An "I told you so" two years in the making...
Sigh.
So, this is good news. Great news, in fact. Still, I sort of loathe to admit it, because I promised myself I'd never be one of those people...
Changed might be too strong a word, "diversified" might be more appropriate.
This has been rumbling around for months but I finally put together a proper proposal and presented it to my chair this past Monday, and it was met with great enthusiasm, so it's full steam ahead. The shift was inspired by a number of factors:
- My participation in/eager consumption of the fan and gender debates on Henry Jenkin's blog last summer/fall and the friendships and conversations that emerged out of that event
-Writing my chapter on BSG's new media marketing/fan content model for "Cylons in America" and the conversations with fellow aca-fans that followed.
- The release of Benjamin Nugent's "American Nerd: The Story of My People," a text as flawed as it is thought-provoking
- My experience at Terminus. It was everything I love about the Narrate events, a space for academics and fans to converge, and I had a ton of incredible conversations/debates on my panels and casually in the halls. That said, I had a very long conversation with Skyler about the state of Harry Potter and academia, and my growing concerns that I was a little late to the party, that stuck with me.
- Bottom line, I need to finish this thing. I need to think about how each chapter could be translated into job talks. I need to work on something that I'm engaged with *right now,* not what I was engaged with 2 years ago.
At any rate, many of the critical questions I planned to grapple with remain the same: there's still an emphasis on authorship/textual authority, and the commercialization of fan practices as they evolve from old to new media models of production and distribution (a la wizard rock) has become more central. Likewise, I'm placing more emphasis on the appropriation of forms of fan labor for marketing purposes, and interrogating fan labor and how it's valued. Essentially, bringing back the old "professionalism" debate and reconsidering the cultural stakes and how labor and professional ambitions are gendered.
The real shift is that I'm no longer dealing exclusively with Harry Potter. Don't get me wrong, there will be a lot of content transferred over from the old project- wizard rock, Gay Dumbledore, RDR books trial, etc. Part of this shift is practical (it allows me to incorporate my work on BSG, creates more diversity for the job market, etc.), part of it was inspired by new interests (comic books, comic-con as a transmedia space, the mainstreaming of fan culture and the supposed "popularity" of nerds and nerdy properties, etc.).
Essentially, the popular press has been making a show about the rise of the fan (or, I'd argue, the rise of the fanboy, both in terms of fanboy creators along the lines of RDM and the fanboy consumers that are routinely credited with the financial dominance of comic book/superhero films), and framing nerds as the new power demographic. The new project will both trace the lineage from the analog pathologized fan to the digital empowered fan, and engage with how fans are reacting to this cultural embrace in sometimes contrary ways. 80s films all tell us that nerds want to be popular, but I wonder if that's really true. You need only talk to some of the veteran fans at comic-con or see how insular and
In short, this is less about how producers are coping with and catering to fans (a la Jenkins' "Convergence Culture"), but more about how fans/nerds (and I'm fully aware that it's problematic to collapse those two words) are reacting to their moment in the sun...and who's capitalizing on, who's excluded from, etc. this moment.
So, yeah, tres exciting. right now I'm looking at:
- A chapter on Wizard Rock and the chain store Hot Topic (branding fandom, wearing fandom, mainstreaming fandom, gender and fans "going pro" etc.)
- A chapter on authorship and textual authority (shows that provide a great deal of ancillary new media content or transmedia content...webisodes, podcast commentaries, blogs, comics, etc.) and the gendering of that authorship (e.g. the fanboy creative collective: RDM, JJ, Time Kring, etc.). Questioning authorial intent and the author (I'm thinking of the press response to JKR's "right" to out Dumbledore and the fan reaction to Meyer's "Breaking Dawn")
- A chapter on Comic-con, comics, comic book films (details still to be fleshed out)
So, there ya have it. Gestating for some time, currently being fleshed out. I'm actually quite excited!
So, this is good news. Great news, in fact. Still, I sort of loathe to admit it, because I promised myself I'd never be one of those people...
Changed might be too strong a word, "diversified" might be more appropriate.
This has been rumbling around for months but I finally put together a proper proposal and presented it to my chair this past Monday, and it was met with great enthusiasm, so it's full steam ahead. The shift was inspired by a number of factors:
- My participation in/eager consumption of the fan and gender debates on Henry Jenkin's blog last summer/fall and the friendships and conversations that emerged out of that event
-Writing my chapter on BSG's new media marketing/fan content model for "Cylons in America" and the conversations with fellow aca-fans that followed.
- The release of Benjamin Nugent's "American Nerd: The Story of My People," a text as flawed as it is thought-provoking
- My experience at Terminus. It was everything I love about the Narrate events, a space for academics and fans to converge, and I had a ton of incredible conversations/debates on my panels and casually in the halls. That said, I had a very long conversation with Skyler about the state of Harry Potter and academia, and my growing concerns that I was a little late to the party, that stuck with me.
- Bottom line, I need to finish this thing. I need to think about how each chapter could be translated into job talks. I need to work on something that I'm engaged with *right now,* not what I was engaged with 2 years ago.
At any rate, many of the critical questions I planned to grapple with remain the same: there's still an emphasis on authorship/textual authority, and the commercialization of fan practices as they evolve from old to new media models of production and distribution (a la wizard rock) has become more central. Likewise, I'm placing more emphasis on the appropriation of forms of fan labor for marketing purposes, and interrogating fan labor and how it's valued. Essentially, bringing back the old "professionalism" debate and reconsidering the cultural stakes and how labor and professional ambitions are gendered.
The real shift is that I'm no longer dealing exclusively with Harry Potter. Don't get me wrong, there will be a lot of content transferred over from the old project- wizard rock, Gay Dumbledore, RDR books trial, etc. Part of this shift is practical (it allows me to incorporate my work on BSG, creates more diversity for the job market, etc.), part of it was inspired by new interests (comic books, comic-con as a transmedia space, the mainstreaming of fan culture and the supposed "popularity" of nerds and nerdy properties, etc.).
Essentially, the popular press has been making a show about the rise of the fan (or, I'd argue, the rise of the fanboy, both in terms of fanboy creators along the lines of RDM and the fanboy consumers that are routinely credited with the financial dominance of comic book/superhero films), and framing nerds as the new power demographic. The new project will both trace the lineage from the analog pathologized fan to the digital empowered fan, and engage with how fans are reacting to this cultural embrace in sometimes contrary ways. 80s films all tell us that nerds want to be popular, but I wonder if that's really true. You need only talk to some of the veteran fans at comic-con or see how insular and
In short, this is less about how producers are coping with and catering to fans (a la Jenkins' "Convergence Culture"), but more about how fans/nerds (and I'm fully aware that it's problematic to collapse those two words) are reacting to their moment in the sun...and who's capitalizing on, who's excluded from, etc. this moment.
So, yeah, tres exciting. right now I'm looking at:
- A chapter on Wizard Rock and the chain store Hot Topic (branding fandom, wearing fandom, mainstreaming fandom, gender and fans "going pro" etc.)
- A chapter on authorship and textual authority (shows that provide a great deal of ancillary new media content or transmedia content...webisodes, podcast commentaries, blogs, comics, etc.) and the gendering of that authorship (e.g. the fanboy creative collective: RDM, JJ, Time Kring, etc.). Questioning authorial intent and the author (I'm thinking of the press response to JKR's "right" to out Dumbledore and the fan reaction to Meyer's "Breaking Dawn")
- A chapter on Comic-con, comics, comic book films (details still to be fleshed out)
So, there ya have it. Gestating for some time, currently being fleshed out. I'm actually quite excited!