Submitted and Accepted!...Sort of

I submitted my paper to the ScholarsArchive without problems.

I also submitted to the Rocky Mountain MLA, as I've reported earlier. I paid my membership fee (it was only $25) so that the panel chair could submit my name as a presenter. I'm in this weird limbo state, though, because I'm still not sure if it's actually happening because the panel might get cancelled due to lack of submissions. And there's the issue of funding, but I can't really work on that until it's confirmed that I'm actually going. Here's to hoping it all works out.

I submitted to the panel "Games, New Media and Virtual Spaces: At play in new media," found under "Special Topics" here.

Just to save the jump, here's my abstract I submitted:

"Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On": Shakespeare and the Cultural Legitimacy of Video Games

For years now, the debate has raged over "video games as art." While the medium has taken several steps forward and we now have many strong examples of artistic games, they still have not achieved the sense of legitimacy our culture gives to anything considered "art." In many ways, video games are fighting the same battle that English drama fought in Renaissance England, a battle chiefly won by William Shakespeare.  The video game industry is currently in much the same state that English drama was in when Shakespeare entered the scene, and game designers could learn much from his example, as he arguably innovated a new medium as much as he achieved anything else.

Part of Shakespeare’s success depended on looking backward to bring already culturally important stories to the stage in order to prove that this new medium could be a vehicle for powerful art. I will argue that in order for video games to win cultural legitimacy they must prove they can do the same, and this paper specifically includes ways in which a video game adaptation of The Tempest could help expand scholarship of Shakespeare's text and exploit some of the unique mechanics of the video game medium to create a new and excellent artistic experience. This is experience would be beneficial to both Shakespeare and video game scholars, but also to students, inviting naturally the kind of engagement that teachers so often struggle to produce. While video games may not yet have their “Shakespeare,” such a legitimizing influence can and will come soon to the video game medium, and, someday, sitting and playing through a video game can and will be seen as a cultural experience and not just a waste of time.

Here's hopin'!

Paper Submitted

Well, I finally did it. I finally submitted my paper to the BYU Scholar's Archive and to the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

That latter submission took a lot of mental effort. I composed the email, proofread it, made sure I followed their submissions guidelines, stared at the email, checked Facebook, still stared at the email, stared off into space, and finally hit the send button. I was a little nervous about having someone outside of class actually read my paper, but I have my fingers crossed that there will be some good results from this.

Well, there's already been one: I submitted to a real-life academic journal! And I wound up feeling pretty good about it.

EDIT: Here is the cover letter I used to submit my paper. It is a bit utilitarian, I admit, but based on their submissions guidelines, it seemed to be what they were expecting. I included the abstract as part of the document I attached to the email, also per submissions guidelines.

Dr. David Bolt: 

Please find attached my submission for the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, "'I'd Say I Had Eyes Again': Redeeming Shakespeare's Gloucester for the Blind." This is an original article; it has not been previously published, nor is it under consideration for publication elsewhere. 

Biographical Note:Nyssa Silvester graduated from Brigham Young University in 2013 with her BA in English, along with minors in editing and women's studies. Her academic interests include feminist theory, history of the book, and disability studies. She lives in Provo, Utah, where she edits fiction in her spare time. 

Thank

 you for your consideration

,
Nyssa Silvester

From the Classroom to Germany

Hi there fellow Shakespearean Enthusiasts!

So, I am no longer in Dr. Burton's class, but he asked me if I would write a quick post about a really cool opportunity that has come my way as a result of the paper I wrote for his class last semester.

From the Writing Front

After receiving some helpful feedback from David and Rachel (Thanks so much to both of you!) I was able to identify some of major issues with my paper"
1. I hadn't clearly defined what I meant when I was talking about constraint and liberation, and as a result my paper wasn't as focused as I wanted it to be.
2. The "so what" is somewhat lacking, and more or less an afterthought than a driving aspect to my paper.
3. The writing needs to be cleaned up.

Last night, I went through and fixed (or at least tried to) point number one. I finally sat down and actually wrote my introduction, not actually changing my thesis per se, but clarifying what my thesis meant. With this new focus I had to go through my paper and identify which arguments coincided with my interpretations of "liberation" and constraint, which naturally led me to cut out a couple arguments that didn't really fit anymore. It shortened my paper which is something I needed to do, but I'll admit my heart bled as I was doing it, thinking of the time I had spent researching/writing...

Points 2 and 3 are yet to be resolved though I'm planning on heading to the writing center today, and hopefully that'll help on point 3.
One post/ step in the process I need to return to is publication venues. I have some ideas, sure, but I feel like I've only done a surface glance at the places I'm considering for publication. I need to spend some time and do a little bit of deeper digging/ be ready to send in some abstracts.

Narrowing Down the Publishing Venues

I was really inspired in class today by the fact that Paul is submitting to RMMLA. Holy cow! Also, Dr. Burton's criticism of Criterion (good place to publish, horrible place to actually be read) rang true of some of the other venues I was considering. With that in mind, I'm going to put a lot of my possible venues on the backburner and focus on one very promising opportunity: the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies.

This journal quite recently published a special issue about blindness in literature, at least one of the articles I plan to integrate into my final paper. (See my annotated bibliography.) With that inclusion, I can really become part of the discussion this journal is fostering, and people might actually read the paper.

Which is, of course, terrifying.

Some things I need to do to mitigate the terror:

• Find a solid organization for my paper. I've been writing a little freehand up until now, but I need to have a series of moves planned out the way that Bailey does.
• Make sure I address every contingency in my close readings. I'm making quite a radical claim, and I need to show that I've done my homework. This will probably mean spending a lot more time in the primary text this weekend.
• Really make sure I'm understanding the points of view of the people I'm quoting. If I want to be part of a discussion, I have to listen first, talk second.

Anyone else have tips about how to make this paper great?

Hey world. Are you as interested in my writing as I am? Probably not...

Academic Conferences: I've actually had a lot of success looking into this. European Shakespeare Research Association is having a conference on Shakespeare and myth. I have a section in my paper about the connection between time and the prevailing feeling of mysticism/ magic within The Winter's Tale which I could tweek for this. I also found one about music and performance in Shakespeare, which would connect with the last couple paragraphs of my paper. Honestly I had a ton of research and thoughts on music I didn't get to put into my paper, so I'd love adjusting/ adding to my paper for this.

Academic Journal: This one proved somewhat more difficult for me. I found a journal called Chapter and Verse about the relationship between literature and music which would connect with some of my research, though I don't think they're accepting submissions. I'll send them an e-mail to clarify though.

Academic blogging: I've been using the No Sweat Shakespeare Blog in my research, and I discovered that they accept guest blog posts. Really it can be about anything Shakespeare related, so I could focus on any aspect of my paper. They do have length requirements though so I'd have to cut down my paper a lot.

Islands to Crash Land On: Publishing Venues

Thanks to a lot of help and recommendations from other classmates, Dr. Burton, and hours of internet scrounging, I've found a few outlets for my paper that I think are a great fit:

Academic Conference: The Wooden O Symposium at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. The Wooden O "is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring Medieval through Early Modern Studies, through the text and performance of Shakespeare’s plays" held annually as part of the Utah Shakespearean Festival. Selected papers are presented on SUU's campus and from those selected, a few are published in the Journal of the Wooden O. They accept submissions from literally anyone, and, while they don't update their site very well, I was able to find that in 2006 they published an undergraduate paper. This combined with the fact that they're specifically looking for papers on The Tempest this year gives me a lot of hope.

