Hello all, and hope that the summer is finally reaching you wherever you may be !
I wanted to set up this series of Blog posts (coming over the next few days) to showcase and highlight the impressive work that’s being done my our Gender Studies (applied) MLitt and MSc students on their Research Placement project (GNDPP04). We’ve had a really interesting and varied set of placements this year with our continuing partners in industry, education and the third sector including: Creative Stirling, the National Library of Scotland (Moving Image Archive), Glasgow Women’s Library and many others…
Our students work with their allocated placement/academic and apply their learning from the programme (and their own bespoke set of skills) to projects that are wider ranging (archival, marketing, textual and semiotic analysis, programming and curation) and produce end products alongside their academic writing that extend to film programmes and workshops, printed Zines, digital film archives and podcasts.
I hope you’ll find some of these projects interesting and if you want to know more about them – please don’t hesitate to email me and I can put you in touch with the student researchers themselves.
First up is an academic research project partnership between our GS student Alba McVicar Reyes and Dr Fiona Noble (Lecturer in SPLAS) on a project investigating and foregrounding women’s voices in the Spanish media/streaming landscape.
Below is Alba’s blog entry on the project, and also included is the project’s final edit of the podcast discussion between Alba and Fiona Noble. Enjoy !
Darren
Over the past five months, I have had the absolute pleasure of working with Dr Fiona Noble as part of the Research Placement opportunity available through the MSc in Gender Studies, at the University of Stirling. Helping with Fiona’s research, which is anchored in the TV show ‘Nacho’ and the voices of the foregrounding women and showrunners in the Spanish media landscape, was one of many options, yet it immediately called out to me as the Placement I wanted to do. She was looking for a film/media student, with an interest in Feminist & Queer Discourse and a desire to engage with academic discussions of televisual media.
As an added bonus, I also happen to be Spanish, speak Spanish fluently, and have grown up alongside Spanish culture and the revolution that is currently reshaping the audiovisual production of Spanish fiction. So, I immediately reached out to Dr Darren Elliott-Smith (the Director of the Gender Studies programme) to let him know that I was more than willing to partake in Fiona’s research and to hear firsthand what it was Fiona needed. Quite candidly, both Fiona and Darren stressed the fact that they did not want me to feel overworked or like I was to bear most of the grunt work. As such, Fiona expected a spreadsheet which would act as a sort of catalogue, simply containing a couple of relevant articles and interviews centring the project’s three key showrunners and ‘Nacho’. However, my initial, superficial research quickly led me to discover a wealth of different sources which could vouch for these women’s groundbreaking careers and how they led the Spanish audiovisual revolution. From video and published interviews to social media posts, to online marketing strategies and even Undergraduate and Postgraduate theses: altogether, this collection of information reveals a bigger picture, through which we can glimpse each woman’s life, career and the strategic deployment of their artistic voice.
The project soon grew to include a database, to which the spreadsheet is the key. The idea is that Fiona can read through the spreadsheet, find useful ideas through each source’s quotes and buzzwords, and then locate the relevant file in the database by looking at the ‘File Name’ and ‘Location (in database)’ columns. The files’ names act as ‘serial numbers’, which label each file according to its relevant showrunner, media and production company (as well as its type and when/where it was published) and within each file, the relevant quotes are also highlighted and numbered, easily accessible.
In short, I provided Fiona with a deeper understanding of these key women’s careers and work until now, as is reflected through the Spanish online sphere, mainstream media and academic discussions, thus saving her the time it would have taken her to do all this preliminary research before writing up her article on ‘Nacho’. All of this knowledge, combined, is presented through the database/spreadsheet. And what I take from this project is thus reflected through my own voice, presented through the project’s creative outputs: a reflective podcast and this very blog post. This opportunity made me think, and learn, a lot. Through Fiona, the showrunners and this project, I rediscovered my pride in Spanish art and fiction, which I had somewhat lost after moving to Stirling in 2019. Engrossed in studying the Anglophonic audiovisual world, I lost sight of the revolution I began to witness in the summer of 2017 when my high school friends forced me to stay up all night long to binge-watch the first season of ‘La Casa de Papel’. Little did 16-year-old me know that the national reception this show received would be echoed internationally for years to come and change the production of Spanish TV and film, and my academic career, forever.
Now, with a better understanding of the industry and a showrunner’s job, as well as a keen interest in deploying Critical Feminist & Queer Theory, I am more aware of the importance of acknowledging the artistry that is emerging from Spanish creatives. The technological and narrative techniques popularised by the showrunners’ stylistic choices, the rejection of the idea that ‘only men’s stories sell’, the rise in creative control held by women in professional production contexts… All of this (and more) is the promise of the revolution these showrunners bring on. Their voice, sonically and cinematically conveyed through the screen, ignites their work with a political significance, which is sorely needed in Spain and in the so-called Postfeminist Wave. Particularly, ‘Nacho’ deconstructs what is typically seen as the ultimate model for hegemonic, toxic ‘macho’ Spanish masculinity: Nacho Vidal, the iconic 1990s Spanish pornstar with the 25-centimetre penis. In ‘Nacho’, the pornstar’s persona is busted open, revealing to the audience both the ugly, brutal truth of trying to survive the porn/sex industry and the bittersweet, innately human nature of the pleasure that is addressed and commodified through it. With full credit to the voices and artistic prowess of the outstanding cast and crew who brought it to life.
So, to any future Gender Studies students who are presented with a similar opportunity, to partake in the programme’s Research Placement and who may feel quite apprehensive because of it, I say: jump right in! Read between the lines of your research’s/researcher’s needs, put yourself in their shoes and figure out what kind of research would help them the most. Be proactive, schedule meetings with them semi-regularly to update them on your progress, set reasonable deadlines for yourself and do your best to obey them. But above all else, you need to find what ignites your own passion and interest within your research. Think about what you can build on in the future, and find out why this research is meaningful to you. Remember that feedback is constructive, never personal, and take advantage of the process and the valuable experience it will bestow upon you. And quite frankly, regardless of the impact or scope of the research, if you can find the passion that drives you, you will find yourself producing the kind of research you would like to see taking up space in wider academic discussions. Become one of the academic voices whose meaningful discussions spark social change.
And be proud.
Good luck!
Alba McVicar Reyes
(she/her)
Take a listen below to the podcast discussion between Alba and Fiona on the project and on Nacho specifically: