Journal Articles and Impact

My journal articles don’t seem to be as widely cited as my books are. I’m not sure this is exactly a reflection of their quality (for example Blaxploitation Films is widely cited and a rubbish book!), although it may be. When Sharon Sherman and I were editing Folklore/Cinema, I have to admit I was a little confused as to why Sharon was being cited, even when the citation wasn’t entirely relevant to the author’s argument, but my work – specifically the JAF piece – wasn’t. I deduced, perhaps erroneously, that many academics – both professional and students alike – were using Amazon as a research database, rather than Web of Science or MLA. At the time the papers in the book were being written (~2005-6), my only published book was Blaxploitation Films, and this wasn’t entirely relevant to that scholarship. Is this why books have a greater ‘impact’ than journal articles?

This raises another interesting conundrum regarding the proposed bibliometrics of the REF: under the RAE guidelines, peer-reviewed journal articles are highly rated, but they seem to have considerably less ‘impact’ than single authored books. I understand that both peer-review of research outputs (articles, books, etc) will be evaluated on their intrinsic quality in addition to the bibliometrics, however I’m becoming increasingly dubious (as I put this blog together) of the value of ‘impact’ statements. I can understand that government agencies want to see such ‘impact’, as they’re non-specialists in our field, but, as with the case of Blaxploitation Films, just because a research-output is discussed publically, doesn’t mean that output is of much research value.

So here is a list of my journal articles, and, as you’ll see, there has been very little discussion of these out-puts:

• ‘My Brother, My Lover, Myself: The Hong Kong Action Cinema of John Woo as Masculine Deep Play.’ Canadian Folklore canadien 19.1 (1997): 55-68

I’ve not found any discussion or citation of this article (thankfully, as it was my first published piece), but it is included in the bibliographies for the journal Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, “East Asian Cinema” section of the UC Berkeley Library, and Michael Flood ed. (2008) The Men's Bibliography: A comprehensive bibliography of writing on men, masculinities, gender, and sexualities. http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/

• ‘Voices from the Periphery: Videodrome and the (pre)Postmodern Vision of Marshall McLuhan’ Postscript 4.4 (1997): 25-37.

• ‘Schindler's List as Jewish Rite: The Esoteric-Exoteric Factor of Cinema-Going’. Culture & Tradition 20 (1998): 5-17.

No immediate ‘impact’ from this paper, however it is included in UC Berkeley Library’s bibliography on “Steven Spielberg”.

• ‘”You Don’t Have to be Filmish”: The Toronto Jewish Film Festival’. Ethnologies 21.1 (1999): 115-132.

Oddly enough, the “Filmish” article is cited in Daphna Birenbaum Carmelli (2004). Prevalence of Jews as subjects in genetic research: Figures, explanation, and potential implications. American Journal of Medical Genetics 130A.1: 76-83.

And, the paper is required reading on Prof. Jeffrey Schandler’s “American Jews and the Media” undergraduate course at Rutger’s University (2007).

• ‘Feminist Folkloristics and Women’s Cinema: Towards a Methodology’. Literature Film Quarterly 27.4 (1999): 292-300.

No immediate ‘impact’ from this paper, however it is included in UC Berkeley Library’s bibliography on “Representations of Asians in Film and Television” (which is odd, as that has little to do with the article’s content).

• ‘Candyman Can: Film and ostension.’ Contemporary Legend N.S. 2 (1999): 137-154.

The Candyman paper is cited by Elizabeth Tucker (2005). Ghosts in Mirrors: Reflections of the Self. Journal of American Folklore 118: 186-203 as well as her book (2005) Campus Legends: A Handbook. Greenwood.

• ‘”Have I Got a Monster for You!”: Some Thoughts on the Golem, The X-Files and the Jewish Horror Movie’ Folklore 111.2(2000): 217-230

I’ve found this paper cited by Bobby Kuechenmeister (2008) in his review of The Epic in Film: From Myth to Blockbuster (by Constantine Santas) Journal of Popular Culture 41.6: 1088-1090

The “Golem” paper seems to have also been useful to a few students who have cited it in their dissertations:

• Aynur Akpinar Peter Svensson & Martin Wennerström (2006). Emotional Ownership and the Fan Fiction Community. MA (Business Administration). Lund University School of Economics and Management.
• Francis Wilke Tytell (2005) The Golem Speaks: The Study of Four Modern Jewish American Novels. MA (Liberal Studies) Dissertation. Wake Forest University
• ‘"Buzz Off!": The Killer Bee Movie as Modern Belief Narrative.’ Contemporary Legend N.S.4 (2001): 1-19.
• “Filming Legends: A Revised Typology” in Contemporary Legend n.s. 5 (2002): 114-135.
• “Folklore Studies and Popular Film and Television: A Necessary Critical Survey”. Journal of American Folklore 116.2 (2003): 176-195.

This article is probably my most cited of any, due, in no small part, to two related conscious decisions on my part in publishing it in the first place: a) as a survey article, it was designed to be the base line for future discussions in folklore/film debates and b) I chose to publish it in a highly available and visible journal (JAF).

Holly Blackford (2007). PC Pinocchios: Parents, Children and the Metamorphosis Tradition in Science Fiction. In Sharon Sherman and Mikel J. Koven eds., Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture. Utah State UP: 74-92.

Ray B. Browne (2004). Popular Culture Studies Across the Curriculum: Essays for Educators. McFarland.

Carol E. Henderson (2007). Allegories of the Undead: Rites and Rituals in Tales from the Hood. In Sharon Sherman and Mikel J. Koven eds., Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture. Utah State UP: 166-178.

Robert Glenn Howard (2008). Electronic Hybridity: The Persistent Processes of the Vernacular Web. Journal of American Folklore 121: 192-218.

Kiri Miller (2008). Grove Street Grimm: Grand Theft Auto and Digital Folklore. Journal of American Folklore 121: 255-285.

Stijn Reijnders (2007). Media Rituals and Festive Culture: Imagining the Nation in Dutch Television Entertainment. International Journal of Cultural Studies 10.2: 225-242.

The article was also cited in a doctoral thesis:

Lydia K. Brauer (2006). Contemporary Constructions of English Texts: A Departmental Case Study of Secondary English Domains. PhD Dissertation, Ohio State University.

• “Superstition & Pseudoscience: The Ambivalence of Belief in the Giallo Film” Midwestern Folklore. 30.2 (2004): 21-29.

• “Most Haunted and the convergence of traditional belief and popular television”. Folklore 118 (August, 2007): 183-202.

• “The Folklore Fallacy: A Folkloristic/Filmic Perspective on The Wicker Man” Fabula 48.3-4 (2007)

Perhaps these last articles are just too recent for any ‘impact’ to be had yet. Time will tell. Although, seeing as the Midwestern Folklore paper was also published in La Dolce Morte and both the Folklore and Fabula papers make up chapters in my Film, Folklore and Urban Legends perhaps the ‘impact’ of these papers will be more manifest in the discussions about those books.

If anyone out there is using any of these articles for teaching, please let me know and I’ll include it here.

Blaxploitation Part 2

... I'm still getting used to 'blogging' - I thought I'd be able to edit my posts once they'd been published - wiki-like. I guess not. So my apologies for the addendum to Blaxploitation Films, and here are some more references:

Books which cite Blaxploitation Films (2001):

• Stephane Dunn (2008) "Baad bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films. University of Illinois Press
• Josiah Howard (2008) Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide. FAB Press
• Andrea Seier (2007) Remediatisierung: Die performative Konstitution von Gender und Medien. LIT Verlag
• Elizabeth Young (2008) Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor. NYU Press. (Thanks to udigrudi for pointing this last one out to me)

Personally, I really want to check out both Dunn and Young's books - they look amazing.

And, although I meant to do this in my last post, a quick pre-release push on the completely revised (and therefore hopefully less crap) 2nd edition of Blaxploitation Films, coming out in November 2009

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blaxploitation-Films-Mikel-J-Koven/dp/1842433342/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244797707&sr=1-3

Blaxploitation Films (Pocket Essentials, 2001)

This was the first book I ever published. I hate it. I tried to be 'cool & hip' and ended up coming across like a total moron. Thankfully, I have a completely revised (and expanded) 2nd edition coming out in November 2009 which hopefully rectifies many of the stupid comments I made in the original.

That being said, this book is probably the most cited in academic papers of any of my research. (Go figure!) The irony being that this book was never sufficiently academic enough to be submitted for RAE consideration (nor was it ever intended as such), and yet, according the bibliometrics the REF may follow, due to its frequent citation, it seems to have accrued some academic value.


For those interested: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blaxploitation-Films-Pocket-Essentials-Mikel/dp/1903047587/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244711979&sr=8-6

It has been cited in:

• Novotny Lawrence (2007). Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre London: Routledge;
• Gerald A. Powell (2004) A Rhetoric of Symbolic Identity: An Analysis of Spike Lee's Malcolm X and Bamboozled. University Press of America;

The book is discussed/cited in the following articles:

• Thelma Willis Foote (2007) Hoax of the Lost Ancestor: Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman. Jump-Cut 49: http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/WatermelonWoman/text.html;
• Mathias Hanf (2005) The Culture of Blaxploitation (this appears to be a self-published paper - perhaps a student essay - http://www.grin.com/e-book/46928/the-culture-of-blaxploitation);
• Stewart Home (2006) Rated X by an All-White Jury. Mute: Culture and Politics after the Net vol 2.11 http://www.metamute.org/en/rated_x_by_an_all_white_jury (Home correctly takes me to task for some of the juvenile and insipid comments I made in the book, and which hopefully I've rectified in my later research);
• Amanda Howell (2005) Spectacle, Masculinity and Music in Blaxploitation Cinema. Screening the Past 18: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr_18/AHfr18a.html;
• Jonathan Munby (2007). Signifying' Cinema: Rudy Rae Moore and the Quality of Badness. Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 11.3: 203-219;
• Gerald A. Powell (2005) Rhetoric of Identity: An Inquiry into Symbolic Syntax and Composition of Black Identity in Bamboozled. Journal of African American Studies Vol. 9.3: 46-53;

I've also found the book cited in the following student papers/dissertations:

• Matthew Tyler (2007). "They Call me MR. Tibbs!": The Changing Face of the Black American Male, On Screen, As a Result of the Civil Rights Movmement. University of Portsmouth (http://dissertations.port.ac.uk/185/01/TylerM.pdf)

And finally, in the blogsphere:

• Jan Bruun (2001) Cult Awareness. Hypertonia World Enterprises. http://home.online.no/~janbruun/archives/2001_11_01_archive
• Jimmy Green (nd. 2002/2?) Blacula. 70s Movie Rewind. http://70s.fast-rewind.com/

Recommended reading by www.blaxploitation.com

I'm sure there are more out there, but its a start. If anyone has any additional citations, please let me know.

Introduction/Preamble

Hi.
I hate blogs. I'm really not interested in what you ate for breakfast. But neither is this an anti-blog, parodying the self-involved styles of other bloggers. This blog is intended to be an interactive notebook.

Obviously the topic of this blog is me and my research; however, this blog is also not simply a self-congratulatory "ooo, look at what I've done" forum. I'm arrogant, but not that arrogant. For those of you who work in British HE, I'm sure you're all familiar with the fact that the RAE is transforming into the REF, and one of the pseudo-metrics that we are going to measured against is 'impact' - what 'impact' does our research have to the outside world. Its highly unlikely that any of us are going to find a cure for cancer, or salvage the world economic crisis, so what kind of public 'impact' can our film, TV, folklore, etc research have? As I understand it, part of the 'impact' taken into consideration is regarding to what extent our work/research is discussed in public fora beyond its initial publication. Ok. I think I understand that.

So this blog is an 'impact' notebook for my own work. I will post here a digest of where my individual research outputs (articles, books, etc) are discussed across the interwebs and in print. Some of you may want to follow this - I don't know why you would, but then again I don't know why people like Twilight either. Please feel free to discuss anything I put up here, and should you come across any reviews, discussions, citations of my work, please include it here.

Should a blog of this kind inspire any of my fellow academics and you want to do your own 'impact' blogs, let me know and I'll link up with your pages and forward any citations/reviews of your own work that I come across.

Of course, this could all go horribly wrong.

Mikel