Logo for the online academic journal Game Studies

Academic Journal: Game Studies is an online-only peer-reviewed journal "to provide an academic channel for the ongoing discussions on games and gaming." They publish multiple times a year online and are open to submissions from anyone, though they are very strict about what they publish and have an extensive checklist to fill before you submit. However, articles such as "The Algorithmic Experience: Portal as Art"

Academic Blogging: Gameology is "a scholarly community dedicated to the study of video games," though it isn't a typical blog. However, they do keep a running bibliography of essays and blog posts on their site, and accept submissions openly, so it's a place I could potentially get published. Such articles as "Notes from Form, Culture, and Video Game Criticism" show that my paper would be a good fit here, though from looking around the site, it doesn't seem like there's been much activity on it in around a year, so maybe it's not the best fit.

Bonus: Big Leagues: Dr. Burton found out that last year, they had a panel at MLA totally dedicated to video games last year, and said MLA might not be a bad place to try out. The 2014 Calls for Papers didn't yield any promising results from the Shakespeare or the video game angles, but this might be an outlet later on when I get this idea fully developed.

All in all, I'm excited to get this project wrapped up and out there. I want to see what the world does with this.

Midsummer Venues

Teaching Global Shakespeares -- SAMLA 2013 Special Session

But is this only for College Educators and not high school educators?

http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/50665

CFP: [Theatre] Renderings: Shakespeare across Continents

This would be okay because I will include performance in the plans, although their focus might be on cross-continental study of Shakespeare. I don’t care, though, my paper applies to all teachers of high school Shakespeare classes!

http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/25267

[Reminder] Teaching Medieval and Renaissance Literature

I could publish here because I am advocating teaching MND and that is a less-taught high school text. (The advertisement calls for “short essays that encourage faculty to try overlooked, non-traditional texts inside the classroom and book reviews.” Is our paper considered a “short essay” ?

http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/50981

I found an article on the website for this journal about teaching King Lear. It recognizes that King Lear maybe isn’t a non-traditional text but the way the author plans to teach it is non-traditional. Sounds like my approach! Again, this article is about teaching at a college level. Do you think they would accept an essay about teaching high school?

Stage Mom Musings

art is everything & everything is art

http://stagemommusings.com/tag/teaching-shakespeare

Blog posts from high school teachers and high school teachers about Shakespeare. This would be a cool place to post because maybe I could get feedback from high school students on my ideas!

Conclusion: I'm thinking the Mom Musings and the 

Teaching Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Do you agree?

Lame, I guess?

Crash and Burn.
Creative Commons License (finally found one!) 

Just a quick update: I just got an email from the conference I submitted to, and they said that my topic doesn't fit closely enough for them to work it into their conference.

On one hand, I'm kinda let down; on the other, I'm relieved. I've been stressed about this paper recently, and it feels good to know that, at this point, I'm not going to have to read it in front of hundreds of intellectuals that do this kinda thing for a living. On the other hand, I would have loved to go to the conference, and it would have been a huge boost to my career (especially since I'm still an undergrad).

Overall, though, this has been a positive experience. Having to think about how to fit my paper to the conference has helped me develop my idea further, and given me a more clear direction to move in. Also, the conference organizers (Fred and Monika) were very kind, and I'm thinking about asking them if I can resubmit a proposal for my reworked paper topic, which lines more closely with their conference. I see now how having to submit our papers is an important part of writing them: it helps us ensure that we have good topics, and that we're doing a good job.

In any case, it's time to follow the advice of a very wise man:

From Disney's The Rescuers.
Screencap found via Google Images. 

EDIT: I asked them if I could resubmit, and they said they'd already finalized the program. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

"Have I submitted a revised final draft to the publication I've identified?": CHECK

Alternate Title: Oh My Gosh What Have I Done?

While puttering around for a publication venue this morning, I found a call for papers for the 8th International Conference for the Tudor Symposium, to be held this summer in England. Their topic was about the appropriation and adaption of Tudor literature in different cultures, something that lines up with my topic nicely. I checked the deadline, and, lo and behold, the deadline for submitting proposals is today! So, I typed up a quick proposal and sent it off.

Then, I sat back in my chair and stared at the screen. It took a few seconds for it to sink in: Oh my gosh, I though, I've just submitted my paper to an international conference. In ENGLAND. What have I done?