I have awesome timing

Just in time for everyone to run out and see the new Star Trek movie (which you should do super soon...it's awesome), here is a link to my Star Trek essay.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfw523gg_2f8d6p77p

This whole project began with a frantic note I scribbled in my copy of Silverman's Acoustic Mirror: "Pg 54: 'inside' filmic space=female; 'outside' = male. ---> what about the computer in Star Trek? ---> both 'inside' and disembodied." From there, I had an excellent excuse (like I needed one) to sit around and watch Star Trek for about a week straight until I began thinking about the "sexy voice" episode ("Tomorrow Is Yesterday"). And really, the rest just sort of fell together. Now I just need to take it someplace. To be perfectly honest, I'd most like to take it to the Trek convention in Vegas. But, since that neither counts for my career, nor would I likely be able to find anyone who cares enough about the Oedipal or Latency Stages to read it, I found a couple of "real" conferences I could send an abstract to.

1. San Fransisco State University's Cinema Studies GSA conference titled "Breaking Barriers: Borders and Beyond Liminality in Cinematic Media." According to the description, they're looking for papers that discuss the ways in which things break outside of the norms in mediated fiction. Since a lot of my paper talks about the episode in which the norms of the Latency Master Narrative of Star Trek is breached, I think it would be perfect.
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=168437&keyword=science&keyword=fiction

2. Pacific University's interdisciplinary conference on Gender, Sexuality, and Power. My paper is, essentially, about gendered voices, the power of said voices, and the ways in which male sexuality and subjectivity may or may not be threatened in relationship to such voice, so I think it would fit perfectly at this conference!
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=167596&keyword=gender&keyword=media

Other than conferences, I had a few other ideas for ways to expand the paper into publishable length. First, I think it would be interesting to compare Star Trek's Enterprise to 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000. The former is female and coldly mechanical, while the latter is male and soothing. Of course, the outcomes and media are entirely different, so it would make for a fascinating study, I think. Another possibility is to just expand my discussion of the Enterprise voice into the spin-off shows. Majel Barret did the voice for every single Star Trek computer (including the new movie, just before she died), so it's really interesting to see her evolution over the years, despite the fact that the ship essentially serves the same maternal function throughout. There are also tons of venues for such papers, include Cinema Journal, The Journal of Popular Culture, etc. etc. etc. And even if I never do get around to writing these things, at least the next time a friend says to me, "Really, Liz, you're watching Star Trek again!?" I'll be able to respond, "Dude, it's research!"