Fandom

Last week, I traveled to Bochum, an industrial city in northwest Germany, to serve as a keynote speaker at the conference (Dis)Orientations: (dis)orienting media & narrative mazes. I enjoyed my time in Bochum and at the conference, connecting with some interesting European media scholars and exploring another German city and university.... read more »

I’d like to interrupt this unplanned blog hiatus – yes, it’s been one of those semesters – to give thanks for this year’s best new show: Terriers. I’d been planning on posting a blog about Terriers after a few episodes, but I’m glad I got too busy to write it, as the show has transformed into something much more engaging and powerful since then. What started out as a shaggy good time has emerged into taught double character study packing a surprise emotional wallop.... read more »

One of my writing projects this summer was to write a book chapter for a forthcoming anthology called Routledge Handbook of Participatory Cultures, edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Henderson (forthcoming in 2011 from Routledge, of course). The handbook is designed to offer accessible introductions to a wide array of facets of participatory culture, suitable for teaching or non-specialist readership, with an impressive line-up of authors.... read more »

As a scholar and fan of contemporary narratively complex television serials, one of my blindspots has been Mad Men, a show about which I’ve mentioned on this blog has little appeal to me. Thus it was a bit surprising months ago when I was invited to contribute to a forthcoming book of collected essays on the show – the editors knew that I didn’t like the show, and wanted me to write about why. I accepted the invitation as a kind of challenge, and the results are posted below.... read more »

As I can’t seem to think about anything else, and it’s a fine distraction from grading, I’ve been engaging in a lot of conversation about Lost this week across a range of media. On Twitter this afternoon, my friend Derek Kompare commented in a discussion that no matter what the finale offers, a good portion of fans will be irate that it didn’t match up to their expectations for the faith they put into the show – and then he compared the reaction to John Locke at the end of season 2, raging against the button.... read more »

Just a quick pointer to my newest publication: in the new issue of Transformative Works and Cultures, I’ve published “Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.”Here’s the abstract:... read more »