yep, procrastinating, hence an interview
The Rules
1. Leave me a comment.
2. I respond by asking you five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You then update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Questions, courtesy of rymenhild
1. You've presented serious (and very interesting) papers on fantasy literature and anime. Are there any other genres traditionally perceived as "low culture" that you intend to study from a critical, scholarly perspective?
If Tarot falls into that category (mass-produced tool of charlatans and psychics, gasp!), then that'd be one. I also have a few ideas for papers on role-playing games, mostly from a gender-y perspective. One of my guilty pleasures is deconstructing TV commercials, but I don't know if I'd ever formally study them; I'm content to make a scary feminist impression on people who are exposed to me ranting about masculinity in Subway commercials.
2. Now that you've spent several years in the Midwest, how does it compare with the lefty West Coast enclaves where you grew up and went to college?
Ooh, that's a loaded question--many of my friends here in Bloomington have perceived, or continue to perceive, me as snobby due to my nostalgia for California. The Midwest automatically suffers a few points in my book for not being near the ocean. I adore being by the sea, and I also can never get my fill of fresh seafood. Still, I've found a lot of good food out here, including awesome farmer's market produce and organic hippie-type things, though there are still a few motifemic slots left unfulfilled: nothing compares to the Thai temple brunch in Berkeley, the vegetarian Chinese place where we ate sweet-and-sour "pork" and drank hot sake, the Mexican food of L.A., dim-sum and sushi in L.A. and San Francisco, the gourmet restaurants my parents have taken me to (in Berkeley, like Chez Panisse, and in Napa and Sonoma and L.A.). Plus I miss my mom's cooking. I don't necessarily miss the cooking in my co-op house in Berkeley, but I did learn a lot there.
Other than food differences, a lot of the places and people in California continue to resonate with me in ways that places and people in the Midwest don't. Most of my family remains in California, although I've had some neat experiences with non-heteronormative communities and households here. I've loved and fallen out of love, hurt and been hurt in both California and the Midwest, though I think my experiences here have shaped my growing-up more acutely simply because I'm getting older, hence am being forced to mature a bit. I miss the mountains and the architecture and the diversity of California. There are more churches here than I would've thought necessary.
The people I hang with here in the Midwest are a huge part of the reason I like it here, though... ranging from geeks, gamers, and goths to fellow academics, liberals, feminists, and people who don't fit any of those categories and may in fact oppose them; craftsy types and costumey types and cooking types, really, creative people of all flavors--they enhance my stay here, and I wouldn't have met any of them if I'd've stayed in California. At the same time, I ache with jealousy at all the cool stuff going on in California in the dance scene, and I treasure the time I got to spend in the Bay Area and wish I'd gotten to do more crazy experimental hardcore dancing before coming out here, where there is a lovely belly dance community but way fewer performance and instruction opportunities. I don't know whether more or fewer people regard me as a crazy feminist here than there; I suspect that my continual proximity to college towns tends to increase the tolerance for my type.
Actually experiencing seasons is a novelty, though I dislike cold weather and humidity. I'd rather chance earthquakes than tornadoes. I've learned, between here and there, that university politics are probably going to suck no matter where I end up as a professor, so I need to learn to be strong and negotiate for what I need.
So, to wrap up this ridiculously long answer, my time in the Midwest has been profoundly challenging at times, as I've felt torn away from people and places and things I love, but only to discover that I can change and come to love new people, places, and things. Still, I don't want to live in the Midwest all my life; I'm aching to return to a coast, better yet, the West Coast, and even better, California, so that I can be near my family in my native climate where you can get berries year-round and purchase alcohol on Sundays.
3. Tell me about a really good LARP moment.
Good in what sense? Anyway, since getting dragged into LARPing (live-action role-playing, for the uninitiated) well over two years ago, I have probably had the most fun playing in a Vampire game where my character is fashionably angst-tastic. A good moment for her was melting sobbing into the floor after a night in which she'd been kidnapped, exiled, and mauled, and yet had still gathered intelligence for the domain, only to have her one-and-only-ex-lover who had betrayed her trust appear--and brush by her without acknowledging her at all. Yeah, I milked that moment for all the angst it was worth. :)
4. Recommend a musician or band you're listening to these days.
Hm... I've been digging Imogen Heap's Speak for Yourself and Emilie Simon's Végétal; both feature intriguing female vocalists and electronic music that one could call bizarre, but it makes me want to dance in strange, cyborg-y ways. I've also been listening to Collide's Some Kind of Strange, which is a tad like what I've just described with more gothiness mixed in.
