Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to my husband, Andrew Lange, and to my children, Catherine and Alexander, for their steadfast support of my projects. I also wish to thank my parents, Jay and Lilia Gonzalez, as well as my sister, Leah Jarlsberg, and my brother, Michael Gonzalez, for their lifelong encouragement. Special thanks also to Chris Jarlsberg for his support. Thanks to the Lange clan, especially Janet and Jay Lange, as well as Colin Lange, Tessa Tinney, and Jonathan Lange.
I wish to extend thanks to Virginia Kuhn, Holly Willis, Gabriel Peters-Lazaro, and all the staff of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California (USC), for their encouragement. I am grateful also to USC’s Department of Anthropology. I would like to acknowledge the encouragement I received from Nancy Lutkehaus and Jenny Cool. Special thanks also to Lanita Jacobs for her friendship and support.
I am grateful to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for its support of my research on YouTube. For their intellectual inspiration and leadership, I wish to thank Mimi Ito and the late Peter Lyman. Thanks also to Wesley Shrum, Executive Director of Ethnografilm 2014. For encouraging my filmmaking endeavors, I would like to thank Heather Horst. Special thanks to Bonnie Nardi for her generous mentorship.
I am grateful to my colleagues at California College of the Arts (CCA) for their support of my work. I would like to thank Stephen Beal, Tammy Rae Carland, Tina Takemoto, Emily McVarish, Tirza Latimer, Juvenal Acosta, Kim Anno, J Carter, Mitchell Schwarzer, Jackie Francis, Max Leung, Rebekah Edwards, Stuart Kendall, Ignacio Valero, Barry Katz, Jeanette Roan, Beth Mangini, and Brook Hinton. Special thanks also to Teri Dowling and Bobby White. At the Columbus College of Art & Design, I’d like to extend my thanks to Melanie Corn for her support. At the San Francisco Art Institute, I would like to acknowledge the support of Rachel Schreiber.
From fields ranging from media studies to filmmaking to video blogging, I would like to thank Henry Jenkins, Michael Wesch, Howard Rheingold, Mindy Faber, Jean Burgess, Joshua Green, Ryanne Hodson, Jay Dedman, Micki Krimmel, Michael Verdi, Steve Woolf, Zadi Diaz, Markus Sandy, Alicia Shay, Mike Ambs, Roxanne Darling, Lan Bui, Vu Bui, Jen Proctor, Rick Rey, Eric Rey, Kent Nichols, and Jonathan McIntosh.
I wish to thank all the people of YouTube who participated in my ethnographic research project and who contributed videos that provided insight on sharing the self through media. I would like to express my special thanks to OhCurt for making me feel welcome to YouTube and encouraging me to keep the camera rolling. Special thanks also to robtran, whose commentary about community and its limits provided crucial insight about our increasingly posthuman condition. Thanks to Joe “Mystery Guitar Man” Penna for his kind support of the project. I would also like to acknowledge the support and enthusiasm of thetalesend and ZenArcher, bright spirits who truly made a difference to the YouTube community and whose presence is greatly missed.
At the University of Michigan, I would like to thank Conrad Kottak, Bruce Mannheim, and Ruth Behar for their intellectual inspiration and generous support. I am also extremely grateful for interactions I have had over the years with Jan English-Lueck and Chuck Darrah at San José State University.
I am also grateful to Julie LaFramboise and our mutual friend for providing emotional support and friendship while juggling research and motherhood. I cherish our friendship deeply!
As a long-term San Francisco Bay Area resident, I wish to thank the friends who made Los Angeles seem like a magical place while I lived and worked there. I would like to thank Ann-Marie and Keith Fine, Jenny and David Madariaga, and Rose and Behram Parekh.
For attending my preview screening at CCA and encouraging my filmmaking, I would like to thank Sally Rayn, Brian Cheu, Padric McCaig, Eric Share, and the intrepid attendees from Platypus: the CASTAC Blog, notably Jordan Kraemer and Michael Scroggins. CASTAC stands for the Committee for the Anthropology of Science and Technology, a division of the American Anthropological Association.
Special thanks also to Gwen Dewar and Adrienne Young for sharing many anthropological insights. For their contribution to the field of media studies and their kind support, I wish to thank Annette Markham and Theresa Senft.
I also wish to acknowledge the ongoing support of my friends Chris and Jan Cooke, Kevin Carter and Che Johnson, and Matthew Carhart and Matthew DeCoster.
Thanks to all the members of the Bay Area Anthropology and Philosophy Group and the Dumbarton Circle, especially Melissa Cefkin, Mazyar Lotfalian, and Shreeharsh Kelkar, for helping participants to deepen our knowledge about the philosophical roots of anthropology.
I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Thanks also to the entire team at the University Press of Colorado for their care and attention to my book. Finally, I wish to thank my editor, Charlotte Steinhardt. I am grateful for her guidance in helping to bring this book into its final form.