Ending

[dickmalone]

We didn't necessarily plan it this way, but Rachel and I apparently decided to celebrate the end of our semesters (and my first year) by eating Southern food. Last night we had blackened catfish with banana pudding for dessert, and then this morning we had country ham biscuits for breakfast. Mmm, country ham

Comments

[skyecaptain]

I've had a somewhat similar experience, I guess, but the fact that there are no pretensions to really having a significant conversation about pop helps this not be that much of an issue (most people just think I'm eccentric).

But I have found unexpected support, especially in the area of legit reception theory and (more specific to some stuff I'm interested in) issues of children's agency, in the mass media & communications department. But I also get the sense that my adviser from this school goes somewhat against the grain of both cultural studies (which she doesn't seem to have much patience for) and quantitative research (for lack of thorough discussion of results and myopic sense of what to study).

[skyecaptain]

for her disdain for lack of thorough discussion, though I haven't talked to her enough about it yet and am getting some of it secondhand through grad students I'm working with.

[dickmalone]

I think your focus on children probably helps too--that's at least an established area of study within mass comm.

I like quantitative stuff, though mixed with qualitative fer sure. I just got comments back on the paper that's going to become my thesis, and the prof suggested I do kind of a media effects thing with it. I hate media effects! Again, this is why it's good I'm doing political communication, I guess.

[koganbot]

This is a bit depressing: not the southern food, but that you're not finding the academic study of pop appealing. You see, I feel that I've hit a wall when it comes to the world of rock and pop criticism. Not that it has nothing more to give me; but rather, there's something I want from it that it just can't give: a community that will pay concentrated attention to my ideas, and that will welcome such concentrated attention from me.

Really, this is something that I've felt for twenty years, about when I'd put out issue #4 of Why Music Sucks in mid 1988: I just looked at what a lot of my contributors had written in regard to each other's ideas, and said to myself, "Each one of these people is on his or her own road and isn't comprehending that other people aren't on the same path." That is, reading comprehension was shit

[dickmalone]

Well, I was talking about this last night, and I think a lot of it is that I want to do essentially literary criticism, but media studies wants to do sociology. I guess some of what you do would work in that context, since you are interested in how people actually use and understand music, but then a lot of what you do is straight-up critical readings of texts. (Er, "texts.") So yeah, I dunno. There's clearly something else that needs to emerge.

I do feel like I'm connected to other people critically. Even if we aren't necessarily talking about the same things, we're all sorta...I dunno, coming at the same broad problem from different angles that don't necessarily intersect but still aim toward the same goal.

[koganbot]

And something else I do is a kind of armchair anthropological reading of texts that assume that there's a division between analyzing texts and analyzing how the texts are used by their readers, and I wonder how the people who write and read such texts [those that assume a difference between text and use] use such beliefs in their lives (though I don't make much of an effort to actually find out).

[koganbot]

By the way, Mike, if you're interested in public opinion on budgetary matters, you might be interested in what my brother does for a living. Look here:

http://www.cbpp.org

CLAIM THAT TAX CUTS “PAY FOR THEMSELVES” IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

THERE IS NO GENERAL "ENTITLEMENT CRISIS"

http://www.cbpp.org/staff/richard-kogan.htm

[dickmalone]

Thanks! Yeah, I looked at a couple of places like the CBPP when I was writing my initial paper. For my thesis I'm hoping to do a comprehensive review both of public policy scholarship on budgetary matters and on ethical issues for the people making budgets.