Resources

“… The Dark Fantastic considers the work of mainstream authors, television writers, and other storytelling creatives through the networked communities – such as fandoms -- where such work is discussed, and the attendant implications for the larger culture.”– Ebony Elizabeth Thomas Teaching courses at the intersection of religion and popular culture is an integral component of my teaching practice. However, when I began teaching, first as a graduate student tutorial leader and then as a faculty member in the 1990s, incorporation of popular cultural texts often bore the strain of having to justify their relevance or appropriateness for academic scrutiny. For many of us who were fans and/or critics of movies, novels, comics, and fashion, our forays into critical popular culture studies were often viewed as side interests. There was the “other” curriculum of unassigned popular cultural texts accessed through independent bookstores, literary and film festivals, and frequently through borrowing from each other. Surely, they could not constitute “serious” academic inquiry. In fact, we often began our academic inquiries about the popular as fans of an author or a particular work or genre. We did the work anyway, often while we pursued other projects deemed, at the time, more worthy of scholarly attention. Fortunately, the influential work of scholars in cultural studies such as Stuart Hall, Jamaican-born sociologist and former director of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies in the UK, [helped bring] methods and approaches for examining the impact of cultural representation to the forefront.As digital texts have grown and proliferated in format and significance, I see these early examinations of popular cultural texts as critical interventions emerging from what Ebony Elizabeth Thomas refers to as “the dark fantastic,” in her book of the same name. For Thomas, “the dark fantastic” is not synonymous with “the Black Fantastic” or “Afrofuturism.” Rather, “the dark fantastic” emerges from the reactions and critical commentary of fandoms to narratives produced by mainstream authors, filmmakers, and television writers. It is a perspective which takes seriously audience reactions and the collective discussions which form because of them as a basis of critique. In retrospect, I think that the dark fantastic is what some of us were engaging in through our participation in ad hoc discussion groups about movies, novels, and particular authors as students.The oeuvre of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler is a particular example. I was introduced to Butler’s work in the early 1990s by another student who recommended the novel Wild Seed. Neither of us had had any of Butler’s writing assigned in our courses, yet we met and discussed her novel. We saw the connections in Butler’s writing with themes about identity, displacement, and community relevant especially for considering African diasporic experiences. Since then, I have taught Butler’s work, such as the novel Parable of the Sower, in religious studies courses for nearly thirty years. Moving the commentary which began in fan discourse into scholarship and creative expressions has enriched my academic and creative path.In teaching contexts, embracing this approach has meant including opportunities for students to use their responses to storyworlds and narratives which are widely accessed, often through multiple platforms and genres, as the basis of scholarly critique. Does this mean that individual students are viewed as “fans” and classrooms as fandoms? In answer to this question, not necessarily, but it does open the space to include such discourse as a source of critique.It does not replace more traditional academic forms of scholarship, such as library-based research, for instance, but it acknowledges and leaves space for critical interventions which emerge from the shared communications of viewing and reading popular cultural texts outside of the digital or in-person religious studies classroom.Here are a couple of examples from my teaching and learning experience in which students are encouraged through assignments and class discussion to reflect on and share their reactions to popular cultural texts as an initial step in their critical analysis:(a) Music Playlist: Students are invited to contribute to a curated music playlist related to the course subject matter. In this short assignment, students select a song which they associate with themes and concepts in the course and write a short (typically 300-word) review outlining the connections which they associate between the song and the course subject matter, including readings, lectures, and documentaries.(b) Film Screening: A film screening is organized as an integral component of the course, to which other members of the department or larger university community are invited. An introduction is provided by the instructor. A facilitated discussion follows. On some occasions, a filmmaker has participated in a facilitated question-and-answer session with the audience.Recommended Reading:Hall, Stuart, Sean Nixon, and Jessica Evans (eds.). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, 3rd edition. Sage Publications, 2024.Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games. New York University Press, 2019.