Arpf

Papers Please!

Are conferences about a good argument or meant to be a more wide ranging form of inspiration?  Recently I have become frustrated by a tendency in the humanities to hide reference to method in favour of interpretation.  Previously this was outweighed by an obsession present in media research from a social science perspective that revelled in methodological procedure without worrying too much about what this might actually mean.  Lisa Holdeman’s 2008 edited collection Common Sense: Intelligence as Presented on Popular Television is an interesting mixture with a first chapter reaching over 100 pages in its attempt to present in detail the book’s methodological underpinning.  Ultimately the argument reveals its origin in the desire to explain the public vilification of intellectuals and the lack of respect afforded to academics which occurred during the commodification of higher education in the twentieth century.  However, the application of interdisciplinary theory takes place alongside the rigorous gathering of data and innovative research design which is wholly beneficial.

Guardbooks on the Shelves of the History of Advertising Trust Archive

The study of entertainment media needs to encompass different media forms and necessarily embrace a range of methods and research perspectives.  At the Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA) conference, held earlier this month in London, I could see seasoned researchers who work in print media headed towards the popular films of the early twentieth century at an exciting pace, only to be pulled up short by an interdisciplinary forcefield.  They hadn’t been trained to read film or work with the visual, so felt that the new territory was off limits.  Collaboration is an answer and often a very successful one, but another way is to start declaring rather than mystifying our workings.

In the early 90s I started to use a database to work through 700 ghost stories, moving from the trusty card indexes – which I still prefer – in order to try something new and write a piece on women’s supernatural writing from a popular perspective.  The first draft contained an extensive commentary on the technique, which was then reduced to a footnote and subsequently excised.  The mechanics, although fascinating to a social scientist, had no place in a literary collection.  Conferences, especially those hosted by ARPF, became the space for making visible where the authority for assertions about popular fiction comes from.  They serve to remind participants that a field of study which has varied (although often undeclared) methodological perspectives is strengthened by them and this shouldn’t be thought threatening.  In a challenge offered during an ARPF roundtable, a member of the audience gave a dramatic pause when asking if there was anything we wouldn’t study.  We all thought he would say pornography and considered our reply, but what he considered to be beyond the pale was Mills and Boon provoking laughter as all of us had published on the brand at some point in our careers.  I didn’t have the guts then to continue the debate about asking where we would draw the line and the broader purpose of research in popular culture.

So the ARPF conference for 2011 is there to discuss “noises off” the backstage of academic work:   critical reflection on the nature of research, selection processes, prioritisation and gaining access to the material that we study is the focus of presenting new and ongoing projects.  This might well prove a valuable activity in preparation for the completion of grant applications, at local and national level, during a period of austerity.  How were research questions formulated and modified?  What constitutes a representative sample and how can we generalise from it?  How significant is empirical research? How do we engage with other disciplines and people who will make use of the material that we disseminate?  What are our responsibilities as researchers? Are there particular ethical considerations that we need to adhere to or establish?  Is the flawless research design a mythical entity?

Exchange and broadening the literature review is often the way to resolve research problems.  Those of us working with twenty-first century ephemera can learn from the painstaking analysis and recovery of material undertaken by Victorian and early twentieth-century researchers.  In turn Jennifer Hayward’s (1997) use of media theory in Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences from Dickens to Soap Opera allows her to interrogate Dickens’ narrative and its reception.  There are salutary lessons and insight which can motivate future research.  Jennifer Phegley’s comparative account of electronic dating services and the Victorian print genre of marriage ads and responses from the editor is a case in point.  Stage, television & film do have interesting distinctions in the way they are studied and offer illuminating cross-overs regarding production and consumption.  Therefore this conference wants to look at shared and divergent methodology, consider future aspirations for this field of research, debate preoccupations and emerging or recurrent themes, and fortify us for the year ahead.

The call for papers for ARPF’s annual conference, to be held in Liverpool this November, can be found here. The closing date for proposals is 1^st September.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 29th, 2011 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.