Fandom as Classroom Practice

Yes, it's a lot more academic than a lot of people would enjoy, but I loved it.
Given the growing amount of fan fiction, of texts that include fangirl/ fanboy characters, and even studies done on fanfiction, this is definitely a great book for the moment. Anything that encourages students to engage is brilliant, and given the types of fanfiction out there, both "curative" and "transformative" it can actually help marginalised or minority student to find themselves and representation within otherwise difficult texts.

I love the ideas in this book. I think that fandom is an excellent way to counteract students' writer's block.

Written by scholars and their students, this collection explores various ways in which fandom can be used in the classroom. Among others I found instructive: Anna Smol writes about having students create fanworks of their choice, letting them express themselves in ways otherwise unavailable in a literature classroom, and Shannon Farley writes about using vids to teach criticism/deconstruction (although I have to say I disagree with her that the Doctor Who Handlebars vid isn’t a reading against the grain; she says it’s just saying what characters like Harriet Jones say in the show).

Rukmini Pande writes about using racebending and fancasting to create productive discomfort about race in students (and tells a striking story about how her class initially fan-cast a live-action Lion King with almost all white actors right after studying articles about Hollywood bias). “The students had so far been rather quiet, but they suddenly became a lot more vocal in arguing the fact that the exercise was a direct product of their own prejudice. One student said quite heatedly, ‘There are white people in Africa, too, you know!’ I agreed, and then pushed her to justify why this specific narrative—that of a royal family that seemingly drew from indigenous customs and languages—should be enacted by white people.”

Paul Booth writes about teaching different waves of fan studies that in some ways recapitulate students’ own journeys. Also, a teacher who used assignments on Tumblr found that “the community environment created by both the peer-to-peer elements and the low-stakes writing assigned on Tumblr became especially important to nonnative speakers of English enrolled in the class.” Feedback was also better: “Even when students knew the icons and usernames of their peers, the level of imagined anonymity that such usernames and icons afforded enabled the students to offer authentic opinions and lengthy reviews of their peers’ work that they otherwise would not have offered if forced to confront their peers face-to-face.”

I enjoyed the practical aspects of this book tremendously. The mix between scholarship and practical classroom experiences was slightly heavier on scholarship than I had been hoping; however, the student response chapters made up for it. It was very helpful to read student responses to fandom studies and related assignments, both positive and negative. I will definitely refer back to these chapters as I adapt teaching ideas and assignments to fit the needs of my students and curriculum. I appreciated that the ideas in Fandom as Classroom Practice were oriented to college classrooms. I finished the book feeling invigorated and inspired to change up an assignment or two in my own classes in the near future.