Weird con happenings - (internalized) fanophobia
So last week I went to a big conference in my field. It was great! I met many people and heard many interesting talks and got by on 4 hours of sleep a night for four days straight! \o/ I was also busy following the hashtags from three other major conferences that were happening that weekend, which was fascinating in and of itself.
My presentation was about fandom and fan fiction in particular and how it is a great way to teach people classical rhetoric. My panel was wonderful. All of our papers were good and we had a good turnout given our presentation time. I was on a FANDOM PANEL which is just amazing, because we were ONE OF THREE and this is a very conservative conference, and they don't really hold with things like computers or fun times or...doing anything that isn't reading a paper that was clearly meant for reading rather than hearing.
Seriously, I was one of the very few presenters with slides, even. Slides! I was cutting-edge because I use power point!! But I digress.
Two things happened that made me think about my - and our - relationship with fandom.One was that I went to a panel on gaming. The panel was interesting because of its structure - the panelists shockingly did not read long boring papers written to be read, but personal narratives about how they became gamers, and how gaming has impacted not only their pedagogy but their life. For the kind of conference we were at, it was a groundbreaking panel structure. Second, though, they were introduced by their panel chair with their avatar names, and while they spoke there was an image of their avatar up on the screen.
It made me think about the contrast between gamer and fan identity, and how that plays out in larger world structures. There is, to be sure, the image of gamer as the unwashed unpleasant socially awkward penguin, but the rise of programmer culture has definitely gone a long way to mitigate it.
These gamers were out and proud at a major conference. And I was happy for them that they could claim that. But fans are definitely not there yet.
The other thing that happened was that I finally met a twitter friend in person. She was just as delightful and enthusiastic and wonderful as her tweets conveyed, and I was thrilled to meet her.
But while we were chatting, she said to me, "Oh, I love fandom!" and I got excited! But then she said, "But I could never talk about fandom in my work, because it would send the wrong message to the market." Like me, she is a young scholar, and the job market is something we think about a lot.
But instead of making any rebuttal, I just NODDED and let her continue talking about her own work. Nodded, even though she had just disparaged my scholarship, and reinforced the second-class status of fandom and all the tremendously important, political, and fun work fandom does. I nodded, because she was nice and friendly and I like her and we do similar work.
I didn't even think about it until later when I was in my room by myself. I'd just let it slip by because I am USED to fandom being treated like that. Which means I am used to being treated like that. It really shook me. I wonder, now, how often that has happened, on social and academic levels. I often talk laughingly about my own work, in part because it is often delightful and hilarious, but also because I know it makes people uncomfortable, and laughter - buying into and mitigating some of their discomfort - is often the easiest way to handle it.
I'm not entirely sure yet how this realization is going to impact my work or how I handle my role in the world, but I'd be really interested to hear what other people, and especially aca-fen, think about it. This entry was originally posted at http://concinnity.dreamwidth.org/51044.html. Comment wherever you like.
My presentation was about fandom and fan fiction in particular and how it is a great way to teach people classical rhetoric. My panel was wonderful. All of our papers were good and we had a good turnout given our presentation time. I was on a FANDOM PANEL which is just amazing, because we were ONE OF THREE and this is a very conservative conference, and they don't really hold with things like computers or fun times or...doing anything that isn't reading a paper that was clearly meant for reading rather than hearing.
Seriously, I was one of the very few presenters with slides, even. Slides! I was cutting-edge because I use power point!! But I digress.
Two things happened that made me think about my - and our - relationship with fandom.One was that I went to a panel on gaming. The panel was interesting because of its structure - the panelists shockingly did not read long boring papers written to be read, but personal narratives about how they became gamers, and how gaming has impacted not only their pedagogy but their life. For the kind of conference we were at, it was a groundbreaking panel structure. Second, though, they were introduced by their panel chair with their avatar names, and while they spoke there was an image of their avatar up on the screen.
It made me think about the contrast between gamer and fan identity, and how that plays out in larger world structures. There is, to be sure, the image of gamer as the unwashed unpleasant socially awkward penguin, but the rise of programmer culture has definitely gone a long way to mitigate it.
These gamers were out and proud at a major conference. And I was happy for them that they could claim that. But fans are definitely not there yet.
The other thing that happened was that I finally met a twitter friend in person. She was just as delightful and enthusiastic and wonderful as her tweets conveyed, and I was thrilled to meet her.
But while we were chatting, she said to me, "Oh, I love fandom!" and I got excited! But then she said, "But I could never talk about fandom in my work, because it would send the wrong message to the market." Like me, she is a young scholar, and the job market is something we think about a lot.
But instead of making any rebuttal, I just NODDED and let her continue talking about her own work. Nodded, even though she had just disparaged my scholarship, and reinforced the second-class status of fandom and all the tremendously important, political, and fun work fandom does. I nodded, because she was nice and friendly and I like her and we do similar work.
I didn't even think about it until later when I was in my room by myself. I'd just let it slip by because I am USED to fandom being treated like that. Which means I am used to being treated like that. It really shook me. I wonder, now, how often that has happened, on social and academic levels. I often talk laughingly about my own work, in part because it is often delightful and hilarious, but also because I know it makes people uncomfortable, and laughter - buying into and mitigating some of their discomfort - is often the easiest way to handle it.
I'm not entirely sure yet how this realization is going to impact my work or how I handle my role in the world, but I'd be really interested to hear what other people, and especially aca-fen, think about it. This entry was originally posted at http://concinnity.dreamwidth.org/51044.html. Comment wherever you like.