Narrative

My dissertation, “Connected Isolation: Screens, Mobility, and Globalized Media Culture” is an analysis of the implications of individualized media forms that increasingly constitute and encroach upon what was previously regarded as public space. I argue that the role of screens in non-theatrical contexts requires that we reassess the importance of media distribution and flows. The reconfiguration of social spaces caused by the proliferation of screens leads to new aesthetic modes and new forms of sociality. The push and pull of those media forms results in a social order I call “connected isolation,” a predicament in which subjects must isolate themselves in order to connect to the world through media technologies. These technologies compel separation from the local in order to achieve immediacy with the global, thereby reconfiguring long-standing categories of space. The unresolved tensions between public and private produced by these devices (the use of cellular phones in public areas, for example) express the emergent social order of connected isolation. My dissertation provides a deeper understanding of a larger cultural problematic – the role of communication technologies in structuring social belonging – through a focus on the tensions between community and technological innovation in a social milieu structured by mass media. In addition to my PhD, I have a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and Film. After graduating from college, I moved to Los Angeles and worked in the film industry for five years. I got some work on television commercials but mostly worked in the exhibition and advertising end. My future research plans include a history of in-flight entertainment, an examination of the ascendancy of Global Positioning System hardware and software, and a reassessment of the concept of liveness in television studies.