Baron, Jaimie. The Archive Effect : Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History. New York: Routledge, 2014. Ebooks Corporation, 13 Dec. 2013. Web. 8 Apr. 2015. Baron argues that films have the ability to extend the power of New Historicism, which claims that there is no one, single history that exists, but many. This is because history is subjective. While I was afraid there was an element of laziness in asking Powers and Blaylock many of the same, exact questions, this source reinforces that it is, in fact, good to do so. By asking them the same questions, we have allowed the interviewees to construct subjective histories, without any sort of change in bias that might occur unintentionally via the changing of the question. In effect, we would actually be able to broaden the scope in which we construct the history that we are creating with these interviews instead.
Blaylock, James P. “Blaylock Interview.” E-mail interview. 27 Apr. 2015. This is the interview we conducted with Blaylock. Primary research, FTW! He answered all of our questions. Some surprising results: 1. He does not believe SoCal played an integral part of steampunk; however, he believes what he learned at CSUF played an important role, if not the actual location itself. 2. He did not meet Jeter and Powers in school. Rather, he met them both through mutual friends. If we were to continue asking questions, I’d be curious to know if they had any classes together or if they ever actually worked together on campus in any sort of capacity. The only mutual involvement in organizations he mentions is off-campus.
Carrott, James H., and Brian David. Johnson. Vintage Tomorrows. Farnham: O’Reilly, 2013. Print. Carrot and David explore the history and progress of Steampunk, asking questions such as What is Steampunk? Where did it come from? Where is it going? Why is it important? The two travel around the globe, interviewing famous and not-so-famous people deeply involved with the genre and fashion, to answer the question. Interestingly, Powers, Blaylock, and Jeter are not among the number. In fact, within the 383 pages, only a single sentence mentions them. They are acknowledged as some of the earliest writers within Steampunk, but their importance is incredibly minimized—so much so that their names cannot even be searched in the index in the back of the book. This demonstrates some of the importance of what we are doing in our research—by giving credit where credit is due and stressing the relevance of our alumni. This book can be very useful, however, in helping us to develop a timeline for the website that displays the growth, development, and changing focus of Steampunk through time.
Choudhury, G. Sayeed, and David Seaman. “The Virtual Library.” Digital Literary Studies. Ed. Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. 534-46. Print. I need to reaccess this book before I am able to create a proper annotation.
Gervais, Bertrand. “Is There a Text on This Screen? Reading in an Era of Hypertextuality.” Digital Literary Studies. Ed. Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. 183-200. Print. I need to reaccess this book before I am able to create a proper annotation.
Guertin, Carolyn. “Handholding, Remixing, and the Instant Replay: New Narratives in a Postnarrative World.” Digital Literary Studies. Ed. Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. 233-46. Print.I need to reaccess this book before I am able to create a proper annotation.
Moss, Michael. “Opening Pandora’s Box: What is an Archive in the Digital Environment?” What Are Archives? : Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader. Ed. Louise Craven. Burlington: Ashgate Group, 2008. 71-86. ProQuest. Ebrary. Web. 8 Apr. 2015. This book was not nearly as useful as I would have hoped, but one topic it did discuss that was of use was the idea of how we organize our archives. The approach to this issue was done in a very abstract and roundabout way that did not ever necessary give a how-to type of instruction; rather, it just discussed the theory of organization in general. While that itself was not of much use, it did get me thinking about some other issues regarding it—specifically, how are we going to organize our archive (i.e. our website)? I already ran into this problem once when thinking of how to add the interview and the page I wrote about the approach to our interview. What header should we place it under on the menu? Should both be available there, or should one only be linked to the other? What would make it easily accessible, show the clearest relationship, but not turn the menu page into a chaotic listing of every possible page on our website? This may not be an issue now, as our website does not have an overwhelming number of pages yet, but it has a great potential to be an issue in the future. I’m still not sure I have arrived at an answer to this dilemma, but at least this book has gotten me headed in a direction.
Powers, Tim. The Anubis Gates. New York: Ace, 1983. Print. One of Powers first novels and one of the first in the Steampunk genre, this book serves as a primary source for answering the question “what is steampunk?” Additionally, knowledge of Powers’ works will provide context for questions during the subsequent interview. This book features references back to his connections here at the university. The novel’s protagonist—Brendan Doyle—is from Fullerton. He has connections, like Tim Powers himself, to Cal State Fullerton and references the danger of merging onto the 91 freeway from the Harbor Blvd on-ramp. He names streets and ships after his friends Jeter and Blaylock respectively. Possibly most interestingly, however, is Doyle’s transition into the guise of William Ashbless, a famous poet. This alias was created by Blaylock and Powers together during their time at CSUF, and has been used jointly between them as a pen name for various publications. So, it seems, Powers himself has interwoven himself into the story, but instead of name dropping the name Powers, he has hidden himself within the protagonist Doyle as Ashbless. Even many of he and Doyle’s characteristics are the same!
What leaves me puzzled is the Steampunk aesthetic within this. This does not take place during the Victorian era. In fact, a quick look at most of Powers’ work would indicate that few, in fact, do. Rather, they often predate it, often set in the 18th and early 19th century, centering more closely to the Romantics. With that knowledge in mind, did the initial Steampunk aesthetic start as something much different than what we think of now? This would be an interesting question to ask during interviews.
Purcell, Aaron. Academic Archives. Chicago, IL: Neal-Schuman, 2012. Print. One useful concept this book brings up is the idea of Google searches. This is something that we really should take into consideration. How useful is our website if people are unable to discover it? We want our website to be a resource to fans and scholars alike. In order for them to find it and utilize its contents, we need to make it searchable. And not just searchable in general, but searchable to the point that keywords can bring our site to first page or two of results, as most people will not go past the third page of listings. The struggle, however, is—how? Unfortunately, this book does not provide a means to increase search-ability.
Skinner, Jonathan. The Interview: An Ethnographic Approach. London: Berg, 2012. Print. In this book, skinner explores how the ethnographic interview differs from other types of interviews. As the interview with Powers and Blaylock will be more historical and analytical rather than entertaining in nature, this source is useful in showing how to ask questions that will provide more reflective answers that would be beneficial to those in the future who can use these interviews as a research tool.
SF at CSUF 