Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Comments

Comment on "Communal Growing Pains: Fandom and the Evolution of Street Fighter"

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:09:08 -0500

Thanks for the very great representation. I like Street Fighter and it already played in my youth.

- nisel

Comment on "Leaving on a Jet Plane..."

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:27:40 -0500

see you here in LA!!!

Mike
www.asthedustsettles.com

- mikehedge.wordpress.com

Comment on "Leaving on a Jet Plane..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:14:50 -0500

Enjoy living downtown! Kudos for choosing the more "interesting" way to experience Los Angeles. I live in a loft in the historic core, and I love the newly opened selection of restaurants, cafes, and businesses in the area. Los Angeles is a city that invites exploration.

- Jennifer Noble

Comment on "Leaving on a Jet Plane..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:40:21 -0500

Prof Jenkins - I love your writing and would really love to meet you once you are settled out in Los Angeles, if you have any free time!

- msmichellelewis.wordpress.com

Comment on "Leaving on a Jet Plane..."

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:16:22 -0500

I'm sorry we never got a chance to get together before your move. I'm glad for the Internet, though, as I'll be able to keep reading your posts right here...

- Michael A. Burstein

Comment on "Calling Young Gamers. Share your AHa! Moment!"

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:36:29 -0500

This is incredible and timely. I have been trying to connect these dots for years from the field. http://www.footgaming.com/Exerlearning and http://digiforceg.blogspot.com

I will share this post with my DigiForce G readers

- Exerlearning

Comment on "Bouncing Off the Walls: Playing with Teen Identity"

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:12:56 -0500

Thanks to everyone for the comments. I just want to make one addendum. While I poke fun at some of parents' foibles in this piece, I have to also say how grateful I am that they gave me room (no pun intended) to explore who I was or wanted to be as a teen. My parents and I get along wonderfully, now that I am no longer an angsty teen. I hope that parents who read this post will recognize the benefits of letting their kids play with their identity offline, as well as online, like my own parents did. Thanks Mom and Dad!

- Hillary Kolos

Comment on "Communal Growing Pains: Fandom and the Evolution of Street Fighter"

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:34:12 -0500

Of course I forgot to mention a few games:

Hyper Street Fighter II
Hyper Street Fighter Alpha
Capcom Fighting Evolution
Tatsunoko vs Capcom (currently only available in Japan; US release scheduled for December 2009).

- Jason Begy

Comment on "Boy and Girl Wonders: An Interview with Mary Borsellino (Part One)"

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:30:28 -0500

Robin has also long represented the editorial view of the readers' ideal self - from Dick Grayson's cheerful innocence to Jason Todd's street badassery to Tim Drake's fanboy geekery to Stephanie Brown's worldly insouciance to Damian's helicopter-parented sense of entitlement.

One might read from editorial's treatment of the Robins their attitudes towards "kids these days" - which would make it unsurprising that the independent-minded Steph was treated so shabbily and replaced by Damian, who hero-worships his daddy.

- kaseido

Comment on "Boy and Girl Wonders: An Interview with Mary Borsellino (Part One)"

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:33:45 -0500

Thanks for the fresh perspective on the Dark Knight’s equally complex Robin character. As a kid I enjoyed following the exploits of the Batman and Robin. Then as a young man I enjoyed the dualistic ontology found so frequently in the series I came to see these qualities in all things related to my interaction with the world. Much like Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick, the story line, symbolism, and multilayered subplots are a reflection of the times in which we live, who we are as individuals and the culture that rewards and punishes us all at the same time. I often tell my kids, “If you want to understand the universe, study Mathematics… but if you want to understand yourself, read the Classics!” It is truly a classic story of (arguably) the greatest superhero and partner created by DC Comics, but that’s a debate for another time. :)

Loved the article.
Sean

- seanmendoza

Comment on "The Radical Idea that Children are People"

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:43:06 -0500

Outstanding post as always Henry.

If they are not people yet they are definitely the people of the future.
Alan.
internet business

- buckyuk

Comment on "The Radical Idea that Children are People"

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:16:43 -0500

As someone who spent many of her formative years on the very site that you cofounded, I wholeheartedly agree that fan culture influenced my education as a writer and critic in a way that high school and middle school did not. The very development of the various beta communities and informative/instructional style guides and threads that were circulated in HP fandom (from Britpicking to historical representations of witchcraft) provided an in depth component often lacking in the educational system. I don't think this is possible in fandoms that aren't intergenerational, as most YA is not.

I find it amazing what you've done with your fandom background.

- Spastic Machinery

Comment on "The Radical Idea that Children are People"

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:31:26 -0500

1) Thank you to people who have said lovely things - it's made my day!

2) "On the internet, nobody knows your a dog" ought to be "you're a dog." (And after I was bragging about Strunk and White, too!)

- Flourish Klink

Comment on "Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies"

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:48:12 -0500

Your thoughtful comments on multiculturalism resonate with my own experiences with live Bollywood dance as a marker of multicultural identity in the United States. As a dance form defined largely through on-going processes of appropriation, in film and performance, a heated debate surrounds questions of what can be appropriated as Bollywood dance in the United States and, just as importantly, who gets to act as the appropriator. For example, Bollywood dances, once maligned for their pastiche, now stand in as symbols of multicultural diversity for many young second generation Indians, who even sometime become protective of Bollywood dance as their cultural heritage. I echo your observations and agree that we really need to pay closer attention to the ways in which multicultural politics and incentives play out in such performances of mediated public culture.

- Bollynatyam

Comment on "The Radical Idea that Children are People"

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:58:49 -0500

This piece is brilliant. Having worked for four years in the Netherlands on media education in a non-profit, I have been striving to find ways to twist the discussion towards what young people learn while embarking on these experiments. Lately we have been trying to develop our video competition StrangerFestival towards peer education so that young people start their journeys as video makers could learn from the ones of their age who already master it. Some of this was covered also in the Demos publication we supported called Video Republic http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/videorepublic

This for me is the core:
"That role wasn't one that was tied to my "kid" status. Anyone could be a fan author, anyone could be a fan editor, and if I could do those things as well as anyone, I could earn the right to be just as important and respected as an adult." I mean that media production teaches you skills that are essential in life as a whole and develops your self confidence and self esteem.

- tommi laitio

Comment on "The Radical Idea that Children are People"

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:19:19 -0500

Hi Flourish,
Great informal learning reference when you said: "...what I learned in their classes is fuzzy and dim. Yet I can remember the experience of getting feedback on my fanfiction as if it were yesterday." You profess the act of trying on identities and obviously have reaped the benefits.

- smithtk

Comment on "Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies"

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:27:01 -0500

Thanks for your eloquent and enlightening response that cleared up many of my concerns and indicated that you had already raised some of the same objections in your extensive development process. K-12 outreach is hard, and I'd rather see people do a lot of it well than a little of it perfectly.

Nonetheless, as the surrounding discussion indicates, I think these remain difficult questions. I think digital educators are all still grappling with how to talk about moral values in conjunction with practices of appropriation involving computational media. In many ways, what have been more high profile concerns about piracy seem relatively trivial by comparison.

I still also have trouble with how the nerdcore paradigm might play out in urban classrooms. Yes, as I point out in my post, nerdcore artists often make fun of inappropriate forms of appropriation themselves, but this critical self-consciousness seems to be a function of class, race, and gender privilege rather than a subversion of it, and the humor about "white kids" they put forward comes in a safe, recognized YouTube genre, comparable to the "White Chicks & Gang Signs" video.

There might also have been some understandable misreading of my post without its full context, as is often the case of exchanges in the blogosphere. I'm not sure it's fair to associate me with a naive and essentialist argument against "dead white males" in the curriculum, given my day job as the Writing Director of the Humanties Core Course at U.C. Irvine, a program known for its emphasis on founding texts and literary traditions.

It seems clear, however, that this is a debate between friends not cultural warriors. As a Southern Californian, I'm looking forward to your move to LA, and I hope that local teachers and kids will be the beneficiaries of your continuing outreach efforts.

- http://openid.aol.com/lizlosh@gmail.com

Comment on "Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies"

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:40:19 -0500

Henry,
I deeply appreciate your response to my response to Liz's response to how we presented the strategy guide at NML's spring conference.

While I largely agree with the sentiments above, I believe there remain some concerns with respect to how the media literacies movement approaches multiculturalism. In true blogger's form, I posted a response to your post, including my concerns in this respect, on my blog at http://tinyurl.com/mcjtxa. I'd love for you to check it out!

- Jenna McWilliams

Comment on "Multiculturalism, Appropriation, and the New Media Literacies"

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:05:34 -0500

I'm far from an expert on multi-culturalism, but I believe that you really capture here how it needs to be seriously rethought in terms of today's inherently multi-cultural world. I find the way you describe race as being enacted to accomplish things in the world as compelling, and rethinking it through this lens as useful.

Throughout all of my work with multiculturalism in things like Grand Theft Auto or the Civ series, I'm find the most important thing is to really listen to the voices of the youth generation (as you do in your video). The cultural categories and constructs are really different than they were 20 years ago, and we can't go in with the old a priori assumptions. This seems to me to be a model example of how to enlist people in taking them on and challenging them.

I think the question underneath is one of "what gets taught" which you address. One thing that also could be argued in favor of Moby Dick is the cultural capital one games through being fluent in the cultural representations of the dominant culture. That's always been my problem with say, replacing Moby Dick with Dr. Dre (whom I love). There is a language and code of power, and at the current time, Dre isn't really in that canon.

- ksquire

Comment on "My Secret Life as a Klingon (Part Two)"

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:16:25 -0500

That is so awesome-I hope to see it on the DVD too!

However, my inner Trekkie (I always hated 'Trekker,' it sounds like you're walking across the tundra) is duty-bound to remind you that Orion girls are GREEN! ; b

- bjork/starbuck slash fic