Thesis Defense > metafandom

Dissertation Defense FTW!

I have not yet had to run that particular gauntlet, but I have four portfolio defenses under my belt and am starting prep for the fifth, so I have some infinitesimally small idea of what a dissertation defense might be like ... and boy, howdy, do I ever have a lot of respect for people who've done it.

In fairness, in my field, if your committee is doing its job, your defense should be pretty low-key, because they shouldn't let you get to that point unless they're ready to pass at least with revisions.

My father-in-law made cookies for mine.

Dude, not unless you're up for a drive-by buggywhipping! :o

The joke among Mennonites, (which I am not, precisely), was "Drive by shunning."

*spit take*

That. Is actually really funny.

It is if you have some basic familiarity with Anabaptism!

This? Is why I no longer bother with metafandom.

Apparently the person who started this round? Semi-pro writer.

...working in part as an advertising copy writer, and one of her novels has, according to a reviewer, "the innocent but willful main female character is tricked into being a sex slave of the main male character (and later, is used and abused by his acquaintances to further his political goals)."

You'll forgive me, certainly, for being less than impressed.

I'm picking a fight with you over picking fights!

OTOH it's maybe more honorable than picking a fight with someone harm- and defenseless, no? At least academics can take it, and are unlikely to run off in tears threatening to leave fandom forever because everyone is like those mean girls in their high school trauma... or something along those lines.

There is that. At least they're in your weight class.

In a way, picking a fight with Acafans is what they're here for. They'll have a great deal more fun if you take the time to argue well, though.

Why yes! We give extra points for good writing!

(And snicker amongst ourselves at the BAD writing!)

If we fight mimes, I will die upon the barricades! (Um. Probably of fright, though. You can't tell me there isn't something wrong with mimes. Also, they are made of evil, and this is a scientific fact.)

They're like clowns made up of all the bits that are too evil to go into regular clowns.

I just want to say that I love this thread. &hearts___&hearts (Also, Vetinari would agree!)

Whoa. Lame.

However, I find myself unable to get too worked up about all this, mostly because the anti-academic position is basically "Your SMART is harshing my SQUEE." Which. I'm sorry, that's laughable.

Whereas I have found smart to be squee inducing, so I guess we just can't all be happy?

I smell a story. C'mon, give.

Pretty please?

http://rolanni.livejournal.com/364971.html I guess, and then metafandom picked it up, and it sort of asploded.

What the heck kind of stuff was this gal smoking? I loved my SF lit classes. And not ALL of SF is escapist it's it's.....

*MEGAFLAILS*

sorry.

Apparently she's author Sharon Lee. But I really can't answer about the smoking.

http://www.sff.net/people/sharon.lee/

AAAAAAAAAAAAA PINK

lemme see if the whole site is like this... and nope she wanted it too look like this!

" Over the years, I've explained with equal sincerity that my ideas came from a facility in Chicago, a box in the attic, my confessor, Bulfinch's Mythology, David Byrne, and the weird weed I smoked that night in the seventies when, well -- it's personal, but we were all crazy back then, man. You remember." bhahah

Are the academics really taking over, or are these people just in the wrong areas? o_O

I have been informed in several places by several different people that one, academics are colonizing fandom and have been doing to since the 1970s; and, two, academics have institutional power in fandom by which they oppress non-academics by um writing tl;dr meta and using big words.

The quiz will be next Friday, btw. Come prepared with a blue book and two pens!

The academics can come colonize my fandoms any old time they want to. I am totally oppressed by the prevalence of boyslash squee. And nonprevalence of girlslash squee.

I have also between told twice that aca-fen who do not immediately admit to our oppressive natures are like white fen laughing off fen of color who talk about racism (we are not the same but we are like).

OTOH, a friend in Canada who once pointed out the dominance of "US" fans (along with their assumption that the first amendment is a global document) found her argument totally ignored/knocked down the the dominant group, and girlslash fen are in a similar position regarding fandom as a whole, but somehow you rarely see major metafandom posts concerning their marginalization within fandom!

YAY PRIVILEGE

Dude, can we like start spouting about boyslashfan privilege now? XD

Well, I think it's a lot more valid argument than the "academics colonizing fandom" argument, but then I r an acafan.

OTOH, I am primarily a boyslasher (have some stuff for Arwen and Éowyn I've started on) (full disclosure: I wrote a paper on f/f slash for academia, including a discussion of the two stories that showed me just how HOT girlslash can be, drools...).

And clearly if one is an English (major) bisexual Canadian girlslash fan, one is hardly allowed to skulk around the margins of fandom, sneaking into the village at night!

Quite quite!

I think in the end we should just have more options of everything, but then I'm not sure where the fairy godmother is who'd be waving her wand to make the fen making all those new things so.

What you mean none of them have ever brought up Nazis?

A couple people have told me that it's more about how particular methodologies (i.e. deconstruction/postmodernism) are all the rage in academia, and other methodologies get no respect, and how that's effecting fandom. Something like that. And maybe that's the issue for them, but I'm pretty sure that's not a typical fannish view - a more likely fannish view really is "The big words harsh my squee! (And yes, I have forgotten how to hit backspace)." To which I respond, "Where I come from, this is how we squee! Cultural differences! Squee that way if you like, though, no skin off my back."

Hmm, I'm not sure what all the rage means: I'm in a literature and languages department at a small university in rural Texas (we have comp, lit, Spanish, and minors in French and Philosophy), and there are no postmodern/deconstructionists here (nor do I believe that it's possible to claim that theory area has dominance unless you define postmodern as "all new critical theories that have been developed in the last sixty years).

I define myself, in terms of theory, as sociolinguistic, queer, critical race feminist, in terms of my approaches and what I tend to teach. The academics I'm familiar with are not the high school deconstructionists (which many of us identify as becoming the rage in academic departments about the time that feminist, queer, and critical race theorists began making some headway in both scholarship and jobs in academia--so it was a nice coincidence for the elite white guys that they could claim a "theory" that disdained identity).

Now in a sense I'm postmodernist with a small p in that I don't believe that there is a single universal theoretical foundation to anything, that I do not believe in a single canon, and that I value such things as multiple-voiced approaches (heteroglossia, to use Bakhtin's term). But most strict postmodernists, especially deconstructionists, would not recognize me as a theorist. But as Gerald Graff, one of my favorite writers in the "culture wars" noted, the fact that all academics have deep divisions (and we're talking MAJOR stuff) is not going to make any impression to their students or the general population who do not have the training to understand that a Marxist, a deconstructionist, and a queer theorists are all in opposition about some methods and practices--they're just all academics using big words.

And my major complaint against the postmodern academics I knew is that they did all their deconstructing of the canon: you wouldn't catch 'em dead reading a romance, an sf novel, or fan fiction!

tl; dr

*cackles and flees from ithiliana's righteous rage.*

Maybe next time choose mimes
Only if it's an oral defence. You want to see a mime try to explain a structural equation model with just interpretative dance.

Yes. Very much. That would be hilarious.

You are awesome. <3

Definitely my favorite post to come out of this so far : ) The advantage is that if it looks like an acafan is winning, zir opponent can always complain that ze're being oppressed by the acafan's analytical skills. Or something.

True--although as a friend pointed out, the fact that the original two posts were made by a professional writer and a journalist who has Higher Degrees, etc. etc. makes the "omg their rhetoric is so oppressive" kind of.....ironic. One reason why the posts are persuasive is, I would argue, the high rhetorical skills of both posters.

Not all effective writers are professional academics, and not all academics are polished writers!

Reminds me of serving on a faculty senate commitee that gave awards to faculty and staff in typical areas, teaching, service, etc. People who applied to awards had to submit letters of support, typical academic thing. One year the head of kkinesiology (PE and coaches) looked at me and said we should substract points from people who had literature profs write letters for them because the lit profs were so much better at writing than the other faculty.

Although the ire does seem to be focusing primarily on us bisexual English majors who are postmodern/deconstructionists (leave me out entirely--I do queer, critical race feminist, and sociolinguistic theory) who are ruining everybody's fuN!