Hello All! While I am a Ph.D. Candidate and have not experienced this with my scholarly writing directed toward film, I have experienced this elsewhere in a professional review. There was an article, written by Carole Blair in the Quarterly Journal of Speech addressing this issue. Moreover, one of my committee members recently experience precisely the type of review that both Murray Pomerance and Harvey Roy Greenberg experienced. I would like to think that the review process should be a positive and productive one, but have heard so many horror stories. As a new scholar, preparing to enter the world of publishing or perishing, I must admit that I am unsettled about this, especially given a recent response I received on another list to which I subscribe. A CFP was sent out for a journal issue that will be devoted to film analyses, and another list member replied with a comment to the effect that "this must surely be a parody, right? This is a joke, right?" I responded with a discussion of the legitimacy of film studies, and suggested that the other member's response might be somewhat elitist. Immediately, several other "speech" scholars denigrated film studies as somehow less scholarly than the study of traditional public address. Fortunately, I received several private replies encouraging me to continue with my studies, and there were even a few public responses supporting my position. Of course the original "attackers" and their supporters chimed in en masse. The point of all this is that many believe that what we do is somehow less valuable than other academic endeavors. This is something with which I will struggle throughout my career, as I am devoted to the study and analysis of film. The good news is, there are presses that will publish film studies, and my professor finally received a wonderfully supportive review from one of them. I'm willing to fight the good fight. I hope others of you are similarly willing. Lisa :-) ======================================= "Fantasy has indeed no other sign, no other way to imagine that the speaker is capable of reaching the Mother, and thus, of unsettling its own limits. And, as long as there is language-symbolism- paternity, there will never be any other way to represent, to objectify, and to explain this unsettling of the symbolic stratum, this nature/culture threshold, this instilling of the subjectless biological program into the very body of a symbolizing subject, this event called motherhood." --Julia Kristeva ======================================= Lisa R. Barry Ph.D. Candidate The Pennsylvania State University 234 Sparks Building University Park, PA 16802 [log in to unmask] http://www.personal.psu.edu/lrb7 ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite