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Drawing the Self Into Existence: Diversity and Inquiry Through Comics Fandom

Sun, April 10, 2:45 to 4:15pm, Marriott Marquis, Floor: Level Four, Independence Salon C

Abstract

In the social media age, the digital fandom multiverse cross-pollinates in ways that media theorist Henry Jenkins (2006) has characterized as convergence culture. Young fans from around the world converge around many of the same identity factors that people do in the analog world. This matters for conducting literacy research, for teens and young adults are increasingly using new media to engage in textual and visual production that is collaborative, patched together with pastiche and allusions, and shared in what has been characterized as environments of “digital intimacy” (Thompson, 2008). Digitally intimate virtual communities have their own ever-evolving rules, norms, and assumptions about meaning-making processes, authorship, and composing. As people participate with one another across these affinity spaces (Gee & Hayes, 2011) and networked publics (boyd, 2008), they engage in participatory cultures “in which everyday citizens have an expanded capacity to communicate and circulate their ideas … [and] networked communities can shape our collective agendas” (2008, p. 7). Yet long before the digital age, comics’ integration of sequential and simultaneous reading modes anticipated this sort of literate intimacy, making meaning across semiotic systems. For in multimodal environments, perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points (Sousanis, 2015). One of the affordances of digitally intimate space is that it allows for alterity in perception, thus becoming a site for social justice, diversity, and cultural change.

Within digitally networked communities for fans, young adults of color find each other, communicate, and traverse the margins of fan culture, engaging in multimodal inquiry through artistic expression (Vasudevan & Reilly, 2013). Specifically, teen and young adult artists interested in diversity have developed a significant presence on Tumblr, creating fanworks featuring characters from many different multimedia properties, including iconic characters from Marvel, DC, and other major comics houses. Some have even ventured into the world of Japanese anime. In this presentation, I will share a multimodal analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) of youth fanartists’ work that inscribes the self into existence using the conventions of US superhero comics and anime through case studies. Specifically, these young artists are bending not only race, but also well-established conventions of comics such as sequentiality, caricature, and iconic solidarity to make new meanings (Molotiu, 2003). After situating these phenomena within other traditions of narrating the self into existence, I conclude by exploring broader implications for literacy and arts education.

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