5. What's your favorite fairy tale (not counting AT 510b!) and why?
I've always had a weakness for "The Little White Cat," which I first encountered in a "folktales of the world" book I used to love as a kid. I haven't really researched it, but I think it's by one of the French conteuses and belongs to the cycle of animal bride tales. I just have this morbid fascination with how the hero has to cut off the little white cat's head after all she's done for him, and she actually insists on this, and of course it transforms her into a beautiful princess... but what implications does this have for feminine heterosexual identities? Does the tale glorify masochism, making it a requisite for transformation? Is masculine agency the key to the tale? Regardless, I find the tale terribly sexy. Dismemberment has always fascinated me (um, symbolically, not literally).
And, oh bother, of course there's "Little Red Riding Hood," ATU 333. Again, you have transformations and dismemberment, with a touch of cannibalism thrown in at least in some versions of the tale. These are images that attract me. As does the color red. I must admit an attraction to wolves, as well, and straying from paths, both of which tend to be fun although they do have their consequences. It's just such a polyvalent and polyvocalic tale, with so much potential for intertexts to inspire varying interpretations (again with the sexy, in a postmodern kind of way). I own a few books on the tale and have read many, many reinterpretations of it. Angela Carter's "In the Company of Wolves" remains one of my all-time favorites, though a lot of the tales in Jack Zipes's The Trials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood are awesome. At one point I was despairing of being able to contribute to the scholarship on it, since SO much has been written, but now I have an idea to write about Halloween costume versions of Red Riding Hood, and how sexuality is interpreted, and so on (confession: I've dressed up as Red in the past, but I put together my own costume, thankyouverymuch, rather than buying a pre-made one). Which I suppose brings us full circle to your first question about "low culture" research topics!
1. Leave me a comment.
2. I respond by asking you five questions. You will answer them, because you like talking about yourself.
3. You then update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Questions, courtesy of rymenhild
1. You've presented serious (and very interesting) papers on fantasy literature and anime. Are there any other genres traditionally perceived as "low culture" that you intend to study from a critical, scholarly perspective?
If Tarot falls into that category (mass-produced tool of charlatans and psychics, gasp!), then that'd be one. I also have a few ideas for papers on role-playing games, mostly from a gender-y perspective. One of my guilty pleasures is deconstructing TV commercials, but I don't know if I'd ever formally study them; I'm content to make a scary feminist impression on people who are exposed to me ranting about masculinity in Subway commercials.
2. Now that you've spent several years in the Midwest, how does it compare with the lefty West Coast enclaves where you grew up and went to college?
Ooh, that's a loaded question--many of my friends here in Bloomington have perceived, or continue to perceive, me as snobby due to my nostalgia for California. The Midwest automatically suffers a few points in my book for not being near the ocean. I adore being by the sea, and I also can never get my fill of fresh seafood. Still, I've found a lot of good food out here, including awesome farmer's market produce and organic hippie-type things, though there are still a few motifemic slots left unfulfilled: nothing compares to the Thai temple brunch in Berkeley, the vegetarian Chinese place where we ate sweet-and-sour "pork" and drank hot sake, the Mexican food of L.A., dim-sum and sushi in L.A. and San Francisco, the gourmet restaurants my parents have taken me to (in Berkeley, like Chez Panisse, and in Napa and Sonoma and L.A.). Plus I miss my mom's cooking. I don't necessarily miss the cooking in my co-op house in Berkeley, but I did learn a lot there.
Other than food differences, a lot of the places and people in California continue to resonate with me in ways that places and people in the Midwest don't. Most of my family remains in California, although I've had some neat experiences with non-heteronormative communities and households here. I've loved and fallen out of love, hurt and been hurt in both California and the Midwest, though I think my experiences here have shaped my growing-up more acutely simply because I'm getting older, hence am being forced to mature a bit. I miss the mountains and the architecture and the diversity of California. There are more churches here than I would've thought necessary.
