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Janet Staiger

Bio: Janet Staiger is an academic researcher from University of Texas at Austin. The author has contributed to research in topics: Hollywood & Film studies. The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 61 publications receiving 1952 citations. Previous affiliations of Janet Staiger include Kansas State University & New York University.


Papers
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Journal Article
TL;DR: This article conducted focus groups to learn how women tenured associate professors perceive their status as faculty women and their progress toward advancement to full professor and found that women associate professors are an overlooked or "forgotten" group.
Abstract: Previous research has found that the problem of sex inequity in higher faculty ranks may result from women taking longer to advance past associate professor. While statistical reports can isolate trends, they cannot identify reasons why women advance more slowly or suggest solutions for the situation. In this study, we conducted focus groups to learn how women tenured associate professors perceive their status as faculty women and their progress toward advancement to full professor. Questions explored career-related beliefs and practices, feelings about career progress, issues encountered while in the academy, and strategies used to manage these issues. Qualitative analysis of recurring themes and self-narratives of participants suggests that women associate professors are an overlooked or "forgotten" group. Evidence refutes the common wisdom that the number of senior women faculty will grow if more women are hired at the junior levels. Women in the study expressed lack of agency and resignation to their status and felt demoralized based on their experiences in the academy. Recommendations to address the "accumulation of disadvantages" are proposed including consistent application of promotion policies, development of workshops educating women about issues regarding their advancement, and equitable support for the activities of women faculty.

43 citations

Book
15 Nov 2002
TL;DR: Authorship and Identity in Hollywood: Intentions and Mass Culture as discussed by the authors The Practice of Authorship David Gerstner, Authorship Approaches Janet Staiger, and Author-Function.
Abstract: Introduction 1. Authorship Studies in Review. The Practice of Authorship David Gerstner, Authorship Approaches Janet Staiger 2. Authorship and Identity in Hollywood. The Auteur Theory, Curtiz and Casablanca Peter Wollen, I Hear Music and There's No One There: Darryl and Irving Write History with Alexander's Ragtime Band George Custen, Stepping Out from Behind the Grand Silhouette: Joan Harrison's Films of the 1940s Christina Lane 3. Authorship and Identity Near and Far from Hollywood: Intentions and Mass Culture. Oscar Micheaux, Identity and Authorship Hugh Bartling, Cundieff's Revision of Masculinity in Film, or, A "Hard" Man Is Not Necessarily Good to Find Jacqueline Fulmer, John Waters Goes to Hollywood: A Poststructural Authorship Study Walter Metz, Len Lye: Reading with the Body Roger Horrocks, A Lost Man: Willie Varela and the American Avant-Garde Chon Noriega, Grassroots Authors: Collectivity and Construction of Community Video Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong 4. The Author-Function. Reframing the Biographical Legend: Style, European Filmmakers, and the Sideshow Cinema of Tod Browing Matthew Solomon, Robert Stigwood: Production, Author, Text Michael DeAngelis, Making Films Asian-American: Shopping For Fangs and the Discursive Auteur Sarah Projansky and Ken A. Ono

39 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: Staiger as mentioned in this paper argues that only four sitcoms have been true blockbusters, All in the Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, Laverne & Shirley, and The Cosby Show, with ratings far above the second and third-rated programs.
Abstract: Archie Bunker. Jed. Laverne and Shirley. Cliff Huxtable. Throughout the entire history of American prime-time television only four sitcoms have been true blockbusters, with Nielsen ratings far above the second- and third-rated programs. Weekly, millions of Americans of every age were making a special effort to turn on the set to see what Archie, Jed, Laverne, and Cliff were doing that week. The wild popularity of these shows--All in the Family, The Beverly Hillbillies, Laverne & Shirley (and its partner Happy Days), and The Cosby Show--left commentators bewildered by the tastes and preferences of the American public. How do we account for the huge appeal of these sitcoms, and how does it figure into the history of network prime-time television? Janet Staiger answers these questions by detailing the myriad factors that go into the construction of mass audiences. Treating the four shows as case studies, she deftly balances factual explanations (for instance, the impact of VCRs and cable on network domination of TV) with more interpretative ones (for example, the transformation of The Beverly Hillbillies from a popular show detested by the critics, to a blockbuster after its elevation as the critics' darling), and juxtaposes industry-based reasons (for example, the ways in which TV shows derive success from placement in the weekly programming schedule) with stylistic explanations (how, for instance, certain shows create pleasure from a repetition and variation of a formula). Staiger concludes that because of changes in the industry, these shows were a phenomenon that may never be repeated. And while the western or the night-time soap has at times captured public attention, Blockbuster TV maintains that the sitcom has been THE genre to attract people to the tube, and that without understanding the sitcom, we can't properly understand the role of television in our culture.

30 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Thomas Ince as discussed by the authors was a classic case of a stage actor who, during a brief period of unemployment in 1910, turned to the fledgling movies as a source of income, and his long-term impact on filmmaking would be very great indeed.
Abstract: Thomas Ince was a classic case of a stage actor who, during a brief period of unemployment in 1910, turned to the fledgling movies as a source of income. Yet his long-term impact on filmmaking would be very great indeed. Working first for IMP and then Biograph, he returned to IMP when promised a chance to direct. He completed his first film in December 1910. Ince soon tired of the one-reel format, however, and accepted a position in the fall of 1911 to direct for Kessel and Bauman's New York Motion Picture Company. He headed to Edendale, California, where a small group of people were already making films. The studio at that time was a converted grocery store: one stage (without even a muslin overhang), a scene dock, a small lab and office, and a bungalow which served as a dressing room. Ince wrote, directed, and cut his first film within one week.2 From these beginnings, by 1913 he had a fully developed continuity script procedure; by 1916 a one-half million dollar studio on 43 acres of land with concrete buildings. There were a 165-foot electrically lit building (which was unique), eight stages 60 by 150 feet, an administration building for the executive and scenario departments, property, carpenter, plumbing, and costume rooms, a restaurant and commissary, 300 dressing rooms, a hothouse, and a natatorium-and 1,000 employees and a studio structure which was essentially that associated with the big studio period of later years.3 Why? Previous historians have provided only partial answers. Lewis Jacobs attributes Ince's innovations to the need to standardize large-scale productions through "formula" pictures and publicity: "Essentially a businessman, he [Ince] conducted himself and his film making in businesslike fashion .... Planning in advance meant better unity of structure, less chance of uneven quality, and economy of expression." Kalton Lahue, in Dreams for Sale, writes, "Ince kept [his studio] functioning at peak efficiency by holding a tight rein on everything that was done." Eric Rhode notes that Ince "was among the first film-makers to adapt his craft to the latest ideas in industrial management and to set up the assembly-line type of production."4

25 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conducted a study of the major U.S. film studios from 1936 to 1965 and found that property-based resources in the movie industry were more valuable than other resources.
Abstract: This article continues to operationally define and test the resource-based view of the firm in a study of the major U.S. film studios from 1936 to 1965. We found that property-based resources in th...

1,512 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, Castillo is a California Cahuilla Indian and chair of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University, and author of two distinguished works on French film and theory.
Abstract: Richard Abel, author of two distinguished works on French film and theory, teaches at Drake University. Carolyn Anderson teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Edward D. Castillo is a California Cahuilla Indian and chair of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. Darius Cooper teaches at San Diego Mesa College. David Desser, our Book Review Editor, teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

728 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that individuals who occupy an intermediate position between the core and the periphery of their social system are in a favorable position to achieve creative results.
Abstract: The paper advances a relational perspective to studying creativity at the individual level. Building on social network theory and techniques, we examine the role of social networks in shaping individuals’ ability to generate a creative outcome. More specifically, we argue that individuals who occupy an intermediate position between the core and the periphery of their social system are in a favorable position to achieve creative results. In addition, the benefits accrued through an individual’s intermediate core/periphery position can also be observed at the team level, when the same individual works in a team whose members come from both ends of the core/periphery continuum. We situate the analysis and test our hypotheses within the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry, which we trace over the period 1992–2003. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

544 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the creative field, i.e., the locationally-differentiated web of production activities and associated social relationships that shapes patterns of entrepreneurship and innovation in the new economy.
Abstract: Creative destruction is a central element of the competitive dynamic of capitalism. This phenomenon assumes concrete form in relation to specific geographical and historical conditions. One such set of conditions is investigated here under the rubric of the creative field, i.e. the locationally-differentiated web of production activities and associated social relationships that shapes patterns of entrepreneurship and innovation in the new economy. The creative field operates at many different levels of scale, but I argue that the urban and regional scale is of special interest and significance. Accordingly, I go on to describe how the creative field functions as a site of (a) entrepreneurial behavior and new firm formation, (b) technical and organizational change, and (c) the symbolic elaboration and re-elaboration of cultural products. All of these activities are deeply structured by relations of spatial-cum-organizational proximity and separation in the system of production. The creative field, however, is far from being a fully self-organizing entity, and it is susceptible to various kinds of breakdowns and distortions. Several policy issues raised by these problems are examined. The paper ends by addressing the question as to whether industrial agglomeration is an effect of producers’ search for creative synergies, or whether such synergies are themselves simply a contingent outcome of agglomeration.

406 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood is presented, and the authors argue that the Hollywood production system is deeply bifurcated into two segments comprising: (1) the majors and their cohorts of allied firms on the one hand; and (2) the mass of independent production companies on the other.
Abstract: Scott A. J. (2002) A new map of Hollywood: the production and distribution of American motion pictures, Reg. Studies 36, 957–975. In this paper, I offer a reinterpretation of the economic geography of the so-called new Hollywood. The argument proceeds in six main stages. First, I briefly examine the debate on industrial organization in Hollywood that has gone on in the literature since the mid-1980s, and I conclude that the debate has become unnecessarily polarized. Second, I attempt to show how an approach that invokes both flexible specialization and systems-house forms of production is necessary to any reasonably complete analysis of the organization of production in the new Hollywood. Third, and on this basis, I argue that the Hollywood production system is deeply bifurcated into two segments comprising: (1) the majors and their cohorts of allied firms on the one hand; and (2) the mass of independent production companies on the other. Fourth, I reaffirm the continuing tremendous agglomerative attracti...

253 citations