Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Lecture on Camp; "Popliteratur"

Some of you might be interested in this taped lecture by Stefanie Roenneke on the subject "Adieu Tristesse! Wieviel Camp steckt in Popliteratur". The lecture was given at the University of Hamburg as part of the lecture series "Poetik der Oberflächlichke: Die deutschsprachige Popliteratur der 1990er Jahre".
In this German language lecture, Roenneke briefly discussed a notion of camp based on Jack Smith and Susan Sontag and then discusses the German pop lit. book Tristesse Royale.
Longer abstract, bibliography and the video available here.

Monday, July 6, 2009

The Media Education Foundation.

(We had a lively discussion elsewhere and I briefly commented on it on my personal blog, yet I decided that it would make sense to repost this on this blog for future reference and for those not involved in the earlier discussion)

The Media Education Foundation is a website and production company producing documentaries to " to inspire critical reflection on the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media." Most of these documentaries on a large number of topics are related to our field of study and are available as full-length Internet previews for personal home use (the university license/ DVD is quite expensive). For example, there are lectures and speeches by bell hooks or Stuart Hall. Below is a trailer for the documentary that brought the site to our attention, Sut Jhally's Dreamwolds 3: Desire, Sex & Power in Music Video.


Thursday, July 2, 2009

Little Helpers.

Probably all of us have heard of Zotero, the research tool and bibliography management extension for Firefox. If you haven't already, do check it out. You need to get used to it, but then it's really helpful to get and stay organized.

I found another helpful add-on for Firefox: You can add Google Scholar to the Firefox search bar (upper lefthand corner). That way you can, after selecting the Google Scholar option, simply highlight a term and run a Google Scholar search with a right-click. Pretty convenient.
Haven't found an add-on for our library catalog or the MLA/EBSCO database - yet.