The super politics of comic book fandom
Editorial for "Appropriating, Interpreting, and Transforming Comic Books," edited by Matthew Costello, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 13 (2013).
Through the Boob Window: Examining Sexualized Portrayals in Transmedia Comic Franchises
As comics have moved from a perceived specialized media to major records-breaking blockbuster franchises, the opportunities for expanding the awareness and fandoms of male characters has increased. Women characters, by contrast, have played within the media narrative as plot points for advancing male characters’ stories as either love interests or tragic victims. We will deconstruct the narratives of male heroism (and super-heroism) with particular attention to the problematic reinforcement of the vigilante and the tech-savior, two tropes that have also been widely embraced in tech culture. These oft-repeated and exaggerated tropes help to shift the baseline expectations of male behavior within the community. They also present a point of contrast for participation by women.
Immersive haptic interaction with media
New 3D video representations enable new modalities of interaction, such as haptic interaction, with 2D and 3D video for truly immersive media applications. Haptic interaction with video includes haptic structure and haptic motion for new immersive experiences. It is possible to compute haptic structure signals from 3D scene geometry or depth information. This paper introduces the concept of haptic motion, as well as new methods to compute haptic structure and motion signals for 2D video-plus-depth representation. The resulting haptic signals can be rendered using a haptic cursor attached to a 2D or 3D video display.