I have selected the essays in this special issue for the quality of their scholarship and the breadth of their explorations of the video essay form: poetic lectures and documentations of live performance work, whimsical experiments and meditations on the end of the world, explorations of identity and irreverent remixes. What unites these works is less a single theme or method than a commitment to create work that could not be presented in any other form. These are not merely lectures with visual aids or sexy re-packaging of knowledge produced elsewhere. They may be adapted works, but they are not derivative. Some are marked by the undeniable tour de-force of their author’s creative energy, though none are merely acts of entertainment. Some are produced by seasoned media artists, others by scholars taking their first plunge into the video editing domain. My guiding force in working with these innovative pieces was the conviction that a hierarchy of academic expression which privileges expository prose limits the forms in which knowledge is presented as well as the very kinds of knowledge that we see as worthy of our collective energy and attention. While not all of the pieces address happy themes—two are, indeed, explicitly about the end of the world—they are all created with an infectious joy in the act of making. This special issue seeks to inspire others to create their own works of alternative scholarship, in video form and otherwise, which create and highlight knowledge that eludes other forms of scholarly presentation. To paraphrase Michalik Gratch from her artist statement below, rather than merely try to make something of what these folks have made, I hope that you will make something from them. I anticipate that you will find some of the claims they make intriguing. More importantly, I hope that you find some of their creative tools useful in your own work.

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David P. Terry (Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Associate Professor of Performance Studies in the department of Communication Studies at Louisiana State University. His work has been published in Text and Performance Quarterly, Theatre Annual, Western Journal of Communication, Qualitative Inquiry, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, and Dissability Studies Quarterly, among other journals.