As I read Francesca Petronio’s thesis Raised on TV: A Queer Teen’s Guide to Syndicated Sexualities in light of the readings for this week and the interplay between form and content, I found myself wishing it played a little more with format. The introduction describes it as “a play on the by-now retrograde concept of a TV Guide”, but other than a more conversational tone (“these kids just love to clap,” she remarks in a discussion of a satirically queer-positive community in Faking It) it hews pretty close to a traditional academic thesis. The introduction is followed by chapters on the three television shows she’s chosen as her focus, interspersed with captioned screencaps. There’s a title page, an acknowledgments section, etc., exactly as you would expect from any other graduate thesis.

I can’t help but wonder what the thesis might be able to say through juxtaposition and visuals were it to mimic a TV Guide in other ways. Petronio uses a three-pronged Media Content Analysis approach that she attributes to Caitlin Campisini, examining her subjects in regard to the political economy of the networks creating them, the content of the shows themselves, and the reaction of news media and online fandom. But she works through those linearly, and all in the same manner: summarizing, with citations, then analyzing. What might it look like to place news headlines or (screencapped or otherwise captured) twitter threads about queer content in these shows across from the summaries of the event, mimicking advertisements in a retro TV guide? What would it do to Petronio’s analysis if it were read in the linear-yet-simultaneous way that Nick Sousanis highlights in his talk on dissertations and academic work in comics form? How would that change the decisions she made about what to place with what on which page or two-page spread?

Or, to break out of the TV Guide conceit, what would the same dissertation look like in video form? The screencaps in Petronio’s thesis are attempting to show understated or subtextual chemistry, a kind of casual queerness outside of specific or “known” indicators. But the very stillness of her images is pinning that down to a specific moment, ready to be made into a new, knowable sign. Presenting the same work in video format could preserve the original fluidity of motion, emotion, and interaction, and through it, the fluidity of identity that Petronio is examining and advocating for.