FEMCRITICON ALL THIS WEEK!

We will create our own SF cons twice during the semester. Those who have been to cons will help us out here, although these class cons will be a hybrid version of course. During part of each con paper and poster assignments will be presented poster conference style. That means that some people will be presenting their work in various parts of the room, all at the same time, while other class members wander around the room, interacting with them as they discuss their projects. Katie will also wander around, giving folks immediate feedback on their work. After we spend time doing this, we will move into collective discussion and engagement all together. For more on SF fan cons, see the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_convention ) and online materials on WisCon, the yearly international feminist SF con (http://wiscon.info). Katie is planning on attending WisCon this year in May, and you may wish to consider attending yourself!


Posters and papers (with handouts) are shared in one or the other of two class cons. For each con you will do either a paper or a poster. Which one you will do when will be determined by lot. You cannot get full credit for either assignment until after you also present them in the con sessions, and participate in follow-ups. In other words, just the written paper or the poster does not in itself complete the assignment. If an emergency or illness kept you from participation either or both days that week, to get full credit you will have to meet with three other students to share your work and their work outside class, and write up the experience and what you learned from it to complete the participation portion of that grade. SO DO NOT MAKE OTHER PLANS FOR THOSE DAYS: BUILD THEM CAREFULLY INTO YOUR SCHEDULE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TERM! Put them into your logbook from the beginning so that attending them will always be at the forefront of your term plans. This is also true of the final two days of class, when you discuss your learning analysis with everyone else. Full credit for the learning analysis also requires attendance and participation on those last days. 

•    FemCriticon: SF Media ecologies, feminisms and cognitions

For FemCriticon you will create either a paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class) or poster (which one determined by lot) in order to explore the political, intellectual, creative, and cognitive ecologies that interconnect transmedia storytelling in science fiction feminisms.

You will choose at least one of the three texts on sf ecologies, one from our sf textualities list, and any one or more other books you might choose with an eye to a smart intertexual “bundle” or set. (We will be experimenting with this idea of intertextual bundles starting out on the first day of class!) You will come up with your own topic that explores how sf feminisms help us think about ecologies of cognition – how play, learning, and the kind of thinking media science fictions entail are interconnected in ways feminists might care about. NOTICE that you may need to do some additional reading and research. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.


(157ff): A new model for media ecosystem: "That model is a complex, layered one...straddle[s] three different realms of experience: the economic, the technological, and the neurological...changes in the market forces that shape popular entertainment [transmedia storytelling in commercial forms of repetition and multiple commodities], part emanates from long-term technological trends [social media and other technological platforms enabling interactive communities such as fandoms with their meta-commentary]; and part stems from deep-seated appetites in the human brain [such as the embodied multitasking of dopamine implicated in memory, learning, pleasure, attention, addiction, physical movement, trial and error at the edge of competence, adapting to adaptation, and so on]." 
(194): "Out of obsession comes expertise, a confidence in your own powers of analysis--a sense that if you stick with the system long enough, you'll truly figure out how it works."

NOTICE THAT THIS ECOLOGY IS THE TOPIC AND CONTEXT OF FEMCRITICON!!!   
•    FemCriticon: SF Media ecologies, feminisms and cognitions 

You must address the ecology explicitly to properly participate!  you would be smart to know this class website very well and to use it to understand this topic in detail. 


NOTICE THAT BOTH PAPERS AND POSTERS SHARE THE RESULTS OF YOUR RESEARCH AND YOUR THINKING ABOUT CONNECTIONS. POSTERS SHOW THESE VISUALLY: WHAT THE RESULTS ARE AND HOW YOU GOT TO THEM.