careers bore me.

Hi.

Duh I forgot to link you all, my invisible readers, to my twitter account. how can i discuss my life on twitter and not let you in to it?

http://twitter.com/melodyisazombie

i made awesome cinnamon buns today and shared them with the workers of the coffee shop i live at. seriously, i may be here more than my own house. ask my roommate.

some crazy UK bike scholars want to maybe put my work in a frickin book based off a bike conference. i didn't get into the conference but they want to publish my paper. best conference rejection letter ever.

i am a velorutionary!

another day as an organizer and teacher

the secret word is: velorutionary

today i learned a new term in one less car: velorutionary (ahhhhhhhh!!!!!), otherwise known as a bike activist, or biketivist. academics certainly love to make up new words!

today has been busy with some unpaid jobs i hold. i met with a fellow teacher about guest lecturing on feminism and porn. we talked for over 2 hours about media literacy. we talked in depth about dreamworlds, a media literacy video about sex and dominance in popular media. although the premise is a bit problematic (leaving little agency in the viewer to determine reality from fantasy), it is a fantastic video to show (and enlighten!) undergrads and others uneducated about media literacy.

i have also been helping to craft criteria for assigning TA gigs in my department. i am grateful to have a boss who is so committed to ensuring proper working conditions for us grad workers.

i just finished editing a training document to assist my fellow workers in talking with RAs about job issues and concerns. the training is largely based on some organizing i helped with in madison last weekend. i spent last weekend with a network of grad worker unions. it was inspirational and educational. woo.

thus i have stayed busy and have done very little GRPP-appropriate work this week. but i am staying productive and energized.

this blog is very "perzine"-esque. it should shift to a more academic angle soon.

media production interlude

today i started auditing an Intro to Media Production class. it is a class i will be teaching next year. i have decided to type up the class notes to organize the information into lecture notes, which will lessen my work in prepping for the class at the end of the summer.

thus the class is already more demanding than i thought. so i will have to put my GRPP work on hold, at least for today. the author of one less car emailed me today wondering what i thought of his book. how exciting! he is a continual inspiration in maintaining my punk/activist/radical academic approach to my job. he is donating all profits from his book to small, DIY bike advocacy groups. love.

single camera use

my friend, Mike Z. Newman, wrote a great conference paper on single shot camera use in situational comedies. i want to use his article when i teach media production. this may be a tough goal as the class is taught using only the multi-camera technique (mostly due to time constraints, as single-camera productions require much more pre and post-production). but the class allows for some critical analysis so i will try my best to integrate the article into class.

i am putting a lot of pressure on the class to foster some empowerment in myself as a media producer. it is a hard skill for women to gain, as it is within an industry silently keeping women on the sidelines. interestingly enough, the students in the class are mostly women. yay!

speaking of silencing women, today at a grad worker (graduate students who work for the university) meeting a man (or boy i should say) referred to some women on a conference call as "girls" and refused to name them. cue No Doubt's "i'm just a girl."

2010 GRPP

hi.

i decided to start this blog for two reasons. 1. i do not have a blog (and now i do!) and 2. i received a summer's worth of living expenses to allow myself to research for my dissertation. i need something to organize my thoughts. this blog will organize my thoughts

grpp?

grpp stands for graduate research political praxis. no it doesn't, but that is what it means to me.

what do you do all summer?

i struggled with accepting this very gracious funding. i love to teach. because i took on the grpp, i cannot teach this summer through my department. i am still uncomfortable with this funding. i basically am getting paid to read and write. i may do this by sitting in the library, out in the sun, in my house, in NYC, on trains, et al. for example, tonight i started reading one less car by zack furness (a foundational text for my research) while sipping on iced coffee in the sun. it is a luxury i cannot fully accept. i have physically labored in the service industry for the last 10 years of my life. summertime meant working over 40 hours/week running my butt off. this summer i will labor over books and microsoft word.

intellectual labor

as a grad worker unionist, i believe my work as a graduate student is labor. but it is a privileged labor. one way i tolerate my life choice in academia is by focusing on being an activist at all times. i whole heartedly believe in praxis (the combo of theory and practice). thus my summer is also dedicated to finishing up minneapolis presents, an all-female, non-sexualized bicyclist calender. all proceeds will go to grease rag, a bi-monthly female bike shop night here in MPLS.

so what?!

i am going to use this blog to report my grpp progress through the summer. this may include: the literature i am reading, current thoughts i have on my research, my response to intellectually laboring, and any activism i partake in.

research focus

i research what i am currently referring to as untold bicycle culture stories/cultures/histories. more on what bicycle culture means later. examples of my research include looking into a feminist bike gang, an anti-gang urban bike group in oakland, and bike porn.

and remember: