http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/home-gallery daily 0.75 2022-12-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061581825-0B442653QRTXDP6X3UAF/unsplash-image-eBakgUqwL8s.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061581825-0B442653QRTXDP6X3UAF/unsplash-image-eBakgUqwL8s.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061621290-H88XRC5X3C1GX6RXHG8Y/unsplash-image-XHL47BBDulQ.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061653524-XDHE9O3VF94FOYLW8WJJ/unsplash-image-T6UiaO8W64k.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061771153-L14L99CYQI1EMTNQLCKS/unsplash-image-bQZWdkdv8qY.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/7037caa0-1f3e-4ee0-82a7-d33d620ad07a/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.36.09+AM.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/ae614b89-915f-4d0a-b61a-e1c991bbe2ad/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.09+AM.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/33395dfa-20d0-4b77-b3e1-2a7e6b265e99/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.30+AM.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/f5fc6bd8-8722-4ed1-b6f3-6a904c8d3055/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.38.53+AM.jpg Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1671198357663-YMPKLNFSY0EA48G3L1WX/Screen+Shot+2022-12-16+at+8.42.02+AM.png Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062187592-HEGNUBRMC0SRZAVMFDA9/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.45.43+PM.png Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062201030-NOI81RA14H7YBR9Y0I6N/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.46.20+PM.png Home Gallery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062231696-IYY7M77X04EGNKBK6KO6/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.45.07+PM.png Home Gallery http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/about daily 1.0 2024-06-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/0c0ac993-00fb-4628-a3bf-88bcae908f23/102.jpg About - Kavita Nayar Jablonka, Ph.D., is an independent researcher, writer, and educator based in the Hampton Roads area, Virginia, USA. Photo by Heart & Rae Photography https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061581825-0B442653QRTXDP6X3UAF/unsplash-image-eBakgUqwL8s.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061621290-H88XRC5X3C1GX6RXHG8Y/unsplash-image-XHL47BBDulQ.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061653524-XDHE9O3VF94FOYLW8WJJ/unsplash-image-T6UiaO8W64k.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667061771153-L14L99CYQI1EMTNQLCKS/unsplash-image-bQZWdkdv8qY.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/7037caa0-1f3e-4ee0-82a7-d33d620ad07a/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.36.09+AM.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/ae614b89-915f-4d0a-b61a-e1c991bbe2ad/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.09+AM.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/33395dfa-20d0-4b77-b3e1-2a7e6b265e99/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.30+AM.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/f5fc6bd8-8722-4ed1-b6f3-6a904c8d3055/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.38.53+AM.jpg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1671198357663-YMPKLNFSY0EA48G3L1WX/Screen+Shot+2022-12-16+at+8.42.02+AM.png About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062187592-HEGNUBRMC0SRZAVMFDA9/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.45.43+PM.png About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062201030-NOI81RA14H7YBR9Y0I6N/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.46.20+PM.png About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667062231696-IYY7M77X04EGNKBK6KO6/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+12.45.07+PM.png About http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/curriculumvitae-1 daily 0.75 2022-12-16 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/9beab38a-474d-4abf-9bfb-b497264df316/Screen+Shot+2022-12-16+at+8.42.02+AM.png Curriculum Vitae - Click to view full CV. Click to view full CV. http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/publications daily 0.75 2022-10-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/b1896fff-dc8c-487b-ad74-730529d34e76/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.30+AM.jpg Publications - Sweetening the Deal: Dating for Compensation in the Digital Age This paper explores the online ‘sugar dating’ phenomenon, the proliferation of websites that connect ‘sugar daddies’ and ‘sugar mamas’ with ‘sugar babies,’ in order to better understand the kinds of meanings informing and derived from the pursuit of openly commodified relationships. Qualitatively analysing discourse on a popular ‘sugar dating’ blog, I argue that ‘sugar dating’ cultivates a disposition to and through paid intimacy that differs from both romantic love and more explicit forms of sex work. Discussed along economic and emotional dimensions, blog participants embrace the economic underpinnings of their instrumental uses of intimacy, but they also invoke romantic discourses of chemistry, connection, and personal choice and the morality of economic exchange, demonstrating a refusal to see their relations as work and solely driven by market logic. These differentiations help to buffer social stigma and represent the social acceptability of instrumental intimacy as a neoliberal strategy for coping with economic and social conditions, but also make it harder to identify the labour of ‘sugar dating’ and further disenfranchise sex workers as they reinforce social distinctions in order to legitimize these relations. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/cc003d7e-e570-477e-b442-0f46302ea2d8/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.33.09+AM.jpg Publications - Working It: The Professionalization of Amateurism in Digital Adult Entertainment This article examines a sector of professional amateur work for women in the digital industry for adult entertainment known as “adult webcam modeling” (AWM). Through a selection of narratives, this paper explores the gendered meanings of AWM and the values women derive from their “amateur” sexual content creation. I draw particular attention to the complex union of professional and amateur roles and relations in the strategies women adopt to succeed in these spaces. On one level, they describe the technical skills and institutionalized knowledge needed to successfully perform professionalized duties of hosting and animating site users’ sexual and emotional fantasies. Still, they do not solely view their work in professional terms, highlighting the usefulness of enacting their amateurism by performing authenticity and developing ongoing friendships with site users for succeeding in this line of work. Framing this work as reliant on both “professional” and “amateur” strategies builds ambiguity into the AWM persona, which has implications for social and historical constructions of sexuality and gender. It also demands rethinking conceptual frameworks that create dualities between professional/amateur, public/private, and commercial/authentic. