Category: job

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Great opportunity > Internship with the Social Media Collective (Microsoft)

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Via Nancy Baym:

Call for applications! 2018 summer internship, MSR Social Media Collective

APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 19, 2018

Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Social Media Collective (SMC) for its 12-week Internship program. The Social Media Collective (in New England, we are Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary Gray, with current postdocs Dan Greene and Dylan Mulvin) bring together empirical and critical perspectives to understand the political and cultural dynamics that underpin social media technologies. Learn more about us here.

MSRNE internships are 12-week paid stays in our lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During their stay, SMC interns are expected to devise and execute their own research project, distinct from the focus of their dissertation (see the project requirements below). The expected outcome is a draft of a publishable scholarly paper for an academic journal or conference of the intern’s choosing. Our goal is to help the intern advance their own career; interns are strongly encouraged to work towards a creative outcome that will help them on the academic job market.

The ideal candidate may be trained in any number of disciplines (including anthropology, communication, information studies, media studies, sociology, science and technology studies, or a related field), but should have a strong social scientific or humanistic methodological, analytical, and theoretical foundation, be interested in questions related to media or communication technologies and society or culture, and be interested in working in a highly interdisciplinary environment that includes computer scientists, mathematicians, and economists.

Primary mentors for this year will be Nancy Baym and Tarleton Gillespie, with additional guidance offered by other members of the SMC. We are looking for applicants working in one or more of the following areas:

  1. Personal relationships and digital media
  2. Audiences and the shifting landscapes of producer/consumer relations
  3. Affective, immaterial, and other frameworks for understanding digital labor
  4. How platforms, through their design and policies, shape public discourse
  5. The politics of algorithms, metrics, and big data for a computational culture
  6. The interactional dynamics, cultural understanding, or public impact of AI chatbots or intelligent agents

Interns are also expected to give short presentations on their project, contribute to the SMC blog, attend the weekly lab colloquia, and contribute to the life of the community through weekly lunches with fellow PhD interns and the broader lab community. There are also natural opportunities for collaboration with SMC researchers and visitors, and with others currently working at MSRNE, including computer scientists, economists, and mathematicians. PhD interns are expected to be on-site for the duration of their internship.

Applicants must have advanced to candidacy in their PhD program by the time they start their internship. (Unfortunately, there are no opportunities for Master’s students or early PhD students at this time). Applicants from historically marginalized communities, underrepresented in higher education, and students from universities outside of the United States are encouraged to apply.

PEOPLE AT MSRNE SOCIAL MEDIA COLLECTIVE

The Social Media Collective is comprised of full-time researchers, postdocs, visiting faculty, Ph.D. interns, and research assistants. Current projects in New England include:

  • How does the use of social media affect relationships between artists and audiences in creative industries, and what does that tell us about the future of work? (Nancy Baym)
  • How are social media platforms, through their algorithmic design and user policies, taking up the role of custodians of public discourse? (Tarleton Gillespie)
  • What are the cultural, political, and economic implications of crowdsourcing as a new form of semi-automated, globally-distributed digital labor? (Mary L. Gray)
  • How do public institutions like schools and libraries prepare workers for the information economy, and how are they changed in the process? (Dan Greene)
  • How are media standards made, and what do their histories tell us about the kinds of things we can represent? (Dylan Mulvin)

SMC PhD interns may also have the opportunity to connect with our sister Social Media Collective members in New York City. Related projects in New York City include:

  • What are the politics, ethics, and policy implications of artificial intelligence and data science? (Kate Crawford, MSR-NYC)
  • What are the social and cultural issues arising from data-centric technological development? (danah boyd, Data & Society Research Institute)

For more information about the Social Media Collective, and a list of past interns, visit the About page of our blog. For a complete list of all permanent researchers and current postdocs based at the New England lab, see: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/labs/newengland/people/bios.aspx

Read more.

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Working with anxiety

People on a rollercoaster

Gillian Rose’s recently posted advice has sat with me for a few days, it’s been in the background of my thinking as I fail to get much proper work done. It’s got me thinking about the level of anxiety I have been working with, which I suspect is (sadly) not uncommon for many folk right now. I don’t know whether writing this is a good idea. It’s not like successful people write these sorts of admissions of weakness but there we go…

This is sort of public taking-stock, with the hope that it may help me along and maybe other folks who feel similar things may feel like they’re not alone, I don’t know…

Gillian Rose’s blogpost happened to come along at the same time I’ve been failing to write my first proper annual appraisal type document after passing through our formal probation system. Until that point I only had to do a much abridged version. Now I’m supposed to a full ‘PDR’, with six sections of a page each that ask you to provide an account of what you’re doing about: “Career Goals and Plans”, “Research and Scholarship”, “Impact”, “Education” (4th! *sigh*), “Internationalisation” and “Other significant contributions to the university” (not to your discipline, to scholarship, to academia, but to the institution – make of that what you will). I have been stuck. I was looking at the pages and while I have written some halfhearted bullet points about the few things I’ve done, it worried me to the extent that I kept putting it off.

The grown-up thing to do is, I think (and I’ve received advice about from someone I trust), to fill out these kinds of benchmarking/monitoring forms positively but realistically – trying to keep in mind an understanding of your own worth. So, not just chasing the targets (goodness knows there are plenty of them), but also politely saying where you could use more support to realise the things that are mutually beneficial – things you want to do and the university thinks are good too. In truth, my department is very supportive. The university has it’s jargon and paperwork but it has always been (for me anyway) mediated by good people. Nevertheless, I wasn’t taking my own advice. In part this is because I am tired (due to illness/ sleeplessness), in part because I’ve felt a bit lost with what to prioritise and what, following Gillian, my ‘brand’ is/ should be.

Drawing upon Gillian’s blogpost, I guess what I am reflecting upon then is how life-changes affect how you see yourself, how you plan and manage time, and how you judge what’s ‘good enough’ as Gillian put it. In the last three years, my time in my current position, with my family I’ve moved city to enable my commute, there’s been a very serious family illness, we became a ‘family’ – I have two children (15 months and nearly four years old[!!]), I have changed my working pattern (to compressed hours one week in four days) to enable childcare, and while I know I am incredibly lucky (I really do and remind myself of that frequently): I am exhausted.

This feeling of exhaustion is mostly due to non-work things, which I’d rather keep private, but there are work elements to that exhaustion. This comes from an accumulation of several factors that seem to play out in my mind regularly: Thinking about ‘keeping up’ – with targets, with debates, with expectations (FOMO, apparently). Trying to come up with ideas that don’t feel like they’re already being done, by those quicker to write. Attempting to be as supportive as possible to others whilst worrying about your own stalling career.

I have been feeling that I cannot seem to come up with a convincing narrative ~ what Gillian discussed as ‘brand’. I’ve tried a few times but I cannot seem to get momentum. This is where my anxiety lies. I do my best not to compare myself to others but what with social media, gossip and so on, it’s hard not to do so. I see others ‘networking’ but I feel less-confident about doing it. So I feel in a contradictory position: by most measures I am no longer ‘early career’, but I still feel like I haven’t really got started.

Where I’ve got to is this: I have a plan for a sort of narrative around automation. I know I am late to the party and this is already other people’s ‘brand’ but it’s what I’m interested in reading and thinking about. I have some ideas about how I can write about this in order for me to remain interested but also to meet expected targets. So, I know it’s not especially ‘ambitious’ or cutting edge or anything but that’s where I am.

I regret none of my choices and I am really thankful I had them. I have received support from colleagues and my institution to enable me to spend as much time as I can afford with my young children. I wouldn’t change that for anything. Nevertheless, I didn’t realise how ‘professionally’ anxious I would become. As things are settling down, in my new-ish work pattern, I feel like I am at a point of being able to prioritise more clearly.

It seems to me that Gillian’s closing remarks are really important – caring for yourself is crucial. I think you have to try and be kind to yourself as well as trying to be all of the other things. You may be thinking “it’s alright for you as: a man/ someone [with a ‘permanent’ contract]/[in the UK]/[in a ‘good’ department]”, and you are right but I can only be honest about how I’ve been feeling. I recognise I’m fortunate and I’ve tried to help others and make the most of that good fortune to the extent that I am able.

I hope that these reflections are in some way useful to someone. It may be unwise to write in this public confessional manner, and maybe I’m simply delivering myself to the ‘attention economy’.

Time to finish that form…

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Careering

People on a rollercoaster

Gillian Rose has written a helpful blogpost on her blog following a talk at Maynooth about developing a career as an academic for the Supporting Women in Geography Ireland group, which I recommend reading. I value the advice Gillian gives (and wish I’d had it earlier in my career), so definitely give it a read.

