Introducing Herr Professor Doktor Stefan Greenfield-Casas

Well I did the thing–I’m now Stefan Greenfield-Casas, PhD.

It’s been a crazy last few months for me, in ways that I was not at all anticipating/planning. I very indirectly hinted at this at the end of my last post, but I ended up applying for exactly one (1) job this year, as my friend suggested I apply for it. I wasn’t planning on being on the job market this year (like… at all) since my dissertation wasn’t close to being done, but in looking at the position I decided I’d take a chance and apply. “It’ll be good practice,” he said to himself. Well. He received the job offer. To that end, I’m happy that I’ll be starting as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Richmond in the Fall. But that wasn’t technically guaranteed, as the job required a PhD in-hand… which meant I needed to finish my dissertation in a month.

At the time, I had two chapters in pretty good shape and one other one which I could start writing pretty much immediately. So I split the four weeks up before my diss was due to my committee as such: Week 1, write the chapter that I already could. Week 2, listen to/analyze as many pieces as I could for my corpus chapter. Week 3, write the chapter based on Week 2’s research. Week 4, write conclusion/intro, format, and check for consistency across the dissertation. Somehow I managed it, though I was working generally between 10-14 hours a day across those four weeks. Needless to say, I immediately crashed for a few days after I submitted the dissertation to my committee.

Screenshot courtesy of Ryan since my laptop didn't want to cooperate. Also, peep that Pokémon tie.

As you can imagine, I didn’t get to quite everything I wanted to with this timeframe. But I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I did get to. To be totally honest, I was dreading the dissertation defense (mostly that it was scheduled for 9AM my time), but in the end I thought all the questions my committee asked were fair and I was able to answer them running on just a few hours of sleep lol. Part of my worry was based on the interdisciplinary scope of my project, which borrowed from translation studies, semiotics, cog sci, media studies, Japanese studies, philosophy/critical theory, and cultural studies (and just a dash of art history). When you cover that much ground, it’s easy to (1) not always explain things as clearly as you intended and (2) miss some citations. I did my best given the time constraints, and there’s definitely more I’ll add in for the book project(s) that will come out of this. I’m also planning on publishing an addendum of sorts here on my site. This will be more personal in nature, explaining my personal motivations for how/why I framed some things the way I did (e.g., why did I start the dissertation with a discussion of Takashi Murakami?) as well as explaining how I ended up selecting my dissertation topic in the first place. So the addendum will be somewhere between an informal preface and a behind the scenes/making-of doc. I’ll update this post whenever I get to writing that.

Yeah, so that’s that! I’m very ready to move on in life, beyond the PhD. It’s been a challenging few years for a number of reasons (personally, institutionally, societally, globally, etc.) so I’ve been craving change and just… newness. To move on. Originally, I was planning an extended road trip this summer. I wanted to travel, to see friends and family, and just have some time to myself to be, to think, to do. Well. I’ll be taking a road trip with the move, but of a very different kind (and in an entirely different direction–I was originally planning on a West Coast road trip lol).

Anyways, now I’m trying to figure out the best option for my Twitter name. Some options include “SteFan with a PhD” (what it currently is), “Ste(PhD)an with an F,” “Dr. SteFan with an F (and also a PhD),” “Pokémon Professor SteFan,” and “SGC, PhD, VAP” (or “SxGC, PhD, VAP”). What’s your fav and/or any other suggestions?