LOTR paper

Hey, thanks to Cory Doctorow for mentioning me in BoingBoing yesterday. :-)

Allison and I enjoyed meeting Janet Croft yesterday. Janet was exactly the same in person as she is in e-mail...easygoing, fun sense of humor, a good people-observer. I confess I was relieved; I've learned from experience that you can't really tell what someone is like solely by their online persona (through e-mail or message board postings). Some people come across way more outgoing online than they are in person, for example, or are much easier to communicate with in e-mail than in person.

We had lunch at a restaurant in the Sheraton Centre, and then went upstairs for the panel. The conference was an annual national meeting organized by PCA (Popular Culture Association) and ACA (American Culture Assocation) and was much more academic in tone than the conferences I'm used to. All the presenters on the panel were from various American universities. Papers presented at the conference were available for sale at the conference bookstore on another floor.

The bookstore, incidentally, was run by Solomon Davidoff, someone Allison and I know through filking...not a surprising cross-over when we remembered that Solomon did his graduate thesis on a popular culture theme. Solomon had the three of us sign a copy of Janet's paper, "Reading Lord of the Rings: The Final Attempt": An Analysis Of A Web Community, as a donation item for Interfilk. :-)





Allison and I also met Jay Shorten, Janet's research partner. Jay was responsible for collating and analysing the statistics for the paper. Unfortunately he had to opt out of speaking much during the presentation because of an ear infection he had developed during his stay in Toronto.

Janet's and Jay's paper was one of four being presented at the panel. I was struck by the diversity of topics of all four papers, which seemed to be similar only in the theme of fandom. Other paper topics covered aspects of Lovecraft fandom, digital copyright, and fan fiction. Each paper was presented in a 20 minute time slot, with a Q&A session at the end of the panel.

Sitting through the Janet's and Jay's presentation was a fascinating experience. I mean, this all started because of one of my fun sabbatical projects last year, when I decided to read Lord of the Rings because of the upcoming movie, and here we were listening to academic-types discuss the whole thing as if it was a scientific experiment, with handouts with charts describing relevancy of posts by gender, number of posts per day and by chapter, etc. I admit I got a huge kick out of the experience. Thank you, Janet and Jay! :-)





After leaving the Sheraton Centre, Allison and I had dinner at Milestone's and then went to see "Ice Age" at the Paramount. Cute movie; my favourite character is definitely the squirrel (or whatever it's supposed to be).

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Janet and Jay presenting their paper yesterday.
	Janet and Allison talking at lunch at the Sheraton Centre.
	Me, Janet, and Allison.