What's New
Guess what? I live in England now! Actually, I have been since winter of 2006, but I, uh, forgot to update this page. If you ever want to know something about me that isn't 2 years out of date, it's probably best to find me on LiveJournal or the new internet crack, Facebook.
For the past year or so, I've been a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of East London, where I've been teaching classes in media theory, race and representation, and of course my usual digital stuff. I could not have asked for a more 'me' job, as far as the students, faculty and general politics of this place go, so I'm a happy girl.
Last semester, I was Acting Programme Leader (like a department chair in the U.S.) This sounds impressive, but it really means the guy who normally does the job went on sabbatical and nobody else would take the extra work. I learned lots of stuff about the UK academic system as I faked being in charge, but frankly I am pretty psyched the real Programme Leader is back so I can return to life as a normal person.
Actually, I lied about liking everything at UEL. One thing that does annoy me is that we're encouraged to keep all our course materials on a Blackboard-type site, which means it's more or less hidden from the public. I can transfer all my teaching materials to my main site here, but it's time-consuming. I promise to try though, and in the meantime, if you need something, ask.
I have great news about my forthcoming book, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks, published by Peter Lang. The book should be in the stores (and on Amazon, et. al. ) by August 2008. If you are an instructor or a student doing work on gender, or social networks like LiveJournal, YouTube, MySpace or Facebook, you should find plenty to keep you occupied in this book. I can send interested parties a PDF pre-pub manuscript, as long as it is for your eyes only (i.e. you are evaluating it for class use, or you'd like to review it somewhere.) Just drop me a line: tsenft at gmail dot com. Other folks have to wait for, you know, the book.
One of the reasons I moved to the U.K. was so I could travel more in Europe. What this has meant is that I now have been receiving all sorts of invitations to speak in the U.S. and Canada.Oh well. I love going anywhere.
October 2007 was plane-o-riffic for me:
First, went out to the Association of Internet Researchers Conference in Vancouver. I was especially excited to be on a sexuality panel with my friend and fabulous kick-boxer, Susanna Paassonen. After that, I headed to Los Angeles to do an invited presentation at the Telic Arts Exchange. This will be for an exhibition called "Showing" being curated by Jordan Crandall. He's from U.C. San Diego, and if you don't know his work, you ought to.Finally, I headed to Canada, where I will be a guest speaker at the Revealed I conference held at the Ottowa Law School.
I've got two trips planned for April 2008: One to Harvard to speak on micro-celebrity at ROFLCon, which should be pretty darn amusing. I'm also going to give a paper on tele-ethicality for the fantastic feminist media conference Console-ing Passions, held this year at U.C. Santa Barbara, California.