I've come to believe that there are certain panel topics which, given the Arisia /ReaderCon model, are going to sound very much along my personal interests but are even more likely to just end up annoying. Fan fiction, for example: I have a degree in media studies, I've written about how fan fiction can intersect with identity politics, and I've read many fascinating academic texts on fan fiction. It doesn't matter--the panel will inevitably turn into a bunch of people talking about how long they've been writing it, how their fan fic is mroe fan ficcy than anyone else's, and who has betrayed the community of fan fic writers and reader. Academics will talk about how certain mainstream works are like fan fic, and then run out of other things to say about it, since maybe only one person on the panel will admit to writing/reading it. The other danger topic is literary criticism and its relevance to genre fiction. For some reason, no one ever talks about how theory and criticism are relevant to the general reader. I would really like to see a panel like this, and I know Jack Haringa mentioned maybe trying to do something like this for ReaderCon at some point. Basically, I think it would be great to see a panel or two which bridges general readership withthe the kind of theory and critical language which many of the reader panelists often refer to but rarely pause to explicate or unpapck.
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Date: 2009-07-18 04:17 pm (UTC)The other danger topic is literary criticism and its relevance to genre fiction. For some reason, no one ever talks about how theory and criticism are relevant to the general reader. I would really like to see a panel like this, and I know Jack Haringa mentioned maybe trying to do something like this for ReaderCon at some point. Basically, I think it would be great to see a panel or two which bridges general readership withthe the kind of theory and critical language which many of the reader panelists often refer to but rarely pause to explicate or unpapck.