Post #8

As Jamie pointed out, the outcomes of many cases relate to any potential impact on the copyright holders’ profit. This seems a commonsense litmus for fair use. I was particularly interested in the satire and parody examples because http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI have been writing satiric posts for the Minnesota Review’s blog this semester. However, I am in no danger of violation because my use of pop culture or literature references usually take the form of direct parody. In cases of emulation (like the rewritten Dr. Seuss), I will remember to transform the material appropriately. I am glad to have reviewed these examples because parody and satire are my favorite approaches to creative non-fiction. I am a member of The Daily Show generation. Since Saturday Night Live was mentioned, I wonder how much of the Daily Show and Colbert Report’s budget and resources are devoted to purchasing rights or determining what crosses the line where satiric borrowing is concerned. I imagine writers for such shows have little wiggle room because their product is for profit whereas, as an educator, I have more leeway in some cases. For example, I once formatted an oral presentation lesson to mimic American Idol. According to these examples, my use of the show format was fine in an educational setting because it would not impact the show’s profits negatively. When SNL does a Jeopardy sketch, however, I’m sure they have to pay for using the format.

Uren Blog 8

I was surprised by the finding in Roy Export Co. Estab. of Vaduz v. Columbia Broadcasting Sys., Inc. in the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use case summaries. Apparently, a news program used less than 2% of a Chaplin film to accompany a story about Chaplin’s death and a court determined that it was not fair use. Contrast that with a news program using a full 12.5% of a video for a news story (also not fair use). In the CBS case, the judgment was qualitative: the court decided that the portion of film used was "substantial and part of the ‘heart’ of the film.” That kind of assessment muddies the waters. It’s much easier to work with hardline percentages rather than ad hoc arguments about the “heart” of a work.

As a researcher, I may run into problems with copyrighted material. At a conference, I used portions of a copyrighted comedy performance, maybe a full tenth of it. I didn’t worry about infringing on rights then, and I’d rather not worry about it now or later.

A tenant of my religion is active disbelief in intellectual property, because we hold that human psyches themselves are not the sole possessions of individuals, but are constituted by and indebted to a community. Therefore, we believe that works come to being through the activation by a socially constructed self of communally created art or knowledge. So, as a writer committed to my faith as well as my craft, I intend to openly antagonize the neoliberal project that seeks to attach privatized ownership and quantified value to all human works, including those which could advance human understanding and empathy.

Blog Post 8: Jamie Rand

The parody cases listed here are kind of a surprise to me. I've always been curious about what constitutes parody--having grown up on Weird Al, and wondering how he never got his pants sued off--and the list of these cases follows a pattern. A number of the "important factors" concern themselves with how the parody was handled; it seems to me that there can be small similarities, or the parody itself must "poke fun at or ridicule" the original work. If neither of those occur, the parody loses fair use, such as in this case: "Not a fair use: An author mimicked the style of a Dr. Seuss book while retelling the facts of the O.J. Simpson murder trial in The Cat NOT in the Hat! A Parody by Dr. Juice. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the book was a satire, not a parody, because the book did not poke fun at or ridicule Dr. Seuss. Instead, it merely used the Dr. Seuss characters and style to tell the story of the murder. Important factors: The author’s work was nontransformative and commercial. (Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. v. Penguin Books USA, Inc., 109 F.3d 1394 (9th Cir. 1997).)" (heh, and just to be on the safe side, here's the citation: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-c.html#2) So far as I understand it, then, according to fair use, "nontransformative" satire is different from parody. That makes sense, I suppose. But mostly, it seems to me that it comes down to a question of money ("commercial," as that example says): if someone should have made money for their work, and they didn't, then you're in violation. As for how those examples affect me: they've made me paranoid. The last thing I want to do is get sued for trying to show my students examples of good writing. The TEACH Act spells out what we can and can't do as teachers, but even still, as that website says, "It is also important to note that TEACH does not supersede fair use or existing digital license agreements." So I guess my plan is to make sure I don't step on anyone's toes while I'm talking about comma splices. Also, it turns out that Weird Al "seek[s] permission of the songwriters before recording their parodies." Who woulda thought?

Blog Post 7 - Hockman

In an effort to remain professional, I will not use any specific social media site (such as Facebook) to build my online identity. However, in an effort to stay or get connected professionally, I look at various university websites that include faculty and graduate student online curriculum vitae. I enjoy looking at current projects going on with certain scholars, such as Antonio Damasio for example.

To be honest, there really are not any websites, blogs, listservs, or other online groups that I follow professionally. For conferences, I usually look at the website at the University of Pennsylvania or follow the listserv within our department. My advisor, Paul Heilker, will also send me links. Some point soon, I will join certain professional or scholarly affiliations such as the National Council of Teachers of English. This semester has been a whirlwind, and at some point, I will get it together and become a part of these fancy pants things.

