A Final (Further!) Reflection on Comic-Con - Vol 1

Well, a month has officially passed since my journey to Comic-Con wrapped up, and it’s (finally) time to take a moment to pause and reflect on my experience and my research project.

LET’S START FROM THE BEGINNING…

Why I did choose to take part in the Experience at Comic-Con Program and how did I hear about it?

I sat down with a friend of mine for coffee in the Fall semester of 2018 who was also in the middle of his Ph.D. We spoke about many things - including publishing and getting papers of the door (I needed a little push to finish some revisions that had been sitting around for the better of six months) and he mentioned how he had completed an internship/placement at a top-tier American university as part of his program. And that got me thinking, after all I found tremendous value in the internships and international experiences that I completed during law school, why not do one as a PhD student. Then, it was all about waiting for the right opportunity…

I’m on several (read many) mailing lists, from a variety of disciplines for both personal and professional reasons, and one of them - recommended by the former Chair of Graduate Studies for the Department of Communication - is CRTNET (Communication, Research, and Theory Network). CRTNET sends out several emails per day, including one on Calls for Conferences and the like. And it’s on this board that I stumbled across a call for applicants to the Experience at Comic-Con Program offered through Radford University.

If you missed my earlier post about the Program, you can read it about it here. Let’s just say that when I read about it, I was immediately interested! Who wouldn’t want to spend a week at Comic-Con International studying an aspect of popular culture and fandom culture?

In addition to what truly sounded like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I was excited about the possibility of learning about and using a new research technique. While I love my doctoral research project tremendously, I wanted to learn about using other techniques - like ethnography - to conduct research in the area of popular culture (my field of expertise). Finally, I was excited about the opportunity of meeting other young researchers and working under Dr. Matthew J. Smith of Radford University.

And so, I applied.

Following an interview in October 2018 (the program received so many applicants that they had to turn some away this year), I received the most wonderful news… I WAS GOING TO COMIC-CON.

Stay tuned for the next instalment in A Final (Further!) Reflection on Comic-Con!