Book Description

"Fandom as Classroom Practice is an indispensable resource for teachers seeking to integrate fan works into their classroom experiences. This multivocal, interdisciplinary collection offers thoughtful, self-reflexive pieces from student and faculty perspectives. Together, the essays in this collection paint a dynamic picture of the value and challenges of teaching (with) fan works within a variety of classroom contexts."--Louisa Ellen Stein, author, Millennial Fandom: Television Audiences in the Transmedia Age "This collection demonstrates that integrating fandom opens up new ways of thinking for students in a variety of disciplines. Syllabi and assignments provide hands-on guidance to teaching fandom and creating a participatory, decentered classroom. The inclusion of student respondents is a unique and important feature of this book."-Melanie E.S. Kohnen, Lewis & Clark College Providing ways to engage students through their popular culture interests, this collection brings together several essays, across disciplines, to show how fan practices such as writing fan fiction, creating vids, communicating via Tumblr, and participating in film tourism can invite students to invest more of themselves into their education. Both scholarship and fandom encourage passionate engagement with texts-rather than passive consumption in isolation-and editor Katherine Anderson Howell and her contributors find that when students are encouraged to partake in a remix classroom that encourages their fan interests, they participate more in their education, are more critical of experts and authorities, and actively shape the discourse themselves. Creating this remix classroom requires thoughtfulness on the instructor's part, and so the chapters in this volume come from teachers who have carefully constructed such courses, including several.