about a girl
The short version: I’m Carly Kocurek. I make arguments about the significance of pop culture and scandalize college kids for a pseudoliving in Austin, TX. I’ve been a missionary, a toystore clerk, a dating blogger and unemployed. They’ll never make a saint of me.
The long version: The blog you’re reading is the work of me, Carly Kocurek. I’m a graduate student and freelance writer living in Austin, TX, a city I’ve called home since 2004. Currently, I’m at work on a Ph.D. in American Studies, having completed my M.A. in American Studies in Spring 2006. Over the course of my career (if you could call it such), I’ve held a number of jobs of varying quality and varying relevance to my actual interests and aspirations. Both my academic work and my writing tend to focus on pop culture issues. At present, I’m most invested in exploring gender, media distribution/circulation, and irony. I’ve presented papers on topics including the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, the AV Geeks Archive, Aleksey Vayner’s “Impossible is Nothing,” and the Nerve Blog-A-Log. Outside the academy, I tend to focus more on popular music and film, particularly the sorts of things that develop cult followings. I aspire to one day produce something worthy of having a cult following. Places I’ve written for include Nerve, Austinist, Rare Austin, and Common Sense Media.
If that’s not enough for you, get in touch via e-mail at carly at sparklebliss dot com.