my driveway.  I turn once again inward to the stillness.

"Who knows, Samara, your future husband could be sweltering away crafting the next great American novel as we speak..."

One can hope, Bob.  One can always wait and hope.

It's been almost two weeks since my last post.  That's unusual.

I wasn't sure how to begin.  January was one of the most grueling months of my life.  When I woke up on February 1st, my first thought was, "I survived!"  But how to begin the next phase?  And how to write about it?

Well I have been writing, but those thoughts are either incomplete or for another project that I hope I can tell you about soon.  The best I can say of such hard weeks and months is that I am still learning, and for that I can be grateful.


Alright, but now for a random selection of life lately:

\\ The Seahawks won the Superbowl and last Wednesday I was one of 700,000 crazies who went to their victory parade.  Despite the 3-hours it took to trek 11 miles and the sub-freezing temps, it really was such a phenomenal experience.

[From Top left: Russell Wilson, Richard Sherman, me flashing a 12, and Pete Carroll]

\\ My flatmate & I went away this weekend to an island cabin for a "Silence Retreat."  It was rather wonderful. We alternately journaled, read, and rested - all bundled up next to the fire.  I think I need the equivalent of this at least twice a year.

\\ But we got a little white surprise during our getaway.  Not 20 feet from the ocean, we had 4 inches of snow!  Made things a bit dicey on Saturday and Sunday, but it was absolutely gorgeous! 

[my feet got lost in the snow]

\\ A song* for you:

*This gives me all sorts of The Fault in our Stars feels :-|

\\ Amazon Smile - seriously, anyone who has an account with Amazon should sign up for this!

One Bibliophile's Calendar

A time for every book under the sun
Or rather round the sun.
Different months call for different books;
A read for every season.
January is an amalgamation -
unfinished books from the prior year,
gifted books, bettering books.
February offers more choice:
What would you like to read?
March is best for modernism.
before marking her demise on the 28th
read some Woolf, and get into Eliot
before the "cruelest month."
April showers... mean sit in and read,
dive into that series, you have the time.
"Spring" for a re-read romance and
May-be find a way to "read out of doors."
June - despite the sun and celebrations,
your series is still making you feel "bibliosocial."
Summer is a time for sci-fi or short stories
or a good Shakespeare comedy.
If, in July, you can carve out a vacation
or just a rare quiet, sun-filled day,
binge-read a new author.
August is for finishing.  Just how much
can you finish before the re-start?
Sun to fog - September is transition
New routines, new books assigned in school
or cradled on suddenly-longer commutes.
At long last: Fall, the reader's utopia.
And Fall means fantasy.
For October - books, scarves, glasses are in vogue,
the bigger the book, the better.
Fantastical wanderings lead into November,
reifying characters and locales in our mind's eye.
Gothic is also good - Jane Eyre feels right
in a stormy or cold December night.
Then the holidays come, and with them,
re-assessed goals, another push to finish,
a search for the Word to make us real.
So we keep reading, keep becoming.

5

[via]

Today is my blog's 5th birthday!

5 years ago, in my "Introduction," I shared,

"words help me process things - and this will be where i'll place the words

that don't seem to have any other home."

Through many phases and changes and far more page views than I ever imagined,

that still remains a pretty accurate description of my blog.

I apologize for the times it feels scattered, but it's not a niche blog.

It's just a space for the homeless words in my head.

When I created this, I really didn't think I would be able to keep it up.

I was like that with pen-pals as a kid.  I would be all enthusiastic... but then

get behind after 2 or 3 letters and be too ashamed to finally write back 6 months later.

So I was more shocked than anyone that 1 year, 2 years in I was still blogging.

Now, it's a rare day I don't get on to check the blog or start another draft.

And though it took me 4 years of blogging to actually admit that just maybe I was a writer...

I am more enthusiastic about it than ever.

I hope to continue to expand and develop both this space and my writing

[keep an eye out in the future - wink, wink]

I want to thank everyone who has followed my blog at any point these past 5 years.

Writing and crafting this has helped me become more of who I am supposed to be,

and your encouragement of that means the world to me!

So, merci beaucoup, my friends.  Merci.

