Acknowledgments

Website and Design Credits

IDAH Community Archive Template Design: Kalani Craig

Template Revisions for the Opaque Online Publishing Platform: Kalani Craig & Sean Purcell

Javascript Code and Functionality: Kalani Craig

Graphic Site Design: Kalani Craig

Additional Site Design Help: Jessica Organ

Previous Javascript and Other Functions Design: Sagar Prabhu

Data Entry Assistance: Xavier Daniels & Lauren Sweany

Acknowledgements

No dissertation is done in isolation. It is only possible with the help of a network of educators who guide and support the research, colleagues who function as sounding boards and supporters, friends who help weather the ups and downs of academic struggle, and family who stand as the bedrock of the whole process.

I want to first thank the dissertation committee for their help and guidance over the course of my eight years at Indiana University. Each committee member helped shape my approach to research at different phases in the process, and helped guide my research as it meandered through topics, methods, and theories. I am grateful to Joan Hawkins, Rachel Plotnick, and Bret Rothstein for being early supporters of my scholarship. I also want to especially thank Stephanie DeBoer, whose light approach to mentorship fostered the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary scholarship that I had hoped to pen for this project. Steph was the first person who signed on as a committee member, and she has always been a kind, generous mentor. Steph guided me as I struggled to find a research topic, as I weathered the global pandemic, and as I struggled to secure funding and backing from within my discipline.

Finally, in this regard, I want to thank Kalani Craig, who has been a boss, a friend, a colleague, a collaborator over past four years. I am indebted to Kalani’s enthusiastic support of my research, for her generosity as both a mentor and friend—helping me navigate job queries, disciplinary infighting, and the trials of staying afloat in the contemporary academic system. More than this, I am thankful for her labor: the dissertation platform is built on her original code for the community archiving platform DigitalArc, and most of the interactive elements of the site were hand coded by Kalani.

I would never have met Kalani, without having worked at the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH). Since starting there in Fall 2021, IDAH has become my academic family. I want to thank Michelle Dalmau, Vanessa Elias, Pouyan Shahidi, Sydney Stusman, Madison Cissel, Emily Clark, Drew Heiderscheidt, and Nate Howard for being kind, generous, supportive friends and coworkers. More than this, I am so indebted to each of them for teaching me in small and large ways, from whole digital methods to the subtle savvy required to navigate IU’s subtle harms. What I think of when I imagine an equitable academy is the environment Michelle, Kalani and Vanessa fostered at IDAH.

During my at eight years in the Media School, I found so many kind scholars who became close friends, who I see as family. Their words of encouragement, their generative conversations, their very presence helped me get across the finish line. I want to thank Ruth Riftin, Alison Brown, and Michael Aronson for helping me throughout the doctoral program. I met each of them in my first months in Bloomington, and each of them made the program feel like a home. I also cannot mention Mike without also mentioning his family—Katherine, Jacob, and Miriam—who were always there as well.

I also want to thank all my colleagues in the Media School, who have helped me over the years. I want especially thank: Eric Blom, Logan Brown, Azra Ceylan, Lucia Cores Sarria, Morgan Gard, Narmeen Ijaz, Mallika Khanna, Stephen Kohlmann, Carol Lin, Cole Nelson, Pallavi Rao, Joe Roskos, Khurram Sheikh, Xan Smith, Edo Steinberg, Luna Sun, and Henry Yan. Each of you helped at different moments and in different ways over the past eight years.

In addition my colleagues in the Media School, I want to especially thank the members of Joan Hawkins’ writing group, who read many drafts of this project over the years. Thanks to Caleb Alison, Richard Germain, Pragya Gosh, Forest Greenwood, I-Lin Liu, Andre Seewood, Anthony Silvestri, Sam Smucker, and Eric Zobel.

I also want to thank a few more folx from Indiana University, the University of California San Francisco, the New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM), and elsewhere who helped support my work at different times. I want to thank Polina Ilieva, whose kind support has been especially helpful as I have burnt out while finishing this dissertation; Anthony Guest-Scott, who showed me how academic education can be its own form of radical care; Faye Gleisser, who first introduced me to opaque practices; Arlene Shaner, who supported my research at the NYAM as part of the Helfand Fellowship; and Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz, who introduced me to the work of Max Liboiron and who continues to show me how media studies can produce real change.

I want to thank, too, Robert von Dassanowsky and Kathy Teige, who passed away before I could finish this project. Kathy was the heart of the Media School when I first arrived. She opened her doors to students, always making us feel welcome; she was a sounding board and a confidant, helping all of us graduate student navigate IU’s labyrinthian policies. The Media School would not have been as welcoming without her, and the tight knit community that flourished around her was part of the reason I was so successful in my years in the program.

Robert was the most generous, gregarious, and accepting person I have ever met. His mentorship made it possible for me to go to graduate school, and his support made it easier to tackle each hurdle as it came. Robert nurtured my love for film, but more importantly, my love for learning. Robert put me on this trajectory, and I hope this research makes him proud.

As I conclude these acknowledgments, I want to turn closer, to my friends and family who are not academics. I want to thank Brian and Elisa Dooley for their support over the years, and for housing me when I did archival research in New York. I want to thank Ian Horner, Micayla Smith, Jessica Organ, Max Henry, and Patrick Kearns for being the best kind of friends, those whose very presence can lift my spirits. I also want to thank Diana Johnson-Sweany, John Johnson, Caitlin Sweany-Mendez and Antonio Mendez, for their generosity, opening their doors and supporting where they could. I am newer to their family, but have never felt unwelcome.

To my parents—John and Robin—whose myriad sacrifices made my educational journey possible, who never questioned my instincts, who always supported me when I stumbled, and who continue to be a home and shelter as I navigate the future, thank you. I would never have been able to do this without your care and support.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank Lauren. You have been there every step of the way. You have heard too many diatribes about French theory, comforted me whenever I got an article or grant rejection, helped me through the peak of the pandemic, through two graduate strikes, through funding cuts and moments when I did not know if I could continue. More than this, of coure, you brought joy to every day. You taught me to love more deeply, and care more intensely. More than helping me get across the finish line, you taught me to view the world in such a way that a better, and more ethical future might be possible.