Anti-Fans and Political Public Spheres

Let me start off by saying we are not discussing “guilty pleasures” here. A guilty pleasure is when someone engages with something they know to be “bad” but they get pleasure out of doing it. So a person may feel ashamed or embarrassed about the engaging, and may do it in secret so that others […]

Podcasts as Public Intellectualism

In the thirty-eighth episode of The Pop Culture Lens podcast, Christopher Olson and CarrieLynn Reinhard present an academic panel from the 2017 Central States Communication Association Conference. On this panel, CarrieLynn is joined by Melody Hoffmann of the podcast Femnist Killjoys, PhD and Molly Turner of the podcast Swipe Right on Molly & Thomas. W. […]

An Autoethnography of Collegium – Day One

This post is a deviation from my normal posts to this blog. Instead of discussing research and ideas on various things media and pop culture, I am instead going to use this post to reflect on my week long excursion to a colloquium known as Collegium. My position is with a Catholic university, and this […]

The Rise of Hentai in America, Part 3

[This is the final part of the women studies paper I wrote on hentai. You can find Part 1, on the definition of hentai, here, and Part 2, on the comparison of hentai to live action pornography, here. And, once again, the material covered in this part is strictly NSFW.] While it may not be […]

Buffy and Public Discourse on Women’s Health

After Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended it’s television run, Joss Whedon inked a deal with Dark Horse Comics to continue the storyline in comic form. What started with “Season 8” in 2007 has since become “Season 9”. The current season finds Buffy in a world without magic, balancing living as a young, working gal in San Francisco […]