In this blog post, I am collecting my thoughts as well as links to other people’s thoughts and writings about how to teach online from a perspective and position of compassion for learners. This information was originally collected on Twitter. Additionally, this notion of “compassionate pedagogy” is not limited to online teaching and learning but…
A Communication Toolbox for Communication Literacy
The following is an excerpt from my book Fractured Fandoms: Contentious Communication in Fan Communities. To read all of the information, you will need to get the book, either from a seller or your local library. [Do not cite this blog post as it is an abridged version of what appears in the book. All…
Investigation into the Mass Media: Then and Then Again
I love finding old papers I wrote. They help me understand where I came from and show the process of becoming a scholar — or whatever I want to call myself these days. I think we need more established scholars sharing these types of reflections on their processes, so finding old papers is a way…
Professional Wrestling Fanfiction from an EDR Perspective
I have been working on this project for a couple years now (as seen here, here, and here). I’m not sure if it will ever get to the point to be truly publishable, and I don’t really need it “published” in the traditional academic sense. So, I’m just going to continue sharing my thoughts on…
Media Engaging(s): Or, How I Learned To Be Both/And in an Either/Or Discipline
This essay contains an early draft of what I ultimately wrote for the Participations special issue on “media engagement” as a concept in audience studies. This essay contains some good ideas that were no where near ready for publishing. I may also not have the time to come back to them, as I have been…
Squirrel Girl and Feminism
I created this video for DePaul’s Pop Culture Conference in 2021 on superheroes. For the first time, it was an entirely online conference with asynchronous, video presentations for academic work. The ideas in this piece come from a chapter I wrote for an anthology being produced by Bryan Carr and Meta G. Carstarphen. That chapter…
Fandom During the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on our lives, including how we experience our fandoms. Cons were moved online or cancelled. New movies came out on streaming apps at the same time as theatrical releases. Online gaming replaced in-person gaming. And people turned to their fandoms to cope with the pandemic. Krysten Stein and…
Disney+, the Fan Industrial Complex, and Star Wars
I love this term: Fan Industrial Complex. Chris thinks he heard it from someone else, so I will need to investigate it. Because from a media ecology perspective, it’s very useful. That’s what we have now with online mediated fan-producer networks. The technologies and economic systems require a symbiosis between more ardent fans and producers,…
The Four Paradigms in Spiral Form
Subtitle: A positivistically constructed model to critique dominant design with a postmodern flair This was a group project from a class with Patti Lather at OSU in 2005 that I completed with Carrie Hung, Hana Kang, and Yongfang Zhang. I look at it now and think it’s so twee! In looking at the four research…
Taxonomy of Fannish Behaviors: A Work in Progress
I’m really interested in the ways we define fandom. Is it just associated with popular culture, or is it a more fundamental aspect of human life? I’m going to use this blog to work through my thoughts on this matter, so it isn’t by any means a completed document, and I will do my best…
Virtual World Fandom Quasi-Autoethnography
This post contains my reflections on trying to express my Star Wars fandom in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. These reflections are based on the Twitter thread I ran in the summer and fall of 2020, which can be found here. I tried to reconstruct it chronologically to show the progression of events and my thoughts…
WrestlePosium I Presentation
Earlier this year I organized, ran, and presented at the inaugural WrestlePosium open online symposium for the Professional Wrestling Studies Association. My presentation concerned the work I have been doing looking at wrestling fans writing slash for the characters of Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. The entire presentation can viewed here. The other presentations from…
