On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I'm a Dog

“On the Internet, Everybody Thinks I’m a Dog” represents Marilee Lindemann’s coming out as a blogger in her professional life. Although Roxie’s World is a blog written by an academic, it is not an “academic blog” in the usual sense. It is a creative experiment in punditry, topical humor, and cultural commentary offered in the voice of a 13-year-old wire-haired fox terrier—Roxie—who has a leaky heart and a laptop. Roxie’s major preoccupations are politics, pop culture, and basketball. Her stance is that of a dogged progressive fascinated by the queer doings of Homo sapiens. Though Roxie is a purebred, Lindemann’s lecture is a mongrel mixture of critical reflection on her own practices as a blogger and analysis of what blogging can teach us about reading, writing, and social networking in the twenty-first century. Situated at the intersection of canine cultural studies, queer/feminist studies, and an emerging discourse of blog studies, the presentation takes up issues of persona, parody, and irony in connection with a post-9/11 politics of dissent; of building and tracking real and imagined audiences in the blogosphere; of the complex role played by words, images, and sound in the grammar and in the world-making aspirations of blogs; and of satirical self-publication as a healthy response to the conditions of academic work under late capitalism.