(Long reply ahead) Thanks for friending! As you can see, I only just started out researching fan culture, so best take whatever I say with a grain of salt for the moment ;) Your LJ is fascinating, I see hours of interesting reading ahead.
I'll definitely keeping your comments on Hills in mind while I read the rest of his work, thank you. Delving into a new research subject always feels a bit like reinventing the wheel -you spend ages reading all the 'basic' texts, and then it turns out that everyone and their mother has already found twenty valid reasons why those text don't make sense, and you have to read them all over again to get rid of your misconceptions.
After following the fans<->academics discussion for a few more days, I feel tempted to just dive straight into data gathering and rely on common sense to interpret those data reasonably correctly, instead of first wondering exactly how to study fans and their work. That could probably be debated into eternity, and I might never get any actual work done. I've been reading up on data-driven research in physics. After this aca-fan discussion, it's starting to sound pretty reasonable to start by gathering a mound of data, analyze it, and then drag in the theory instead of starting with theory.
May I ask if you perhaps have any recommended reading about masculine/feminine academic culture? I remember reading about this distinction multiple times on Henry Jenkins' blog. It may be due to my non-existent attention span, but the point in those blog posts always got lost in the verbosity. I'd like to learn more about this.
We may be on the same track as to that sense of what it means to be a 'fan' and the importance of engagement in fandom. Warnings about getting overly involved in the little world of your research subject always sound odd to me -as if an intelligent and discerning person will suddenly turn into some sort of partisan zealot the minute you take away the glass between researcher and subject. I dropped out of active fandom after my first years of university and sort of tumbled back in last year after I started reading HP fics. Reams of HP fics. Still, just lurking around made me feel as if I wasn't 'fannish' enough anymore to be able to do a well-founded analysis of work produced by fans, so I recently hauled myself over to LJ and IJ and am trying to do some writing and drawing again. Actually getting involved might keep me from spouting bullshit about fandom much more effectively than reading ten books on the subject.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2008-11-01 07:43 pm (UTC)I'll definitely keeping your comments on Hills in mind while I read the rest of his work, thank you. Delving into a new research subject always feels a bit like reinventing the wheel -you spend ages reading all the 'basic' texts, and then it turns out that everyone and their mother has already found twenty valid reasons why those text don't make sense, and you have to read them all over again to get rid of your misconceptions.
After following the fans<->academics discussion for a few more days, I feel tempted to just dive straight into data gathering and rely on common sense to interpret those data reasonably correctly, instead of first wondering exactly how to study fans and their work. That could probably be debated into eternity, and I might never get any actual work done. I've been reading up on data-driven research in physics. After this aca-fan discussion, it's starting to sound pretty reasonable to start by gathering a mound of data, analyze it, and then drag in the theory instead of starting with theory.
May I ask if you perhaps have any recommended reading about masculine/feminine academic culture? I remember reading about this distinction multiple times on Henry Jenkins' blog. It may be due to my non-existent attention span, but the point in those blog posts always got lost in the verbosity. I'd like to learn more about this.
We may be on the same track as to that sense of what it means to be a 'fan' and the importance of engagement in fandom. Warnings about getting overly involved in the little world of your research subject always sound odd to me -as if an intelligent and discerning person will suddenly turn into some sort of partisan zealot the minute you take away the glass between researcher and subject. I dropped out of active fandom after my first years of university and sort of tumbled back in last year after I started reading HP fics. Reams of HP fics. Still, just lurking around made me feel as if I wasn't 'fannish' enough anymore to be able to do a well-founded analysis of work produced by fans, so I recently hauled myself over to LJ and IJ and am trying to do some writing and drawing again. Actually getting involved might keep me from spouting bullshit about fandom much more effectively than reading ten books on the subject.