Four years ago, I took the reins as Editor in Chief (hereafter, EIC) of New Review of Film and Television Studies. In a way it was a role I felt born to play: in my senior year of high school I held the same position on the student paper; even earlier, as a child, I’d been inspired by Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great to solo-author and -edit a newsletter that I copied and circulated to what I presumptuously imagined was my rapt readership of friends and family; and going into this new stint as EIC I’d just about wrapped my first (I hope not last) edited collection. Shepherding that project had proven a respite from the still-recent postpartum exhaustion of expelling (under duress of my looming tenure review) a second monograph and the daunting prospect of facing the blank page again so soon, as well as from the dark days of the (first and I dearly hope last) Trump presidency.
Armed with this constitutional aptitude and under the tutelage of my predecessor extraordinaire Kyle Stevens, I embarked on my next adventure in nervous yet eager anticipation that (quoting Charles Foster Kane in my introductory ‘Declaration of Principles’) ‘it would be fun to run a newspaper!’ For the most part it has been precisely that, as well as edifying and gratifying; but it has also been utterly exhausting. That is largely on account of my having (as is my nature) bitten off more than any mere stipended servant with a day job should chew by taking on the task of building a blog while still very much learning the ropes as EIC and with only a revolving door of part-time graduate assistants as support staff. Even as it became the most demanding aspect of my EIC duties – while not even appearing in my job description – the now-bona fide NRFTS Blog is what I’m proudest of having accomplished during my tenure; as I ruefully joke, it’s my baby.
But raising it, as they say, took a village. To all of the scholars from across the discipline (and beyond) who gave so generously of their time and labor in contributing think-pieces, podcast conversations, written dialogues, reviews, video essays, and more, I am endlessly grateful for the efforts you devoted to transforming a twinkle in my eye into a flourishing forum for topical, accessible media studies discussion. Made possible through the funding I received from Emerson College’s School of the Arts, the journal’s institutional home these last four years, this venture aimed to extend NRFTS’s reach beyond our paywall to serve both our authors and readers, and in handing it over to the outstanding team of incoming editors – twice as many as when I came aboard, an endorsement by our publisher Routledge, Taylor & Francis of the journal’s success and ongoing evolution – I feel assured and grateful that it will continue to grow and flourish.
It is our constant conundrum as knowledge workers that ‘living to work’ rather than ‘working to live’ confers the great privilege and immense joy of doing what we love for a living, even as it condemns us to always be working – or, at least, to always be thinking about working. As such, my last four years were at once exhilarating and trying. I could not have foretold that my stint as EIC would almost immediately coincide with (in chronological order) changing jobs, the loss of a parent, and a pandemic. This confluence of events made for both reassuring and harrowing happenings that I need not rehash, but which I mention as a means to reflect on what my role as a journal editor signified for me through that unsettling period that simultaneously permitted my (literal and figurative) coming home.
One of my favorite aspects of the EIC position was the broad overview it provided of our field at large, as so often, as scholars and educators, we remain siloed in our respective research areas and institutional cubbyholes. I relished this opportunity to observe the full scope of our collective mission – dare I say obsession – as (albeit undercompensated) stakeholders in screen media and moving image culture. Though there too it took a village: the peer reviewers whose anonymous but invaluable efforts on behalf of the journal and the profession at large are reflected within every page we’ve published; a list offering tribute to those who provided consent to being identified appears at the end of this issue, and all of our reviewers have our ongoing appreciation for their generous and generative feedback. Our authors, as well, deserve the utmost thanks for selecting NRFTS as the venue in which to publish their work and for their patient progress towards seeing the fruits of their strenuous intellectual labors in print.
Alongside my awe at the stimulating scholarship appearing in the journal’s pages – such that we expanded our quarterly issues to include nine articles (or more) apiece – I also never failed to find comfort in the community of kindred spirits that we constitute as film and media studies folk. One measure of that generosity is mentorship, and on that front NRFTS has been fortunate to find stalwart allies in both the Queer and Trans Caucus and the Television Studies Scholarly Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media studies. It has been our pleasure and honor to work in tandem with these groups and their multiple cohorts of officers over the last several years’ cycles of co-sponsored annual awards for graduate students, the Holmlund Prize and the TV SIG Essay Contest, both of which will continue partnering with NRFTS to promote emergent media studies scholars for (I hope) years to come.
While I cringe at the increased sway that journal metrics hold in academic publishing and over promotion and funding decisions within higher ed, it has been furthermore cheering to see what are to me the more significant numbers – of downloaded articles and submissions to the journal; of page views on the blog and followers of our social media accounts – move upwards. While we look askance at what the platform formerly known as Twitter has done to threaten the integrity of our activity and following (1,600 strong and growing) there, on both that service and among our Instagram entourage we’re grateful for the loyalty and likes that greet our updates from the editorial trenches.
In a year that saw moviegoers’ surge to see Barbenheimer and box office-billionaire filmmaker Greta Gerwig (aged 40!) appointed to head the jury of 2024’s Cannes Film Festival, it’s easy to overlook the snail’s pace at which women directors are achieving equitable representation within the industry (as tracked tenaciously by inclusion initiatives at USC Annenberg and San Diego State). Another foremost objective of mine as EIC was to foster a more gender-inclusive roster of scholars and scholarship, to which this Special Issue/Dossier attests. Much as my opening issue as EIC had as its theme a topic close to my heart (Radical Romantic Comedy, vol. 18, issue 1 (2020)), it was bittersweet gathering together this bumper crop of scholarship now proudly on display in all its rigor, range, and relevance for ‘Feminist Film/Media Now’.
As the lucky seventh special issue I’ve had the pleasure of overseeing, it brings me great satisfaction and giddy anticipation to share this rich array of work spanning all periods of screen media to build on feminist film and media scholarship of decades past, from Diana W. Anselmo’s scrutiny of silent film-era scrapbooks made by early 20th century starstruck girls to Emily Naser-Hall’s look at unruly women’s domestic labor in mid-century American sitcoms to Jerome P. Dent, Jr.’s bringing critical race theory to bear on Black Final Girls. These contents indicate the globe- and industry-spanning, aesthetically eclectic spectrum of feminist film and media scholarship, from Anna Siomopoulos’s revisionist reappraisal of classical Hollywood screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), to Leung Wing Fai’s appreciative assessment of cult Japanese women-in-prison series Female Convict Scorpion (1972-73), to Kornelia Boczkowska’s thoughtful perambulations on women walking in experimental film and video, to Matthew Robinson’s rousing reading of a woman wrestler’s challenge to the sports biopic in Fighting with My Family (2019), to Cristina Ruiz-Poveda Vera’s fiercely attuned analysis of female teenagers’ animality in contemporary European cinema. Sharing my penchant for the provocative and irreverent, Fabienne Collignon’s pondering of the creepy allure of Under the Skin alongside the penultimate essay by Marzena Keating & Joanna Łapińska seize on the feminist potential of the insectile and scatological respectively. The closing article’s eloquent, insightful ode to the intimate, intricate films of the great Kelly Reichardt is fittingly authored by pioneering scholar of feminist film studies – and one of my foremost mentors – Janet Bergstrom.
I am beyond delighted to share the marquee with sisters-in-feminist-solidarity, Sarah Louise Smyth and Stefania Marghitu, who I’ll let wax proud about their special dossier’s equally revelatory contents – including a riveting roundtable on women’s contemporary television authorship and, last but not least, three specially curated book reviews.
I suppose it is fitting that this departing missive should take on strains of an Oscar speech, but before playing myself off I want to thank a few more folks whose indispensability these last four years deserves acknowledgment. I was ably assisted (especially on all things social media) by the Emerson College and Wellesley College students who served on behalf of the journal as Graduate Research Assistants and Hive Research Project Summer Interns: Allison Armijo, Brendon Burns, Sofia Diaz, Amanda Gillette, Maddelynn Horn, Miriam Tavernas, and Zoey Yan. Though my collaboration with the (quite literally) global team at Routledge, Taylor & Francis took place almost entirely remotely, they have been among my most frequent correspondents. Alexandra Kanovsky, the Portfolio Manager with whom I came aboard and who also now sets sail on other adventures, provided us ballast in all ways, from advocating on behalf of our budgetary requests to granting our appeals for promotional free access articles. Overseeing our submissions portal and peer review process, Melissa Wilkinson was a congenial associate and ever-reliable resource. Our production team, headed up first by Jane Remolacio and now by Lorna Pangan, graciously bore with my to-a-fault perfectionism and not-always-expedient response time with reviewing proofs; their behind-the-scenes labor too is indelibly imprinted upon every page.
Alongside spotlighting radical romcom, my first issue featured an obituary for our then recently-deceased Editorial Board member Thomas Elsaesser, written by his close colleague and friend and NRFTS founding EIC Warren Buckland. Both Warren and Thomas loom large in NRFTS’s origin story; it has been an aim of my tenure to uphold the legacy of the venerable journal that they conceived and cultivated over the past twenty years (happy birthday us!). My predecessor and pal Kyle Stevens has remained consigliere throughout my term, always there for good counsel or commiseration. Among his many words of wisdom, he rightly predicted that I needn’t worry about that contractual clause preventing me from taking another EIC position at a ‘rival’ journal within the coming year, so unimaginable is the prospect at present. Yet I’m sure I’ll get the itch to edit again; it’s in my blood after all.
Another of Kyle’s bold proclamations has also been borne out: of our NRFTS Book Reviews Editor since 2016, Kyle reflected that ‘hiring Matt Connolly is the best thing I did as Editor’. As a neophyte EIC on a team of two, I took this as deeply reassuring; having now worked alongside Matt for the last four years, I’m in total agreement, and again vastly reassured that it’s to him I’m ceding the helm – and with a few more hands on deck. I have every confidence in Matt and his new editorial team – Associate Editor Max Bledstein, Online Editor Geneveive Newman, and Book Reviews Editor M. Sellers Johnson – and am thoroughly excited to see how NRFTS continues to thrive in its third decade.
In the hopes that you will turn now to the thrilling articles, roundtable, and reviews in store, I’ll draw to a close this concluding dispatch and with it this altogether challenging and invigorating chapter of life. It’s been fun!