Dissertation Now Available

The dissertation version of one of my current projects, A Frown Upside Down / The Affective, Cultural and Convergence Histories of Disney's Song of the South (2010), is finally available through ProQuest Dissertations. This is more or less the version that I completed and defended last December (I have since made more revisions).

A link to the abstract and preview can be found here--if you have access to a university library, I believe you can retrieve the full text of the dissertation by logging in to the library's database, going to ProQuest and searching for it through there (there is no direct permanent link that I know of, sorry).

I will only say for now that I don't like the abstract in retrospect--its too narrowly focused on what at the time I thought was the project's biggest scholarly contribution. But looking at it now, I feel it misses the scope of many other historical and cultural issues I'm trying to examine.

Having conceived the idea back in 2002, then researched it for another five years, and then actively worked at it for over three years, I am very proud of this work--its easily the best thing I've ever written, and I think many different audiences in time will find much of value (and provocation) in its pages. When the project is brought to its final resolution, I will take more time to reflect on the process of writing and revising it, and on what I feel its ultimate contributions may be.

peace,
js