My Real Job
For anyone interested in my research, both of the papers I'm giving at the Midwest Political Science Association conference this coming weekend are available online. They are:
Wills, Emily. "The Making of Arab New York: Discourse and Politics in Bay Ridge" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th Annual National Conference, The Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Apr 02, 2009 Online
. 2009-04-01
Abstract: This paper uses ethnographic research in the diverse Arab communities of New York City to develop an analysis of the new forms and ideas in political discourse that are developed in diaspora. My research, like much theoretical and empirical work on discourse, makes simultaneous use of both the Foucauldian sense of discourse, the set of linguistic signs and practices that are used to create and structure meaning in society, and the processural sense, the act of speaking to and listening to fellow members of a discursive community. I want to use the set of signs and meanings that we use in everyday life to analyze processes of social contestation. In this paper, I isolate a single area of discourse in the second sense, the process of developing, justifying, and legitimating a notion of what constitutes "the Arab community" in New York. From this single topic of debate, I will demonstrate the way different thematic discursive foci, particular democracy, gender, and Middle Eastern politics, are developed in connection with each other in the actual practice of political debate, via an analysis of how these debates are shaped by engagement with multiple hegemonic formations that surround Arabs in New York.
Wills, Emily. "The Political Possibilities of Fandom: Transformational Discourses on Gender and Power in The X-Files Fandom" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association 67th Annual National Conference, The Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, IL, Apr 02, 2009 Online
. 2009-04-01
Abstract: Radical messages in pop culture texts are often entangled with conservative or even reactionary discourses. What is the real potential for dissent within popular culture? Is it located in the texts themselves, or, rather, in the practice of a viewing public? Much analysis assumes fannish practice has political potential because it allows a different reading for each reader and holding them all up as legitimate, refusing a single meaning in a text. I argue there is another way fandom is political: in its content, which can rearticulate and transform the conservative and reactionary discourses in its core texts. In this paper, I examine these questions as they pertain to the fan culture organized around a single text, The X-Files, and a single area of thought, the relationship between roles gendered as female, and authority and agency. I argue that, through the character of Dana Scully, the canon text of The X-Files sets up an unmistakeable association between adhering to socially normative femininity, especially the roles of abductee, sexual victim, and mother, and a steady loss of authority. However, fan discourse names this association, criticizes it, and resignifies those roles as authoritative.
To get these papers you can:
1) Go to the links provided in the citations; click on the All Academic link at the bottom, or use the html function towards the top.
or
1) Go to the MPSA Paper Archive here.
2) Select Search Papers (third tab)
3) Search by author, and put in "Wills."
4) My two papers, along with one other one, pop up.
Feedback appreciated, from fangirls with thoughts on the content of the XF paper, or from other readers interested in either topic.