* Interesting fact - I didn't put this together till yesterday, but, though done unwittingly, I think it was Fate that I created this blog on January 28th, as it just happens to be the date Pride and Prejudice was originally published.  And I'd like to think that is a good omen :)

"Ender is making it possible for the others his age to be playing in the park." 

"And Jesus died to save all men, of course." Graff sat up and looked at Anderson almost sadly. "But we're the ones," Graff said, "we're the ones who are driving in the nails." 

I'm reading Orson Scott Card's First Meetings, a collection of short stories in the Enderverse - including the original "Ender's Game" as it appeared in 1977 as a 50 page story.  It's so fascinating having first read the 1985 novel to approach this. 
Comparatively, this feels very in media res, but with surprising depth, making it very apparent that Card had already begun his complex world-building.  This makes me wonder if this is, perhaps, the best way for an author to enter their created world in sci-fi or fantasy.  Composing a short story would force the author to establish the mythology, history, and projected future while also presenting just a fraction of that story to test the waters.  Well, that's what I'm wondering, anyway.
Being shorter, things are much more direct - such as the lines above - but they are also profound.  Not quite a re-read, I'm still moved by earlier decisions - knowing the ramifications later on.  It's funny actually - I've read abridged versions and then later full versions of novels; I've read parallel novels; but this is the first time I've read the condensed version after reading the expanded story.  I suggest trying all three if you can at some point.  It's a marvelous exercise in narrative choices.

Ok, enough rambling.  Happy Thursday.

2014.

[via]

2013: Opportunities

At the beginning of 2013,  the Lord spoke to me about how this year meant "opportunity."  And He was so right!

"Opportunity," however, is not all a rosy.  It involves a lot of variables.  There are risks to be taken.  There are often multiple opportunities vying for priority, and adulthood means having to pick a card and hope you picked right.  Opportunity is about risk with the chance of reward.

But when looking up "opportunity" in the dictionary, the word I found over and over was "favorable."  Opportunity is "a favorable, appropriate, or advantageous combination of circumstances; a chance or prospect."  Like a mountain concealed by clouds, I believe favor is still there, guiding me.  Even in silence.  Even in pain.  

This year I've learned that opportunity can come in all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, it looked like...

...going red.
...going short.
...less money in my savings account than I'd like.
...filling up journals and blog drafts faster than I could possibly process experiences.
...#refusetobeacog, etc. Generally raging against the machine, in search of something deeper.
...being moved to tears by a simple song lyric.
...belting out said song lyrics in a park with tens of thousands of others, led by Mumford & Co.
...sitting on the kitchen floor sobbing my guts out because of narrative and because, no matter how made up it is, it's true.
...having wonderful adventures with visiting friends.
...just doing "it."
...riotous run-ins with bus admirers.
...accepting titles I had always been afraid of [see, "writer"].
...writing in rounds.writing for release.
...opening up to someone, but him them pursuing someone else.
...fireworks.
...meeting artists I'd been inspired by.
...cubicle parties and embracing dress-up more than ever before!
...facing people I've been afraid of fears.
...a lot of Baggins vs. Took inner wrestling.
...having my own bathroom for the first time in my life.
...walking through vineyards, through the streets of Nob Hill, and through countless bookshops.
...finding myself in one of those bookshops with news that blindsided me, rendering me unable to even buy a book - all of them hurt somehow.
...picnics by the lake with good friends.
...moving out with my best friend.
...bearing friends' dreams and burdens and hopes and joys. 
...waiting on the Lord
...new revelations on stewardship - body, soul, and spirit.
...road trips for record books. 
...a lot of Doctor Who.  all. the. feels!
...flexing the forgiveness muscle.
...flexing the humility-and-asking-forgiveness muscle.
...challenging myself to go beyond what I thought myself capable of.
...a lot of "self-induced" late nights.
...inconveniences.  "An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered..."
...meeting lots of new fantastic(al) characters.
...learning that the Lord is the only one I can implicitly and whole-heartedly trust.

 
It's been one blaze of a year - peaks and valleys and everything in between.  But, as Sheldon Vanauken said, "If there were a choice – and he suspected there was – a choice between, on the one hand, the heights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now, chose the heights and the depths."  

Here are to all the opportunities you & I have had this year, and here's to all the ones coming in 2014!

