Aaaand I’m now writing my Psych paper on Buffy. I believe this nicely rounds out my Fandom in Academia series:
Freshman Year:
- Visual Communications — Lord of the Rings. Comparative visual analysis of equivalent scenes in two film versions of “Return of the King.”
- Digital Design Foundations — Sandman. Reinterpretation of The Endless in my “Sandman Series.” In this class, I also did designs inspired by Monty Python‘s Ministry of Silly Walks and Ender’s Game.
Sophomore Year:
- Copyright and Culture — Harry Potter. Discussion of legal implications for different types of fan art (focusing on the Harry Potter fandom)
- 3D Computer Modeling — The Nightmare Before Christmas and Star Wars. I modeled an environment from TNMBC and an Imperial walker from Star Wars. Also a creature based on the Jabberwock, but I’m not exactly in the Lewis Carroll fandom.
- Networked Life — Buffy, sort of. We were supposed to create a network of absolutely anything, so created a network of Buffy guest actors, linked based on if they’d appeared in an episode together. I ended up discussing the arc structure of Buffy a bit in my analysis of the shape of the graph, but it wasn’t really about Buffy itself.
Junior Year:
- Film History — Star Wars. The impact of the original Star Wars trilogy on the special effects industry.
- Virtual World Design — Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Created a video game set in an environment based on an image from The Wolves in the Walls.
Senior Year:
- Feminist Fairy Tales — Terry Pratchett. Theories of Revision in Tepper’s Beauty and Pratchett’s Witches Abroad. (We read the book in class, mind you!)
- Film Analysis and Methods — Firefly/Serenity. Comparison of themes of “otherness” in Serenity and The Searchers
- Science and Literature — Doctor Who. Senior Year, Empathy with aliens in War of the Worlds, Ender’s Game, and DW 1×06 “Dalek.”
- And now: Psychology of Judgments and Decisions — Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The indirectness bias in “The Gift” and other episodes.
Why yes, I am awesome. I accept your love and I return it.