(That’s Juno L and Nyx R.)
2023 is the full year since 2016 that I’ve lived in one place—no more commuting back and forth to my job in Charlotte, just a very routine commute from Connecticut to Manhattan. The stability this offered and the mental bandwidth this opened is probably one significant reason why, despite some relatively big upheavals on the personal level, 2023 was a very successful year both personally and professionally.
The biggest thing I did this year was officially publish my WOXY book, The Future of Rock and Roll: 97X WOXY and the Fight for True Independence. This is both a book about that radio station, and an argument about what artistic, creative, and political independence takes to really work. The thing that defined WOXY was its philosophy: independence can be found only when practiced with and for other people. Unlike the “freedom-from” sold to us by mainstream American political ideology, this is a FREEDOM TO — to create, to experience, to share, to build, to do new and different things, to take risks, to live. The researching and writing of this book was extra proof of that: I had the enthusiastic assistance of many former station staff, including Doug Balogh, Matt Shiverdecker, Dave Tellman, Damian Dotterweich, Julie Foreman, and many others. Many of those people are now what I would consider my friends. And while I wouldn’t say this book makes a huge scholarly contribution beyond the radio and popular music history part (or at least it feels that way to me, a philosopher, who considers her job to be building new theories and concepts, which this book doesn’t really do), I can see that it’s meant a lot to the community of WOXY staff and listeners, and made a difference to them. I got to meet many of these people in person at my first-ever book signing at The Mercantile Library in Cincinnati (you can listen here to a recording of the event). If you would like to order a signed copy—or a regular copy from Cincinnati’s favorite independent bookstore, you can still find some at Downbound Books.
I also won an award at my day job, as I was nominated and voted by my colleagues as the “Up and Comer” in SpringerNature’s books group. This award is for the new editor who’s made the most innovative and productive impact on their publishing program in 2022-2023. I’ve been able to build on my many years of experience both as a scholarly author and as a journal editor to build brand new lists at Palgrave in music and sound studies and in interpersonal communication and rhetoric, on the one hand, and in continental philosophy and non-Western philosophies on the other. My favorite Palgrave release of 2023 is The Story of The B-52s: Neon Side of Town by Scott Cheney and Brigitte Herron. This is the book I’ve always wanted to read about the band: it talks about the impact the history of queer activism had on the band, the AIDS crisis, and generally how the band’s music is both fun AND artistically serious. This was one of our best sellers, and I’m very proud to have commissioned it. I’m also working with many authors and volume editors on projects that take advantage of Palgrave’s ability to embed audio and video directly in our ebooks. I have an audio production textbook coming out early 2024 that has over 200 audio examples, and I’m working on a pilot project to publish a peer-reviewed podcast. I look forward to stretching the boundaries of scholarly publishing even more in 2024.
I also singed a contract to publish my fifth book, Good Vibes Only: Phenomenology and the Biopolitics of Algorithmic Legitimation. You can read the proposal here. This time around I felt like I actually knew what I was doing with respect to writing and organizing the book and the proposal. There’s probably some obvious reasons for that beyond just experience—one thing I learned through this process is that research & editing can support one another in ways similar to the way research & teaching are widely understood to be mutually supportive. In my day job I read a ton of literature and focus on whipping other people’s ideas into book shape, which are certainly useful when writing one’s own book. At the same time, writing a book of my own gives me first-person understanding of the writing process, its various stages, and the different kinds of issues scholars writing books experience. In a lot of ways, it feels good to be back to writing a book that’s primarily building a new theory (I’m a philosopher at heart, sorry.)
I also published a lot on my newsletter, mainly because there’s fewer and fewer places to pitch work like mine (RIP Real Life). Some of the most important pieces relate to what I think will be book 6, which argues that what happened to alt rock radio in the late 90s is the first movement in a more widespread shift in both media and the politics of masculinity, whose climax we see in the January 6 insurrection. This project is also about how those shifting gender politics coincide with shifts in the music industry such that the old gendered (and raced) rockist-vs-poptimist opposition is obsolete for understanding the politics of contemporary music and media.
From the gendered pop/rock binary to resilient or aggrieved vibes
How Modern Rock’s Queer Politics Got Gentrified & Straightened Out into ‘Indie’
I have a lot of thoughts about my evolving practice as a somewhat independent scholar. (I say somewhat because scholarly publishing is not exactly outside the academy. I still get paid to go to conferences, though in a different role. I still have to know the literatures in my fields, have a network of scholars, you get the point.) Please feel free to ask me these thoughts in person; I may write about them here sometime in the near future. I also have MANY thoughts about a vibe I sense among people who left tenured faculty roles, which I may never publish but which you are certainly welcome to ask me about in person, even more so if you offer to buy me a drink.
While we’re still on the professional stuff, a request: I don’t get paid to research anymore, and have to pay for my books, articles, and so on out of my personal funds. If you value my research and would like to support it, I’d appreciate a subscription to this newsletter—only $30 a year. This will be especially helpful as my personal laptop just died and I have to get a new one.
On the personal front, I lost two members of my family this year, my father-in-law Doug Picirillo and my dog Laika. Neither one liked the other very much, so it’s weird to lose them both in the same year. Doug’s passing also marked my spouse and I moving into a new stage of middle age, where we’re the ones responsible for Big Family Stuff.
More positively, we got a new puppy, Nyx! She’s a rescue who’s a mix of about everything, and she starts puppy school Jan 2. My spouse also got appointed to our town’s Arts Commission, so it’s been nice to see them settle into some success. Our tomato plants also grew higher than our shed this year, likely thanks to the absolute deluge of rain we had this summer.
For next year, my main goals include:
Finishing a first draft of the vibes book. I am about ⅓ of the way through the last chapter, chapters 2-4 are written and just need to be revised, and chapter 1 is researched and written in bits but needs a lot of attention. Finishing up two in-progress chapters seems doable given my day job and other commitments.
Presenting at philoSOPHIA and at IASPM-US. We’ll see if my SPEP submission is accepted.
Having more invited speaking gigs. I may not be in a faculty position anymore, but I am still actively researching and would love to speak to your conference, class, institution, etc.
Signing another trade book about a pop music topic. (HMU if you are writing such a book. The Story of The B-52s debuted as #1 new release in music on Amazon…)
Meeting friends (both IRL and internet) for coffee in Manhattan more often (again, if this is you, HMU)
GETTING MY WEBSITE BACK UP. It’s-her-factory.com has been inaccessible from an admin perspective for about 6 months and I really need to get this up again.
I am growing out my grey hair! I’ll keep the blue streak in the front, but the idea is to go full silver + blue by the end of the year. (My hair is short and grows fast, this is actually pretty realistic.)
This isn’t exactly a goal of mine, more like an invitation: If we know each other even very remotely on the internet and you see me out and about, especially at a conference, please do say hi! It’s not weird or awkward, I actually love it. I am usually super easy to find at conferences at the Palgrave table.
Here’s hoping to seeing each other in 2024.