I don’t wish to draw equivalences of experience (either in the sense of expertise or stuff that you do/happens to you) not least cos that experience/those experiences are clearly different, yet Gillian’s blogpost made me think of a couple of things about academic ‘brand’…

Goodness knows you can put all sorts of pressure on yourself to somehow live up to the ‘superhero‘ (*oh dear*) that seems to be asked for in job adverts (as Rachel Pitt and Inger Bewman have discussed), sooo… in my limited experience, it seems to me that developing what Gillian calls a ‘brand‘ (with those scare quotes, mind) is both necessary and problematic.

It’s a positive thing insofar as other people need to be able to understand what you do so if you have a clear and accessible ‘brand’ then it may well help with applying for jobs, for grants and so on. As Gillian puts it, try to work out:

the kind of geographer/academic that you are or you aspire to be

As Gillian goes on to identify – a mentor can help (and that can be fantastic). If you’ve got a sort of narrative that binds together, however loosely, the things you’ve done, written and taught then other people can easily make sense of who you are as an academic. Likewise, if you respond to thematic funding calls it can give you a way in. It may lead to other people actually inviting you to give talks, collaborate and so on… so that’s all pretty good – it can feel nice to be recognised and (hopefully) respected. Also, if a theme becomes a ‘big thing’ then you can get a head start, for example if you ‘brand’ yourself as someone who does ‘the geopolitics of media’ then you may have an advantage when pitching into thematic calls about the machinations around ‘fake news’ and so on…

I hesitate to say this, again from my limited experience, however – ‘branding’ can also, I think, be problematic when pursued over-zealously. I am not being derisory about ambition, I think/ hope there are positive versions of it. Nevertheless, there are strategies for career advancement that may work but may also come at a cost – sometimes to yourself and sometimes more widely. I’d like to think these are the sorts of issues a mentor can help you identify and hopefully negotiate without negative effects.

Being specific about your ‘brand’ may start out helpful but could become restrictive. For example, you might position yourself as someone who does research on a particular area (like the ‘geopolitics of media’ example above) or on/with a particular theory or theorist – you might write the journal article or book on it – but you may want to have one eye on whether you’re pigeon-holing yourself restrictively… after all, we have careers that can last decades (hopefully).

‘Brand’ carries the possible, unfortunate, connotation of monopoly – trying to become the person who does [x] (I know that’s not what Gillian was suggesting). It may be tempting to try to achieve that status too, but I think I would caution against it personally. If you have tough enough skin I suspect it’s possible to gain that status in some circumstances, I doubt anyone will tell you not to (you may just face more-than-usually unpleasant anonymous peer review comments as you ratchet up the ‘outputs’), but I wonder at what cost..?

One of us might somehow bash out eight articles in a year all on-‘brand’, they might manage a few more in subsequent years, firmly staking a claim to that theme/ set of ideas/ empirical focus. They might organise conference sessions and events, carefully billing themselves as the gatekeeper or key speaker. A group building a ‘brand’ might collectively do these things, spur one another on – they even ‘boost’ each other through citation rings. However, we might also want to think about what such practices and that level of productivity means in terms of expectations we set for ourselves or our employers, perceptions of the quality of our work, or sustainable work load.

We might want to think about the positive and negatives of ‘reputation’ that may come from all this. We might also want to think about whether we’re perpetuating problematic expectations for other colleagues – “Well, if Bloggs can write so many articles in a year why can’t you?” etc etc. It becomes competitive. Personally,  I hope that we can find ways of celebrating one another’s work rather than competing. I’d like to think that academia is a collective and collaborative enterprise…

I worry (too much! heh) that if we were to focus too much on ‘brands’ we open ourselves to the negative sides of competition that so many colleagues have criticised in terms of the negative effects on wellbeing [e.g.]. I think the advice Gillian gives in her blogpost takes us some way towards doing so, and I’m grateful she shared it.

Maybe you disagree with my ramblings? I’d welcome comments below…

In terms of how to manage our own wellbeing I wrote some stuff on here a while ago about ‘the job’ that may or may not be of interest too…
Academic emotional labour
Illness, reflecting on work…

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AI Now post-doc positions

Holly from the UK TV programme Red Dwarf

This looks like a great opportunity for someone interested in the sorts of things the “AI Now” Institute (NYU) does. Link.

AI Now is looking for two to three postdoctoral researchers whose work resonates with the Institute’s mission. This position is an ideal opportunity for scholars who are interested in understanding the growing role of AI and related technologies within social and political institutions, and who are excited by the idea of shaping a new and far-ranging research field.

