Academic CV

    Ryan Bigge
    Located in Toronto's Dufferin Grove neighbourhood
    ryanbigge [at] alumni [dot] sfu [dot] ca

    Scholarly Interests
    * political economy of magazines
    * creative industries and freelance economies
    * commodification of labour and culture
    * culture of cities and gentrification
    * blogs and imagined communities

    Education
    * Master's from York/Ryerson in Communication and Culture, June 2007.

    * B.A. from Simon Fraser University, June 1998. History and psychology double major.

    Published Academic Work
    * Hiding in Delight: Transgression, Irony and the Edge of Vice. Master's Thesis.

    Abstract: This study examines a Montreal-based underground magazine and its use of "edge" as a strategy of retaining subcultural capital and limiting its readership, thus creating a narrow but profitable niche market that extends Thomas Frank's work on rebel consumption. Vice, through its content, tone and business strategies, unites a series of diverse but related issues including subculture, transgression, cultural intermediaries, the political economy of magazines, the audience commodity, the politics of pleasure and how media texts constitute audiences as consuming subjects. Through a combination of interlocking discursive and aesthetic strategies that involve transgression and irony, Vice is able to minimize aspects of the audience commodity as described by Dallas Smythe while foregrounding its subcultural capital. In this way, it is able to convert subcultural capital into economic capital while remaining a relevant and authentic underground publication.

    * "The Cost of (Anti-)Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites." First Monday, Vol. 11 No. 12, December 4 2006.

    * "Making the Invisible Visible: The Neo-Conceptual Tentacles of Mark Lombardi." Review essay published in Left History (10.2 | Winter 2005), pp. 127-134.

    Conference Presentations
    * "First Retards, Then Rats, Now This: Reflecting on Vice's Total Moral Vacuum." Intersections 2007: What's Right / Right Now? Sixth Annual Communication and Culture Graduate Student Creative Conference. Ryerson University, March 24, 2007.

    * "The Cost of (Anti-)Social Networks: Identity, Agency and Neo-Luddites." Identity and Identification in a Networked World: A Multidisciplinary Graduate Student Symposium. New York University, September 30, 2006

    * "Vice City: Communicating and Consuming Urban Transgression." CCA Graduate Master's Session, Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. York University, June 3, 2006.

    * "Erasure Through Aesthetics: Gentrification and the Remaking of Space." Intersections 2006: Emerging Spaces, Transforming Scapes. Fifth Annual Communication and Culture Graduate Student Creative Conference. Ryerson University, March 25, 2006.

    Teaching Experience
    * October 2006 to Present.
    Instructor for The Freelance Writing Business (1711), University of Toronto SCS.

    * February 2006 to Present.
    Instructor for Freelancing the Feature (1722), University of Toronto SCS.

    * September 2007 to December 2007.
    Senior T.A. for Dr. Stuart J. Murray, Ryerson University (ACS 205: Writing as a Cultural Act).

    * September 2005 to December 2005.
    T.A. for Dr. Kate Eichhorn, Ryerson University (ACS 205: Writing as a Cultural Act).

    * January 2005 to April 2005.
    T.A. for Dr. Jennifer Brayton, Ryerson University (SOC 202: Popular Culture).

    Professional Development
    * Arts Certificate in the TA Development Program at Ryerson, awarded Winter 2008.

    Guest Lectures
    * "The Cost and Effort of (Anti-) Social Networks." The Networked Imagination (HUMA 1650). York University. November 13, 2007.

    * "Toiling For MySpace." The Networked Imagination (HUMA 1650). York University. November 7, 2006.

    Grants, Fellowships and Awards
    * First prize in Ryerson's 2006 SSH Graduate Student Research Article Competition for "Crime Doesn't Pay, But Vice Just Might."

    * Ryerson Graduate Award 2004-2005.

    * Bell Globemedia Scholarship 2005-2006.

    Service
    * Member of the Ryerson University graduate admissions committee for prospective Communication and Culture MA candidates. (January 2006 to May 2006.)

    Journalism Relevant to Academic Praxis
    * "Road-testing the $100 laptop's 'appropriate technology.'" Toronto Star, January 20, 2008. Article about the One Laptop Per Child project and its relation to appropriate technology.

    * "Longing for Nightlife's Feigned Danger." Toronto Star, January 13, 2008. Article exploring the constructed nature of urban nightlife, focusing on the work of professor David Grazian and his new book On The Make: The Hustle of Urban Nightlife

    * "Giving the Mainstream 'Moments of Littleness.'" Toronto Star, August 5, 2007. Article about "Clip/Stamp/Fold 2: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X - 197X," an exhibition at Montreal's Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA).

    * "The Tyranny of Residual Media." Toronto Star, July 8, 2007. Article about the debut of the iPhone and the psychological and environmental aspects of obsolescence, with reference to the recent anthology Residual Media, edited by Charles R. Acland.

    * "You Are Looking at an Open Book." Toronto Star, June 10, 2007. Article about DocuBurst, a piece of information visualization software created by University of Toronto student Christopher Collins.

    * "The Official Typeface of the 20th Century." Toronto Star, April 15, 2007. Article about the significance of Helvetica, on the eve of its 50th birthday.

    * "The Death of the Double Entendre." Toronto Star, July 16, 2006. Feature-length article that considers cultural competencies in the context of the eroticized advertising campaigns of American Apparel.

    * "All the News That's Fit to Blog." Globe and Mail, July 31, 2004. Feature-length article about selected bloggers receiving press accreditation for the Republican and Democratic National conventions.

    Cultural Studies Index

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