You know, until we did this module, I slightly planned to just search online library databases for new materials. In addition, I planned to look at the publications of different scholarly organizations. I now know that I need to Google more stuff - oh world wide web, let me embrace you with my human arms.

Blog Post #7: Dana

I have spent my entire online life ensuring that I avoid an internet footprint. I am a member of a variety of social networking tools and I have a series of miscellaneous internet accounts and identities but you won’t find me on any of those sites (unless I direct you to them) because I've protected myself from being searchable.

I'm privy to the belief that social networking sites are the go-to searches for the job market, and I don't intend for my entire career to exist solely within the sphere of academia. So when I do "go public" (with goodness knows what), I will rely heavily, if not solely, on social networking accounts (specifically Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook since they are the most popular social media forums). I’d host a big linking party to all these sites via an about.me page which would also provide an opportunity for me to upload/link to a resume, and would direct viewers to (now hypothetical) future publishments and collaborative efforts.

Getting your name out there seems important, so like everybody else I'll be looking for conference opportunities via sites like Upenn's Call For Papers which I believe we were directed to in an earlier module. Lately I've been receiving a pretty solid influx of opportunities for conferences thanks to the VT English departments listserv, so for now I'll focus on those. I've never had a problem with keeping on top of media trends, and now I have about two columns worth of bookmarked material chock full of everything I could ever want to know about literary academia.

It's good to keep all this stuff in mind, but for me, creating an online identity is a project for a different day.

Blog Post 7: Kevin Runs Third Person Into the Ground and Still is Not Silent Bob

When I Google myself, I usually end up with a list of the name-faming director's latest antics. I have to be very specific to dig up anything remotely related to my budding scholarly career, and even then the online list is far from complete (apparently subject to the whims of an undergrad-run paper).

My plan to disseminate my digital scholarly presence and stay "in the loop" includes eventually joining MLA, CCCC(no P), and LinkedIn. Like Robert, I really enjoy conferences...and plan to submit to many. I used to pay dues to the American Philosophical Association so I could attend their big annual do in Philadelphia (2009) and New York (2010) with Concord University's Philosophical Society; I did not present, but I enjoyed the talks immensely.

Since publication is integral to staying afloat in the creative writing field, much of my connection to the creative writing world happens through researching publications through online databases and resources. I learn more about fellow writers and aspects of writing and publishing through Poets & Writers magazine and website. Their website allows me to participate in forums and access databases of contests and publications. To understand which magazines are currently most popular and to learn about brand new publications, I often go to duotrope.com. Here I can also discern which magazines to which I should send work.

Like Robert, a conference I plan to attend as long as I can afford going is the AWP conference. This conference is the largest meet-up of writers all over the country. There are hundreds of seminars and speakers and nearly thousands of literary magazine, MFA program, and publishing house booths. This conference is essential for the creative writer who wants to make use of every possible resource to publishing, gaining further education, and making connections with writers, agents, and publishing houses/magazines.

The fact that I joined an MFA program allows me connections to the creative writing world. Attending readings by visiting writers is one way that the MFA program at Virginia Tech allows me to connect with the writing world beyond Virginia Tech, and allows me to spend time outside of the classroom getting to know professors and fellow students. Taking advantage of workshops these visiting writers typically offer for Virginia Tech MFA students has especially enriched my work, my knowledge of publishing, as well as my feelings of connectedness to published writers.

Jamie Rand: Blog Post 7

I don't really have many strategies that involve my professional community. The only strategy I really have, and the one that's gotten me this far (which is to say, into an MFA program) is coming to know my professors, asking them if they'd like to meet up, then picking their brains about the field. As an example, when I was a year from graduation back at the University of Toledo, I had lunch with a professor of mine and asked him about grad school. His reply was that I'd have money enough for food and rent and that was all and I'd do nothing but read and write. He pointed me in the direction of a few different schools, gave me the names of other professors who could help me with the application (personal statements, etc.), and gave me some general tips about applying. It was enough of a lead for me to start, and now here I am. (By the way, his summary of grad school was absolutely correct.) I guess it wasn't the most efficient way to go about being a part of academia (undergrad took me a whopping twelve years; by the end of my tenure there I felt like Van Wilder), but it worked for me. During that time, I came across the Poets and Writers website, which was a real boon (and which, sadly, I haven't looked at in months). Other than that, though, I can't really list any other websites, blogs, listservs (I can't even define that term), or anything else. Mostly I just read a lot of contemporary stuff, admire what I read, and learn about writing from that.

Uren Blog 7

On the scholarly side of my nascent little career, I have—though I don’t much now—follow the Penn CFP list. Through it, I’ve found a couple of conferences to which I submitted abstracts and at which I presented scholarship and read fiction.

I remain passingly interested in comedy—its relationship to critical engagements with mediated texts and especially the opportunity it presents to analyze psychical economies. Sean McCarthy runs a site, The Comic’s Comic, where he shares and discusses much about popular comedy, all centered around stand-up, the medium with which I’m most preoccupied as a researcher. A site like The Comic’s Comic points the way to a lot of popular material that supplements research in comedy. For the scholarly resources necessary to conduct inquiry in humor studies, I have joined the Popular Culture Association. As Miller says in the module, the conference is, in fact, a whole lot of fun; I helped the topics run the gamut by presenting a psychoanalytic reading of shit in Louis CK’s Chewed Up.

At the PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio last year, I was most committed to attending sessions about TV. You find a bunch of people at least tangentially interested in the stuff you’re interested in. Conversations ensue. While my interest in TV is waning, I still keep tabs on Jonathan Gray’s The Extratextuals, Jason Mittell’s Just TV, and Christine Becker’s News for TV Majors. A good example of why I don’t get excited to participate in online communities: some time ago I posted a comment on Gray’s blog that I now find annoying. It was cool to directly communicate with a scholar whose work I’ve found interesting and who works in a program I would covet were I to jump ship for a Communications department. But I’m a bit too self-conscious to actually enjoy those kinds of exchanges.

Finally, as a creative writer, I have also presented at conferences. I’m pretty sure that if it isn’t AWP, it doesn’t count. Although, maybe not. At the Arkansas Philological Association conference, of all places, I read some short shorts that started a conversation with Trudy Lewis, who’s a real-deal writer and professor at Missouri. Nice, too. (I also got to hear Padma Viswanathan read her superb story "Transitory Cities".) At PCA/ACA, I read a story to two friends and three strangers. So it goes. We grabbed drinks after and talked about influences and so on.

Beyond these loosely strategized endeavors, I’m probably far too insular a scholar. More so now than before, too. I’ve lined up a couch in Chicago for AWP, though.

Quinn's Blog Seven

I think that the professional community most relevant to my work as a writer is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). The AWP has a yearly conference at which all sorts of writers meet and go to readings and panels on things such as "Memoir Without a Net" and "The Care and Feeding of Long Poems." In order to participate in my professional community, I intend to attend this year's AWP conference in Chicago, Illinois. Yes, it will be freezing and I will have to take a plane. But the cold and flying are worth learning about chapbook publishing, "keeping a debut book alive", and the "relevance of print culture in a digital age." I know nothing about creating a website, other than I need to have one. So I plan to enlist a person to help me create a website. Having a website and/or blog is tricky, though. Because some journals won't accept work that's been previously published online, even in a blog. Another way to stay connected with the professionals in my field is through Facebook groups such as "Writers' Colony," where people share calls for submissions and ask and answer questions about publishing or writer's block or whether or not the metaphor about the chandelier and the ovaries is working in a story. On "Writers' Colony," which is a private group, so I don't know how to provide a link to it, people even ask questions about whether certain character names are good. People swap poems and stories. Attending conferences such as the AWP conferences seems like a good way to stay up to date in my field. Another way to stay up to date is by reading articles in The American Poetry Review or Poetry Magazine. Hugely important to staying up-to-date, however, is reading the work of my contemporaries. Reading first books. Reading what's been published in print and online journals.

Blog Post 6: Kevin Juggles in his Sleep (he also grinds his teeth)

Like Nial, I sometimes find myself flapping between 3 roles--feathers askew and rudders akimbo, like some sort of wild p(h)easant. The student role can be quite taxing: write the seminar paper--write the annotated bibliography, partially duplicate the annotated bibliography for another class days before it is due for the former class--another short paper and a long one for the survey--and a final portfolio to work toward for yet another class.

The nascent professor role is, for me, the most joy-filled. Designing my composition assignments and working toward a complete syllabus has been a fun process.

The role of researcher is almost inseparable from the role of professor, which is almost inseparable from the role of student--all viewed within the context of our triad of concerns at VT for the next couple years. I do not consider the dichotomy to be false, but maybe elusive. The three roles are interdependent and symbiotic, in my mind.