ABOUT THE AI NOW INSTITUTE

The AI Now Institute at New York University is an interdisciplinary community researching the social and economic implications of artificial intelligence and related algorithmic systems. We focus on producing foundational research illuminating the social contexts as automated decision-making moves deeper into core institutions like health, education, and criminal justice.

Founded in 2017 by Kate Crawford and Meredith Whittaker, AI Now is housed at NYU, where it fosters vibrant interdisciplinary engagement across the University and beyond. AI Now’s current partners at NYU include: the Tandon School of Engineering, the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, the Law School, the Stern School of Business, and the Center for Data Science.

AI NOW POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS

As an interdisciplinary institute at NYU, AI Now will provide postdocs with the opportunity to develop their scholarship at a top academic institution with an explicit remit to collaborate with researchers and practitioners across different fields, whether in NYU, at partner institutions, or within relevant industry and civil society organizations. AI Now has a strong network across these sectors, and will make this network available to postdocs where relevant and useful.

Postdocs will devote time to their own research and collaborative projects and will contribute to AI Now programs and events related to their research portfolio. Teaching is not expected, but may be an option, depending on a candidate’s availability and interest.

AI Now is committed to mentorship and support and to accommodating and resourcing research agendas that fit within its core mission. Postdocs will become a core part of a growing research community that includes reading groups, expert workshops, international conferences, regular salons, and site-specific travel. Fellows will also have the opportunity to help shape the annual AI Now Symposium.

RESOURCES AND BENEFITS

  • Competitive salary and benefits
  • Access to an exceptional network of mentors and established researchers spanning NYU and beyond, including civil society and industry practitioners
  • A generous research stipend for conferences (including international), fieldwork, and research materials, available as needed
  • Relocation assistance available as needed

See the full text of the call here.

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Academia.edu as an instrument of analytical discipline

Saw a paper, shared (perhaps ironically) on ResearchGate, concerning Academia.edu and the ways it can be seen as a means of self-discipline around ‘impact’, self-promotion and how these may relate reward and recognition. May be of interest to some…

“Facebook for Academics”: The Convergence of Self-Branding and Social Media Logic on Academia.edu

Brooke Erin Duffy and Jefferson D. Pooley.

Given widespread labor market precarity, contemporary workers–especially those in the media and creative industries–are increasingly called upon to brand themselves. Academics, we contend, are experiencing a parallel pressure to engage in self-promotional practices, particularly as universities become progressively more market-driven. Academia.edu, a paper-sharing social network that has been informally dubbed “Facebook for academics,” has grown rapidly by adopting many of the conventions of popular social media sites. This article argues that the astonishing uptake of Academia.edu both reflects and amplifies the self-branding imperatives that many academics experience. Drawing on Academia.edu’s corporate history, design decisions, and marketing communications, we analyze two overlapping facets of Academia.edu: (1) the site’s business model and (2) its social affordances. We contend that the company, like mainstream social networks, harnesses the content and immaterial labor of users under the guise of “sharing.” In addition, the site’s fixation on analytics reinforces a culture of incessant self-monitoring–one already encouraged by university policies to measure quantifiable impact. We conclude by identifying the stakes for academic life, when entrepreneurial and self-promotional demands brush up against the university’s knowledge-making ideals.

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Academic emotional labour

We are getting to the business end of our second term at my institution, when our final year students submit their dissertations, and we shift register looking towards field trips (our 2nd years go this weekend), exams and transitions – including of course graduation. This and some rather troubling conversations and various meetings through the term have got me thinking about the volume of emotional labour some of us perform. I say ‘some of us’ because, as with any organisation, some colleagues variously avoid it due to a range of reasons. Thus, some are faced with quite a bit of such work. Maybe these observations are a bit naive but this is where I currently find myself…

At the beginning of this academic year I ceased to be “Early Career”, in spite having only recently (3 years ago) getting back into geography – I spent three years (overlapping writing-up) as a post doc outside of the discipline. In the three years I’ve been in my current position, and beginning to learn how to teach, I have been surprised and at times overwhelmed by what others have labelled an ‘epidemic’ of mental health issues in universities. The complicated entanglements of anxiety and depression that a significant number of our students are contending with are worrying and at times heart-breaking. Some terms can be measured in the number of boxes of tissues I buy (not only for the students).

My experience has been that you get no training for this and, if you have not been an undergraduate for some time, the level of the issues our students are experiencing may feel utterly alarming and mystifying. I remember my time as an undergrad as pretty care-free and fun. It really saddens me how many of my tutees may well remember their time in a very different and perhaps largely negative way. Likewise, many of us in academia are wrestling with personal mental health issues and to be confronted with those of the students may well be very challenging.

So, what do I/you do, with no training and perhaps little experience of such things? Well, this is not meant to be advice but it gets me to the point I want to make: First things first – we are not counsellors. We are not trained to deal with these issues and can possibly make things worse ont better. Show empathy and sympathy, of course, but my strategy has also been to show respect for the student by explaining as tactfully as possible that they need to seek help from what we call “wellbeing services” and/or their GP. Many have already done this. A surprising number are already medicated.

So, personally, I end up listening, trying to discern the academic/administrative measures I have at my disposal that I can put in place to support the student’s needs and identify when I need help. Sometimes you get through the meeting, close the door and may have to have a cry yourself. Many colleagues will recognise this pattern and I’m not trying to dispense advice here but it does say something about work.

Many of us have a calculated workload, perhaps in a digitally accessible workload model (which some colleagues might suggest inculcates us into internalising the logic of institutional discipline for ourselves 😉 – if you look in that workload allocation the chances are there is figure somewhere that figures in office hours, personal tutor duties and so on. Often, the students you may be ‘supporting’ are not personal tutees but dissertation tutees as well, which is a different workload allocation – but probably not a big number. For some of us this workload figure may be accurate. For others this is a mere fraction of the workload experienced.

It would be easy to retort – “well, don’t take on the work”, don’t ‘pander’ to the students and stick rigidly to the time set out. Of course, with some authority (seniority, grant income buy-out etc.) you probably can do this. However, increasingly there is institutional pressure to improve metrics around student experience, to demonstrate the institution is ‘supportive’. As ‘frontline’ staff, academic tutors can bear a significant amount of responsibility for this.

So, this (potential) labour can be a catch-22: you do it, support students, deal with the related admin and your own emotional wellbeing and it may potentially affect other parts of your work that you value (i.e. research/writing time); or: do the minimum/ don’t do it and the work will be displaced to your colleagues (I don’t think it simply goes away) and you may risk being admonished for damaging the ‘student experience’.

Increasingly, such work is being pooled into particular roles – “senior tutors” of one kind or another: for a year group etc. Likewise, the extraordinary growth in applications for mitigation and the administrative side of the academic support for students with wellbeing issues involves a huge increase in work for our administrative colleagues – who are, in many institutions, increasingly embattled, disenfranchised and pulled in other directions.

It seems to me that the status quo is untenable. We cannot go on, we must go on. According to colleagues researching school-level education and those managing admissions, some students are arriving at university with these mental health issues already at an advanced stage, which seems to me a damning indictment of the ethos of the culture of our education system but also suggests we may need much more concerted responses to managing wellbeing from day one, somehow.

I don’t have the answers, but it seems to me that if we continue like this many of us face an ever-increasing student support workload that carries significant emotional cost. I try to remain positive – it is possible to put measures in place and there are dedicated colleagues in many institutions who are putting in place systems and taking difficult but necessary decisions about how to do this work. Nevertheless, I never imagined this would be such a big part of my job.

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Illness, reflecting on work…

I was off work for about a week and returned to work a week ago. Since then I’ve been struggling to catch up and I confess I’ve found it really hard. I’ve never really been properly ill during term-time before (that’s pretty lucky isn’t it?!) – it is exceptionally stressful. Pressure comes to return to work from your employer, from your students, from yourself – about possible student complaints, about dissertation anxiety, about delayed/late marking etc etc.

Moral of the experience: do not get ill. The work just piles up and you still have to do it all.

This got me thinking anyway…

The weird thing about any job, but (in my experience) academia especially, is that there’s lots of things you do not learn until they happen. The PhD is supposedly a form of training but it is a tremendously poor preparation for any role beyond a full-time researcher. Some postgrads get some teaching experience, which is good – but it doesn’t prepare you for what I found to be the most surprising and perhaps testing parts of the job: managing the weight of adminstrivia and dealing with your pastoral role. The way I have experienced this is: admin just keeps coming, and will only grow; and: students’ lives are bewildering.

Relatedly, the only advice I think I’d dare give a colleague new to the job is: make sure you take care of yourself. I’m afraid no one else will. The job will take all you can give and want more. The things I continue to negotiate to handle this are:

  1. Decide how much of yourself you are willing to give to your job/career. This fundamentally changed for me when my son came along.
    • Think about how your work and life ‘balance’, for example: in my experience commuting is not a long-term career strategy, especially with small children.
    • Try not compare yourself to others. Just because they are doing things you privately perceive to be ‘better’ than you does not make it a valid comparison. Feel proud about your own achievements, celebrate others’ success (if you feel able – we’re all human!) and keep muddling along.
    • Do not let performance management systems rule your life – think about how what you want to do can be spun to answer the requirements. AND >> keep a handle on your self-worth, sometimes expectations are unrealistic – this doesn’t make you “bad” or a “failure”. Talk with those whose opinion you trust and talk with those going through the same thing, you do not need to be alone (plus: join the union).
  2. Prioritise what you must/want to do and then find ways of firmly but politely saying “no” to the other things.
    • You may find you actually have some latitude to change things, like re-scheduling tutorials etc. If this makes things easier: do it!
  3. Most importantly: enjoy the job, regardless of the things we all know are difficult about it, teaching and researching for those who are interested can be very rewarding.

 

 

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Geographies of Popular Culture – a 1st year reading list

As we’re at the beginning of term here in Exeter and I’ve been fiddling with my teaching resources I thought I’d share some of them here, so please find below and in a linked PDF the suggested reading list I offer our first year students for a section of the module Geographies of Place, Identity and Culture concerning ‘Popular Culture’.

GEO1105 Geographies of Place, Identity and Culture

Geographies of Popular Culture: Reading List

 

In addition to Introducing Human Geographies, there are a few very good textbooks that may support further study, especially if you pursue cultural geographies in the second and third years:

Crang, Mike. 1998 Cultural Geography, London, Routledge.

Horton, John and Kraftl, Peter. 2014 Cultural Geographies. An Introduction, London, Routledge.

Storey, John. 2012 Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. An Introduction, 6th Edition, London, Pearson.

Lecture 1: Popular Culture

This lecture will introduce the theme of popular culture, revisiting key concepts and motifs that have emerged throughout the module and open out, as a context for further study, the pursuits and activities of popular culture.

 

Anderson et al. 2002 “A Rough Guide” in Anderson, K., Domosh, M., Pile, S., and Thrift, N. eds. Handbook of Cultural Geography, London, Sage, pp. 1-9

Storey, J 2012 ‘What is popular culture?’ in Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. An Introduction, London, Pearson, pp. 1-16

Wider reading

Bryman, A. 2004 The Disneyization of Society, London, Sage. –In library 306.3 BRY

du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. 1997 Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage.

Harvey, D. 1989 The condition of postmodernity, Oxford, Blackwell.

Klein, N. 1999 No logo, New York, Picador.

Mitchell, D. 1995 “There’s no such thing as culture: towards a reconceptualization of the idea of culture in geography”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20: pp. 102-116.

Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. 1998 Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, London, Routledge.

Turner, G. 2003 British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3rd Edition, London, Routledge.

 

Lecture 2: Geographies of Music

Music is the focus of the second lecture, situated both as forms of performance and a means of expression. We will look at the ways in which music is performed and how its audiences are convened. We will also explore how music is key medium for the expression of identity and the enactment of place.

 

Fraser, A. 2012 “The Spaces, Politics, and Cultural Economies of Electronic Dance Music”, Geography Compass 6(8): pp. 500-511.

Rogers, A. 2012 “Geographies of the Performing Arts: Landscapes, Places and Cities”, Geography Compass 6(2): pp. 60-75.

 

Wider reading

Anderson, B. 2004 “Time-stilled space-slowed: how boredom matters” Geoforum 35(6): pp. 739-754.

Cresswell, T. 2006 “‘You cannot shake that shimmie here’: producing mobility on the dancefloor”, Cultural Geographies 13: pp. 55-77.

Hudson, R. 2006 “Regions and place: music, identity and place”, Progress in Human Geography 30: pp. 626-634.

 

Kong, L. 1995 Music and cultural politics: ideology and resistance in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 20: pp. 447–459.

Leyshon, A. 2009 “The software slump? Digital music, the democratisation of technology, and the decline of the recording studio sector within the musical economy”, Environment and Planning A 41(6): pp. 1301-1331.

Mels, T. 2004 “Lineages of a geography of rhythms”, in Mels, T. ed. Reanimating Places: A Geography of Rhythms, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 3-44.

Revill, G. 2000 “Music and the politics of sound: nationalism, citizenship and auditory space”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18: pp. 597-613.

Saldanha, A. 2002 “Music, space, identity: geographies of youth culture in Bangalore”, Cultural Studies 16: pp. 337-350.

Simpson, P. 2008 “Chronic everyday life: rhythmanalysing street performance”, Social and Cultural Geography 9(7): pp. 807-829.

Simpson, P. 2012 “Apprehending everyday rhythms: rhythmanalysis, time-lapse photography, and the space-times of street performance”, Cultural Geographies 19(4): pp. 423-445.

Watson, A., Hoyler, M. and Mager, C. 2009 “Spaces and Networks of Musical Creativity in the City”, Geography Compass 3(2): pp. 856-878.

White, B. and Day, F. 1997 “Country music radio and American culture regions”, Journal of Cultural Geography 16: pp. 21-35.

Wood, N., Duffy, M. and Smith, S. J. 2007 “The art of doing (geographies of) music”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25: pp. 867–889.

Wyndham, M. and Read, P. 2003 “Buena Vista Social Club: local meets global and lives happily ever after”, Cultural Geographies 10: pp. 498-503.

 

Lecture 3: Geographies of Life Online

In this lecture the we will explore the growing number of ways in which life is mediated with and through the internet. We will investigate the ways in which the internet reconfigures the performance of identity and our understandings of space and place.

 

Kinsley, S. 2013 “Beyond the screen: Methods for investigating geographies of life ‘online'”, Geography Compass 7(8): pp. 540-555.

Wider reading

Adams, P. C. 1997 “Cyberspace and virtual places”, Geographical Review 87(2): pp. 155-171.

– 2011, “A taxonomy for communication geography”, Progress in Human Geography 35(1): pp. 37-57.

Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. 2001 Mapping Cyberspace, New York, Routledge.

Graham, S. 1998 “The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualising space, place and information technology” Progress in Human Geography 22(2): pp. 165-185.

Hillis, K. 1998 “On the margins: the invisibility of communications in geography” Progress in Human Geography 22(4): pp. 543-566.

Kellerman, A. 2002 The internet on earth: a geography of information, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley.

Mossberger, K., Tolbert, C. J., and Stansbury, M. 2003 Virtual Inequality: beyond the digital divide, Washington DC, Georgetown University Press.

Thrift, N. 1996 “New Urban Eras and Old Technological Fears: Reconfiguring the Goodwill of Electronic Things”, Urban Studies 33(8): pp. 1463-1493.

Zook, M. 2005 The Geography of the Internet Industry: Venture capital dot-coms, and local knowledge, New York, Blackwell.

Lecture 4: Geographies of Books & Reading

While literature can be considered as ‘high’ culture, in this lecture we will consider the ways in which literature and fiction are a significant source of imaginative geographies and particular types of spatial experience.

 

Hones, S. 2008 “Text as It Happens: Literary Geography”, Geography Compass 2(5): pp. 1301-3117.

Kitchin, R. and Kneale, J. 2001 “Science Fiction or future fact? Exploring imaginative geographies of the new millennium”, Progress in Human Geography 25: pp. 17-33.

 

Wider reading

Cresswell, T. 1993 “Mobility as resistance: a geographical reading of Kerouac’s On the Road“, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18: pp. 249-262.

DeLyser, D. 2005 Romana memories: tourism and the shaping of Southern California, Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.

Kneale, J. 1999 “The virtual realities of technology and fiction: reading William Gibson;s cyberspace”, in Crang, M., Crang, P., and May, J. eds. Virtual Geographies, London, Routledge, pp. 205-221.

Lando, F. 1996 “Fact and fiction: geography and literature”, GeoJournal 38(1): pp. 3-18.

Livingstone, D. 2005 “Science, text and space: thoughts on the geography of reading”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(4): pp. 91-401.

Romanillos, J-L. 2008 “‘Outside, it is snowing’: experience and finitude in the nonrepresentational landscapes of Alain Robbe-Grillet”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26: 795-822.

Said, E. 1995 (originally, 1978) “Imaginative geography and its representations: Orientalizing the Oriental”, in Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin, pp. 49-73.

Sharp, J. 2000 “Towards a critical analysis of fictive geographies”, Area 32(3): pp. 327-334.

Shortridge, J. R. 1991 “The concept of the place-defining novel in American popular culture”, Professional Geographer 43(3): pp. 280-291.

 

Lecture 5: Geographies of Cinema and Television

As one of the key media of the 20th and 21st centuries, the moving image is crucial to understanding material cultures, changing ideas about landscape, and identity. In this lecture we will examine the ways in which cinema and television have both reflected and created kinds of spatial experience.

Rosati, C. 2007 “Media Geographies: Uncovering the Spatial Politics of Images”, Geography Compass 1(5): pp. 995-1014.

 Wider reading

Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. 1999 Remediation: understanding new media, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

Carter, S. 2007 “Mobilising generosity, framing geopolitics: Narrating crisis in the homeland through diasporic media”, Geoforum 38: pp. 1102-1112.

Carter, S. and McCormack, D. 2006 “Film, Geopolitics and the affective logics of intervention”, Political Geography 25: pp. 228-245.

Couldry, N. and McArthy, A. eds. 2004 MediaSpace: place, scale, and culture in the media age, New York, Routledge.

Lukinbeal, C. 2005 “Cinematic landscapes”, Journal of Cultural Geography 23(1): pp. 3-22.

Morley, D. 1996 “The geography of television: ethnography, communications and community”, in Hay, J., Grossberg, L., and Wartella, E. eds. The audience and its landscapes, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, pp. 317-342.

Rosati, C. 2007 “MTV: 360° of the industrial production of culture”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32(4): pp. 556-575.

 

Lecture 6: Spaces of Games and Play

Fun can be a serious business. In this lecture we will explore the various ways playing and playfulness are important to how we understand the world. We will examine how play allows us to be ‘other’, how structured games are important to how we negotiate individual and collective identity, and the ways playfulness is central to our performance of everyday life.

Woodyer, T. 2012 “Ludic geographies: not merely child’s play”, Geography Compass 6(6): pp. 313-326.

Wider reading

Ash, J. and Gallacher, L. 2011 “Cultural Geography and Videogames”, Geography Compass 5(6): pp. 351-368.

Borden, I. 2001 Skateboarding, space and the city: architecture and the body, Oxford, Berg.

Caillois, R. 1961 Man, play and games, New York, NY, Free Press of Glencoe.

Flusty, S. 2000 “Thrashing downtown: play as resistance to the spatial and representational regulation of Los Angeles”, Cities 17(2): pp. 149–158.

Holloway, S. L. and Valentine, G. 2000 Children’s geographies: playing, living, learning, London, Routledge.

Huizinga, J. 1949 Homo Ludens: a study of the play-element in culture, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Stevens, Q. 2007 The ludic city: exploring the potential of public spaces, Abingdon & New York, Routledge.

Sutton-Smith, B. 1997 The ambiguity of play, Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press.

Valentine, G. and McKendrick, J. 1997 “Children’s outdoor play: exploring parental concerns about children’s safety and the changing nature of childhood”, Geoforum 28(2): pp. 219–235.

Winnicott, D. W. 1971 Playing and reality, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Waitt, G. 2008 “Urban Festivals: Geographies of Hype, Helplessness and Hope”, Geography Compass 2(2): pp. 513-537.

Lecture 7: Geographies of Consumption

Consuming goods and services lies at the heart of everyday life, for subsistence, work and for leisure. The ways we consume are a significant focus for cultural geographies research. We will explore how consumption relates to identity and place.

Crewe, L. 2000 “Geographies of retailing and consumption”, Progress in Human Geography 24: pp. 275-290.

Clarke, N. 2008 “From ethical consumerism to political consumption”, Geography Compass 2(6): pp. 1870-1884.

 

Wider reading

Anderson, B. 2004 “Time-stilled space-slowed: how boredom matters” Geoforum 35(6): pp. 739-754.

Bell, D. and Valentine, G. 1996 Consuming Geographies: We are what we eat, Routledge London.

Clarke, D., Doel, M. and Housiaux, K (eds) 2003 The Consumption Reader, Routledge London.

Crewe, L. 2001 “The besieged body: geographies of retailing and consumption”, Progress in Human Geography 25: pp. 629–40.

Crewe, L. 2003 “Geographies of retailing and consumption: markets in motion”, Progress in Human Geography 27(3): pp. 352-362.

du Gay, P. 1997 ‘Introduction’, in: du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London, Sage, pp. 1-7. –In library: 301.243 DUG

Lury, C. 1996 Consumer Culture, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Mansvelt, J. 2005 Geographies of Consumption, Sage, London.

Paterson, M. 2006 Consumption and Everyday Life, Routledge, London.

Ritzer, G. 2013 The MacDonaldization of Society, 7th edition, London, Sage. –In library: 306.0973 RIT

Urry, J. 1995 Consuming Places, Routledge, London.

Urry, J. 1990 The Tourist Gaze, Sage, London.