The people I hang with here in the Midwest are a huge part of the reason I like it here, though... ranging from geeks, gamers, and goths to fellow academics, liberals, feminists, and people who don't fit any of those categories and may in fact oppose them; craftsy types and costumey types and cooking types, really, creative people of all flavors--they enhance my stay here, and I wouldn't have met any of them if I'd've stayed in California. At the same time, I ache with jealousy at all the cool stuff going on in California in the dance scene, and I treasure the time I got to spend in the Bay Area and wish I'd gotten to do more crazy experimental hardcore dancing before coming out here, where there is a lovely belly dance community but way fewer performance and instruction opportunities. I don't know whether more or fewer people regard me as a crazy feminist here than there; I suspect that my continual proximity to college towns tends to increase the tolerance for my type.
Actually experiencing seasons is a novelty, though I dislike cold weather and humidity. I'd rather chance earthquakes than tornadoes. I've learned, between here and there, that university politics are probably going to suck no matter where I end up as a professor, so I need to learn to be strong and negotiate for what I need.
So, to wrap up this ridiculously long answer, my time in the Midwest has been profoundly challenging at times, as I've felt torn away from people and places and things I love, but only to discover that I can change and come to love new people, places, and things. Still, I don't want to live in the Midwest all my life; I'm aching to return to a coast, better yet, the West Coast, and even better, California, so that I can be near my family in my native climate where you can get berries year-round and purchase alcohol on Sundays.
3. Tell me about a really good LARP moment.
Good in what sense? Anyway, since getting dragged into LARPing (live-action role-playing, for the uninitiated) well over two years ago, I have probably had the most fun playing in a Vampire game where my character is fashionably angst-tastic. A good moment for her was melting sobbing into the floor after a night in which she'd been kidnapped, exiled, and mauled, and yet had still gathered intelligence for the domain, only to have her one-and-only-ex-lover who had betrayed her trust appear--and brush by her without acknowledging her at all. Yeah, I milked that moment for all the angst it was worth. :)
4. Recommend a musician or band you're listening to these days.
Hm... I've been digging Imogen Heap's Speak for Yourself and Emilie Simon's Végétal; both feature intriguing female vocalists and electronic music that one could call bizarre, but it makes me want to dance in strange, cyborg-y ways. I've also been listening to Collide's Some Kind of Strange, which is a tad like what I've just described with more gothiness mixed in.
5. What's your favorite fairy tale (not counting AT 510b!) and why?
I've always had a weakness for "The Little White Cat," which I first encountered in a "folktales of the world" book I used to love as a kid. I haven't really researched it, but I think it's by one of the French conteuses and belongs to the cycle of animal bride tales. I just have this morbid fascination with how the hero has to cut off the little white cat's head after all she's done for him, and she actually insists on this, and of course it transforms her into a beautiful princess... but what implications does this have for feminine heterosexual identities? Does the tale glorify masochism, making it a requisite for transformation? Is masculine agency the key to the tale? Regardless, I find the tale terribly sexy. Dismemberment has always fascinated me (um, symbolically, not literally).
And, oh bother, of course there's "Little Red Riding Hood," ATU 333. Again, you have transformations and dismemberment, with a touch of cannibalism thrown in at least in some versions of the tale. These are images that attract me. As does the color red. I must admit an attraction to wolves, as well, and straying from paths, both of which tend to be fun although they do have their consequences. It's just such a polyvalent and polyvocalic tale, with so much potential for intertexts to inspire varying interpretations (again with the sexy, in a postmodern kind of way). I own a few books on the tale and have read many, many reinterpretations of it. Angela Carter's "In the Company of Wolves" remains one of my all-time favorites, though a lot of the tales in Jack Zipes's The Trials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood are awesome. At one point I was despairing of being able to contribute to the scholarship on it, since SO much has been written, but now I have an idea to write about Halloween costume versions of Red Riding Hood, and how sexuality is interpreted, and so on (confession: I've dressed up as Red in the past, but I put together my own costume, thankyouverymuch, rather than buying a pre-made one). Which I suppose brings us full circle to your first question about "low culture" research topics!