Blog Post 6 - Mike Roche

I think the identity I feel most comfortable with is "independent scholar." Probably the one I feel least comfortable with is "research collaborator." I'm adequate in the "student" department; however, one of the reasons I seek an MFA is because I can feel myself reaching a threshhold for the amount of academic course material I am willing to engage in. I don't yet feel comfortable with the "teacher" one, as I've never taught before, but I am excited to try to be a good one. But back to the one I identify with most: "independent scholar." I consider myself one of these because I read literature. Like Michelle, I prefer reading primary texts over the secondary ones which analyze the primary ones so, in this sense, I wouldn't consider myself an aggressive independent scholar.

If you consider poems and other kinds of art "research," then I suppose I am a research collaborator because I'm always sharing my findings--i.e. my poems--with other researchers--i.e. other poets. I think it is very cool to browse through the Virginia Tech Electronic Theses and Dissertations and find creative work from MFA students who've published and graduated. I also like how I can use ProQuest to obtain copies of creative dissertations from some of my favorite poets at other universities throughout the country. When I think about the fact that I'll be publishing a creative dissertation at the end of my three years at Virginia Tech, I become more comfortable considering myself a research collaborator.

Blog Post 6

My current identity at Virginia Tech seems to reside between student and independent scholar. By independent scholar I mean writer/poet. I do not identify myself as a researcher as I don’t purposefully seek out academic research regularly. I turn to academic research only when necessary. I do see its advantages and have enjoyed discovering how many academic articles and essays I have found on poetry through this course. However, I enjoy reading actual primary texts by poets and other creative writers and writing my own work more than I enjoy researching secondary materials on poetry.

I don’t identify myself as being a teacher yet as I am not currently teaching. I am moving gradually into that identity through working with a mentor (who is a teacher) and through my pedagogy class.

To a degree I believe separating these ideas out is impossible, as I conduct informal research almost daily through Google and Wikipedia searches. In my own life I am constantly reading up on certain phenomena I find interesting. And so, I’m always researching. I’m just not researching in any formal academic way.

I think I also teach without being aware of it. Granted, my “teaching” does not occur in a classroom and it’s much less anxiety inducing, but it exists along the teaching spectrum at some point. For instance, I am very eager to express and explain ideas to peers and enjoy mentoring and tutoring fellow students.

Like Nial, it will be necessary for me to plunge into all of these identities in order to land a decent job in the future. Though I rarely turn to academic research without needing to, when I am forced to explore intellectual essays (particularly when they have to do with some aspect of creative writing), I usually enjoy what I come away with. Thus, in the future, I may develop a desire born of necessity for academic research.

Blog Post #6

I am the product of my schooling: an idea reconfiguring, information regurgitating, language-processing machine. I am incapable of independent thought—the ideal citizen! I am a color commentator. I do well on tests and can write essays. I know how to use a semicolon. I clear bureaucratic hoops with the grace of a gazelle. I am punctual. When I elide prose, I can pass for a poet. I spent years learning and relearning how to be a student. I have no marketable skills. My prose is clear and error-free. I will never leave school because I have evolved to survive in an academic habitat. If I learn to wear socks-with-sandals and plaid button-ups in a spectrum of eggshells, creams, and off-whites, I may be a successful professor. I have nothing original to say. I can combine old ideas prettily and in various metric patterns. Sometimes in rhymes, but I try to be subtle. I know which lies to tell in what contexts. I work for the approval of authority figures, real or imagined. I stand against intellectual yardsticks on tiptoes. I measure myself against my peers, real or imagined. I am enlightened beyond concerns with physical beauty. I am intensely superficial regarding intellect. I can never hope to satisfy my own ideals.

BP6: Nial "The Wild Turkey" DeMena

Depends on my mood: There are days when I'm working on my annotated bibliography and feel like an independent scholar, then there are other times when I'm sitting in my office doing schoolwork like a dumb student, and even times when I try to ask around like I'm collaborating. I don't find it necessary, except when asked, to define the various Nials because as I know, a Nial divided against itself cannot stand. The many shades of academic Nial--pissed off at his busy-work Nial, proud private tutor Nial, scholarly Nial, creative Nial--have to work together seamlessly in order to get to the PhD,  job, then tenure future-Nial.


As of writing my post, I am somewhere between scholar, student, and professor. I'm working on a seminar paper (scholar) while I fulfill my requirements (student), and I will go back to and finish my four major assignments for pedagogy tomorrow (professor). Nevertheless, I prefer independent scholar Nial because he isn't and can't be hampered by administrative work, busy work, or teacherly concerns. He is just focused on his ideas which, despite what everyone tells him, he still believes is his sole, driving reason for coming back to school. 

Just like Robert, I know my future success / career is contingent upon scholarship and teaching. But there is also a curious side of me, like Quinn admits to, that believes in the ghost of smells as a phenomenon. 

My boy Jim Leigh, trailer-park supervisor Sunnyville, will take me out: