Swarming Comic-Con
“Swarming Comic-Con: A Collaborative Ethnography of Industry-Audience Relations in the Entertainment Industries” is a collaborative ethnographic project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada that examines the relationship between the media industry and fans at San Diego Comic-Con.
Research Team: Benjamin Woo (PI, Carleton University), Erin Hanna (University of Oregon), Shawna Kidman (University of California San Diego), Felan Parker (St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto), Suzanne Scott (University of Texas at Austin), and Matthew J. Smith (Radford University).
Publications
Recent Articles & Book Chapters:
“Distributing Whiteness: Please Like Me and Global Television Circulation. ”Television and New Media, Online first publication, November 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F15274764211052894
“The Experience Economy of TV Promotion at San Diego Comic-Con.” International Journal of Cultural Studies. Online first, July 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877920935888 [Click here to download the Accepted Manuscript version of this article]. See also an interactive visual guide to this article.
“Time, Space, Strategy: Fan Blogging and the Economy of Knowledge at San Diego Comic-Con.” Popular Communication, Spring 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15405702.2019.1627547. [Click here to download the Accepted Manuscript version of this article]
This slideshow provides an extensive insight into the spaces and experience of San Diego Comic-Con (click on picture):
Books
Screening the Closet develops a new framework for understanding queer visibility in the media that stresses the interdependence of race and sexuality. Challenging the idea that an increase of LGBTQ images is a uniformly
positive development, I demonstrate that many of these images offer a narrow vision of queer visibility.
Contents:
Queer Representation, Visibility and Race in American Film and Television: Screening the Closet was published by Routledge in November 2015.
Introduction
1. All That Visibility Allows, or Mapping Queer Visibility
2. Visions of History: Queerness and Race in Hollywood Cinema from the Production Code to X-Men
3. Towards the ‘Gay 90s:’ Redefining Queer Visibility through the Lens of AIDS
4. Outside Space and Time: Screening Queerness in Brokeback Mountain and Boys Don’t Cry
5. Kevin and Scotty Get Married (And Hardly Anyone is Watching): Queer Visibility, Privacy, and the Boundaries of Everyday Life on Television
Concluding Remarks
Please see my CV for all publications.
Melanie E.S. Kohnen 