I'm finding the learning curve a bit high on this one. The radial graph maps connections between collections/collectors/institutions - but is there any way to expand the graph - for example, I click on AAUP for OSU, it gives me a simple graph with OSU as a node - could I click the OSU node to then see its connections? I'm also wondering how I can use this as a way to enrich my own research with historical materials. Any ideas?

I don't want to ask this site to be a different site (it could be that I am not the audience) - it just strikes me as odd that the entry for queer nation http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/view?docId=queer-nation-cr.xml is so lonely! That project (and its ephemera) are so richly connected through personal relationships, I'd love to see that made visible.

Not to self-promote, but as long as we are considering non-traditional research presentation and visual methods for thinking through the world, I would like to put in for comics as one place to do that. Here are some links of (mostly) online projects that are doing awesome work in comics and research.

Fourth mention : book length treatments of various sorts - these are not strictly speaking academic, but they engage with similar conversations about meaning, memory, and representation.

Joe Sacco's work: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Area-Gorazde-Eastern-1992-1995/dp/1560974702

Logicomix : http://www.amazon.com/Logicomix-Apostolos-Doxiadis/dp/0747597200

If we think about memoirs as auto-ethnography, there are many more to add..

Fifth mention: http://spinweaveandcut.blogspot.com/

Nick Sousanis' blog - he is writing his dissertation about comics in comic form!

I'm interested in this as an intervention in making ethnography happen. Rather than finding existing communities doing this sort of exchange (I'm thinking about mail art and zine communities especially), this group is creating a space for this to happen.

What seems to take it into the realm of big E ethnography for me is the NYU address on the call for participation. Anywhere else (is this just freecycling for an academic cv?), and I wouldn't think of it as "ethnography." Though I'm not super invested in the term ethnography, I'm very interested in the ways that art and cultural production overlaps with research. I'm heartened to see projects that resist exclusively scientific organization of knowledge. Affectively engaging research is exciting - but I'm not sure this is it. Interesting bibliography though - do any of the linked projects self-identify as ethnographies?

This has been in my to-be-read folder for ages. I've started it a few times, but never finished it. While his arguments about the cases confuse me, I found useful his exploration of the potential tensions between user-produced content and institutionally maintained platforms. Traditional ways of thinking about vernacular online discourse place it in relation to the institutional. Howard sets out two types of vernacular - subaltern and common. He then argues for a dialectic understanding of online discourse, where one is always going between institutional and individual (counter-institutional) expressions. The cases are the weak point for me. However, this may be explained by Howard's disciplinary orientation as a rhetorician. The article's center is the fight about "vernacular," not how specific people and communities express themselves online.

Also, unless I am reading ungenerously, Howard mistakes Dignity USA (a counter-institutional though long standing organization for gay Catholics and allies) with the Catholic Church proper. This distinction seems like a small point at first; his arguments about the blogger adding text could still be considered disruptive. However, it indicates to me that he is not familiar with the community. As someone interested in community-produced media, this wasn't a helpful article.

I couldn't get the pdf from that link. The pdf is available through the table of contents for the current issue (volume 12) at http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/issue/current.