Short Report

[caitri]

Okay first off my talk went very well. The Fan Studies area is meeting in small rooms so the seventeen people made it a pretty full room. Plus everyone laughed at my jokes which is always a good sign in the morning. The conversation and discussion after was beyond great.

I stayed for the next panel. It was...less great: a pair of grad students who were noobs, one of whom was discussing slash and a) hadn't read any scholarship on it and who seemed to have b) not read any at all. The audience was smaller and mostly dudes, probably because panelists were also discussing comics and games. There was also one old school guy in the audience who wanted to discuss fanfic as plagiarism but he pretty quickly got shut up. Anyhow the whole thing really annoyed me and I've been trying to analyze why that is. I think a part of it is my usual frustration with people who are new to an area and haven't read as much as they need to have. I also think a not insignificant part is a frustration with dudez who want to walk into an area of literature primarily written by and for women, with mostly women scholars critiquing and discusding it, and they not only don't do their homework but treat it as something "new" when there's been bodies of work around for, oh, over twenty years now.

Grr.

Anyway, I'm taking a break for a bit and then I'm going to go get some coffee and jump back in the fray. More anon!

Comments

[tocourtdisaster.livejournal.com]

Yay for your talk going well! :D

Boo for people not doing their homework! :/

Here, have an icon that's completely unrelated to the topic at hand. ;)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Right back atcha, bb!

[morfin.livejournal.com]

Glad your's went well :) I second the annoyance of someone jumping on a bandwagon about something they haven't done their research on (and usually have a rather contemptuous opinion on it too). I once had someone who had just read ONE recent book on Tolkien's influences try to lecture me about it. Rather like going up to theology professor and trying to explain the Bible to him ;)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Wow, ONE book on Tolkien. *snort* That's just...yeah. I consider myself a Tolkien geek but I wouldn't try to lecture anyone unless I had a working knowledge of both Sindarin and Old Gothic!

[morfin.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's just the beginning. You need to be familiar with the philology of Quenya and the consonantal shifts (s to th) in Sindarin. Then Welsh and Finnish which provided some of the linguistic inspirations, and a smattering of Nevbosh for good measure. A knowledge of Old English for the Rohan language is kindergarten :) So break out your Snorri Sturluson and Kalevela and let the rings fall where they may ;)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Woo hoo!

BTW I just got out of the last panel of the day and one of my friend/colleagues presenting gave me a hattip as an example of LOTR fan/Rohirrim contingent. I was deeply amused, but anything academic at 10pm seems funny. :)

[joirerson.livejournal.com]

Excited that your talk went well! And ick on the other talk... I think it's always annoying when people who aren't in these tiny (or not so tiny) fandom subcultures swan in and pretend they know what they are talking about. /annoyance!

What other talks are going to be there? I am so fascinated by the prospect of an academic discussion of the fandom places I hang out in, it sounds very interesting! (The academia I come from- nursing- has some positives, such as disgusting stories and pictures of babies, but it seems very different.)

[caitri.livejournal.com]

Oh man, so there's like 5k people here, and there's talks on everything. I'm largely in the Fan Studies area with some excursions into SF/F and vampire areas. My fav talks have been on the use of time and place in Firefly, Buffy and comics, fandom wank and Supernatural....and yeah. Nerdvana. :)