The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 7 Volume Set

General Editor's Acknowledgments

A project like this is not the result of any individual's effort. It is the collective output of a team of people working together in different capacities to conclude an idea, something that originally seemed like a distant fantasy and is now a real, material set of volumes, with dozens of authors of original work apiece and with the editorial thrust of a major publishing house. Yet if there has to be a tale of origin, then this encyclopedia began over a decade ago, when I met Jayne Fargnoli at a lunch in Timpone's, a little “Northern Italian” restaurant in Urbana, Illinois. At that point she convinced me to edit A Companion to Media Studies, which eventually came out in 2003. I thank all involved with that edited collection – authors, research assistants, host institutions during my first sabbatical, and my home departments – because it was, and remains, a widely used source of reference, teaching, and research. Just a couple of months ago I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow scholar in Bogota, Colombia, who brought that volume along, for me to autograph and for him to share with me how useful it continues to be in his teaching and research.

I begin with that volume and with Jayne because, as a result of the success of that volume – if success can be measured by the number of copies that are sold and by the number of colleagues who have told me they use the book – we began to talk about expanding it into a larger project. Jayne floated the idea ...