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/7037caa0-1f3e-4ee0-82a7-d33d620ad07a/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.36.09+AM.jpg Publications - You Did(n’t) Build That: Audience Reception of a Reality Television Star’s Transformation from a Real Housewife to a Real Brand This article explores themes and issues related to the variable reception of gendered practices of self-branding in popular culture and media. By analyzing discourse on two online fan forums, it examines the ways in which audiences of Frankel’s two spinoff series, Bethenny Getting Married and Bethenny Ever After, respond to Frankel’s transformation into a branded self. What meanings does Frankel’s branded self generate? How might gendered meanings delimit the forms and valences afforded to self-branders? Attention to viewers’ negotiations of what is at stake for the self-brander suggests it is a contestable and conditional manipulation of affect, thereby denying the presumption that socially situated self-branding practices are uniformly acceptable, that concepts of success to which self-branders aspire are uniformly constructed, and that the growing historical condition of precarity under neoliberal reform is uniformly experienced and managed. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/2fda4811-485f-492e-938c-c45d8f3cc6d6/Screen+Shot+2022-10-29+at+9.38.53+AM.jpg Publications - Book Chapter in The Gig Economy: Workers and Media in the Age of Convergence Before the current hype of gig work, adult entertainers were working as independent operators on web platforms used to stream live video feeds and connect with internet users, an emerging sex industry known as cam modeling. Still, adult entertainers are often omitted from academic discourse on digital gig labor. Not only does this erasure negatively impact its workers – predominantly marginalized women – but it also makes it difficult to appreciate the scope and variations of gig work. This chapter draws upon qualitative data to examine the benefits and drawbacks of cam modeling. By exploring the convergence of sex work and the gig economy, this chapter aims to provide greater visibility for marginalized gig workers and research that may inform activism, laws, and regulations affecting the digital sex industry. http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/teaching-2 daily 0.75 2022-10-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667075062121-1WQR118X1XIJ6OMZQEE0/unsplash-image-jt9Lnsmq-3Y.jpg Teaching - Consumer Culture Photo Credit: Artem Beliaikin, @belart84 on Unsplash https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667075678237-HV0EBPPRG21W617I82PS/unsplash-image-omeaHbEFlN4.jpg Teaching - Media Theory & Criticism This course examines approaches to the analysis and criticism of contemporary media. You will learn how to become critical of the media you consume and produce, and how to articulate your thoughts by drawing on a body of theories/concepts to support your opinions. Through extensive reading, writing, class discussions and screenings, you will develop not only the ability to analyze and critique media texts, but also a broader critical worldview. There are three parts to this course: Part I: Introducing Media Theory & Criticism: What is it and Why Should We Care Part II: Mechanics of Media: How Do Media Produce Meaning? Part III: Media, Culture, and Society: Contexts of Meaning Please contact for syllabus. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667073245151-C13X9DYUQL0M1IXE7KTM/unsplash-image-UzwsrV3bFdU.jpg Teaching - Video Games & Culture Photo Credit: Michal Ilenda, @michal_ilenda on Unsplash https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/141b3782-206a-4bdf-b3bb-ff048c944b22/Untitled+design%281%29.png Teaching - Reality Television The basis for the appeal of both talk shows and reality TV may lie mainly in the “uncensored,” “unscripted,” and “spontaneous” nature of these human dramas. Real World, which premiered on MTV in 1991, has been credited with helping to establish many of the textual characteristics that define the genre of “Reality TV,” a form that in less than 20 years has come to dominate the American television landscape. From its inception, reality TV has ballooned, mushroomed, and mutated into endless hybrids and sub-genres. This course aims to explore questions such as: What are the political and economic environments and ideologies that facilitate not only why and how the programs are produced, but also the audience’s reactions? How may this fascination or even obsession with the “real” impact the styles and productions of other cultural products? How are the factors of race, class, gender, and sexuality systematically represented in the programs, and what is reality TV’s social impact? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5384c92be4b0b8104fbc9d11/1667074611848-6XOMQTEHN8BWHHV0QCWQ/unsplash-image-SYTO3xs06fU.jpg Teaching - Digital Media & Culture This course examines the elements, practices, and potential implications of what is broadly categorized as “digital media and culture.” Over the course of the semester, we will grapple with theories, concepts, and issues that come up in readings, class discussions, and media examples and ask us to think about the artistic, economic, political, and social implications of using digital media technology to make meaning out of life. Because this course covers a wide expanse of topics, and each day’s theme is rich enough to provide the contents of a whole course, this course offers students a sampling of important ideas and debates in the field to stimulate thought and conversation, curiosity to learn more beyond the classroom (or at least ours!), and personal initiative and independence in completing assignments. In other words, I will introduce you to a variety of contemporary studies of digital media and culture and try to give you as much flexibility as possible to pursue those you find more interesting than others in more depth. Topics include online identity, community, and labor; digital film, TV, photography, and music; video games and gaming culture; spreadable media; Web 2.0; virtual reality; and mobile devices and everyday life. http://www.kavitanayarjablonka.com/contact daily 0.75 2022-10-31