First Lines - 2013

My friend Simon has a tradition of doing a "First Lines" post to capture the year.  In his words, "It's very simply - you copy across the first line of each month's first blog post, and a link to that post, as an intriguing overview of the year..."  Sounds fun.  Here I go:

January - "This year is a sealed envelope / With apprehensive hope / We brace for anything / I swear, I understand that nothing changes that / The past will be the past / But the future is brighter than any flashback."

February - Since I woke up this morning I've been inexplicably excited.

March - This weekend I had one of those great "Wow!  Not everyone thinks everyone thinks the same way I do (thank God!)" moments.

April - This weekend was glorious! Glorious!!

May - Seriously... this book is wrecking me!

June - Ours is NOT a blind faith.

July - I know I've just written about it, but I'm seeing this everywhere - aren't you?  It's a happenin' summer - and it's just begun!

August - August means ... Moving into my own place and starting a new season.

September - "Don't be afraid to change. You may lose something good, but you'll gain something better."

October - Currently listening to... a lot of Lorde.

November - So... the National Theatre of Great Britain celebrated their landmark 50th Anniversary tonight, bringing over 100 performers together for a live evening comprised of some of their most famous productions.

December - Some nights, you just have to stay up late watching Jennifer Lawrence interviews and appreciating all that is quirky and authentic.

Wednesday Creatives: Simon Thomas

Two summers ago, my first Sunday in Oxford, I was at church, meeting lots of new people and one of those was a a guy named Simon.  After some casual conversation, I learned that he was "reading" English Literature for his D-Phil at Magdalen, specializing in obscure female authors of the 1930's.  Oh, and he works for the school library - which in his case, happens to be the Bodleian.  Impressive.  But then he mentions, yah, he has a blog...

Come to find out he has a rather famous book blog, "Stuck in a Book."  Famous as in: several hundred followers, gets invited to Penguin events, and the official Lizzie Bennet Diaries facebook page - they follow Simon's blog.  Oh and on top of being a grad student, working part time for the Bodleian, now and then, part time for Oxford University Press (I'mnotjealousI'mnotjealousI'mnotjealous...), he must read 130+ books a year and then, of course, blogs about them. I consider myself lucky to count Simon as a friend and fellow Janeite, to have discussed LBD episodes via facebook comments, to have followed his trips to Chatsworth and the home(s) of Virginia Woolf, and to have taken up some of his book recommendations [I'm sorry I didn't love Agatha Christie more, but London War Notes was beyond compare!].  And I've mentioned him here before for his review of Peter and Alice.  I'm sure he's going to go onto an illustrious career in publishing or writing or blogging or academia or whatever he chooses to pursue. 


All that to say... He has branched out from book reviews to post some short creative writing, like these witty poems.  Each little one is dedicated to an author and they go something like this:

What the dickens?

Oh Charles, you saw
The humble poor
In such disarming detail -
But somehow missed
In all of this
A single real female.

Dear Aunt Jane

"Sweet, ineffectual Jane, the dear!"
Of all misreadings, wrongest.
Her barbs will last two hundred years;
Her laughs, both loud and longest.


Aren't those fun?  Do check out both parts 1 and 2   Also quite good is his "One place, Many Simons" article, regarding the idea of the same place becoming part of our story in many different ways.

Today, though, he outdid himself.  A fan of hilarious, literary, and/or witty short stories? Read "Jane Austen wrote the works of William Shakespeare."  Having experienced one or two academic conferences and after writing my thesis on the critical history comparing Austen to Shakespeare - this made me cry with laughter.  Such a joy!

On letters

Over the weekend, I was organizing papers and files and clearing out a bin for a (long awaited) lager space to keep out notes, cards, and letters.  I didn't have time to re-read as much as I would have liked to, but the snippet here, the postcard there made me so happy.  I'm a spoiled girl, with letters from England, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, and all across the United States. 

 

This morning, one of my favorite bloggers posted "Why We Should Write Letters Again, Please."   This is a conversation my older brother and I have had many times.  They last.  Letters mean more.  [Just see Letters of Note.] The time they take to compose, the tangibility they convey, the distance they close - they mean so much to both parties.

As Fall is now decidedly upon us, and the natural inclination to stay close to the hearth has settled in our hearts, consider "posting" something more memorable than a message or tweet. 

"The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters" - Lewis Carroll

"How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous." - Haruki Murakami

"I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth." - Jane Austen