e. Catalog descriptions of courses have to appear on syllabi, and professors are obligated to teach courses according to catalog descriptions.
Interesting! I don't think that was the case here, but I could be misremembering, or maybe the professor broke protocol. He DID leave immediately following that semester, so... that may tell you something.
My impression was that we were going to learn how to build blogs and use social media. We did some of that, but there was way more emphasis on the fannish aspect of things. In fact, we never really learned how to build blogs. We spent a few days on tumblr (which I thought would never gain any traction, lol) and blogger each. That was it.
think fan studies can be taught, and it would be a fascinating grad class. I think trying to teach fanfic itself, especially to undergrads is very fraught. Just on a practical level, fanfic works when people have familiarity with the source material.
That's a very good point. If they're not familiar, of course they'll be lost. To expand on that, passion might also help. For example, my conversations with casual Harry Potter fans are wildly different from my conversations with people who were really into the books. No one matters except the trio and Dumbledore. They barely remember the names and roles of other characters. Which isn't a bad thing, I'm the same way with, say, The Hunger Games. I liked the series. Then I moved on with my life.
There's Coppa's Fanfiction Reader, but most of the fanfic in there is about those big fandoms like X-Files and Star Trek, and IDK how well reading that kind of fanfic works when you haven't watched a whole bunch of it.
Yeah. We didn't read that book, but we read something similar and that was one of the problems.
Also, even for fellow fans, it's hard to discuss one fandom - especially the big ones. I wasn't into WRock, so that part of the Harry Potter fandom didn't resonate with me at all. Meanwhile, a lot of my friends who were in the fandom were into the kinky fanfic side of things. With all due respect to those who were, I was never into that either. So... you know.
I think the guy should've just stuck with the course description, with some conversation surrounding websites for specific books and TV shows.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2021-09-28 11:28 am (UTC)Interesting! I don't think that was the case here, but I could be misremembering, or maybe the professor broke protocol. He DID leave immediately following that semester, so... that may tell you something.
My impression was that we were going to learn how to build blogs and use social media. We did some of that, but there was way more emphasis on the fannish aspect of things. In fact, we never really learned how to build blogs. We spent a few days on tumblr (which I thought would never gain any traction, lol) and blogger each. That was it.
think fan studies can be taught, and it would be a fascinating grad class. I think trying to teach fanfic itself, especially to undergrads is very fraught. Just on a practical level, fanfic works when people have familiarity with the source material.
That's a very good point. If they're not familiar, of course they'll be lost. To expand on that, passion might also help. For example, my conversations with casual Harry Potter fans are wildly different from my conversations with people who were really into the books. No one matters except the trio and Dumbledore. They barely remember the names and roles of other characters. Which isn't a bad thing, I'm the same way with, say, The Hunger Games. I liked the series. Then I moved on with my life.
There's Coppa's Fanfiction Reader, but most of the fanfic in there is about those big fandoms like X-Files and Star Trek, and IDK how well reading that kind of fanfic works when you haven't watched a whole bunch of it.
Yeah. We didn't read that book, but we read something similar and that was one of the problems.
Also, even for fellow fans, it's hard to discuss one fandom - especially the big ones. I wasn't into WRock, so that part of the Harry Potter fandom didn't resonate with me at all. Meanwhile, a lot of my friends who were in the fandom were into the kinky fanfic side of things. With all due respect to those who were, I was never into that either. So... you know.
I think the guy should've just stuck with the course description, with some conversation surrounding websites for specific books and TV shows.