thinking about how many times i’ve wanted to bring in “low brow” sources in my academic writing, and how such a mode of critique is so fundamentally foreign to the institutions in which i’ve been embedded that i never even considered it a possibility. i once wrote about how beowulf echoes in tolkien’s fiction (primarily using the hobbit to argue that both narratives employ rings) back in high school, but that was an exception because my history teacher was a massive nerd, and tolkien was a well-respected medievalist so the topic didn’t seem far-fetched regardless. but that has very much been an exception for me. i know that film and media studies exploring television, genre fiction, even memes and fandom culture, that there are spheres dedicated to analyzing these “low brow” works of art and social phenomena. but as a comparatist and shakespearean, my area has always been relegated to quote-unquote “high brow,” despite my abiding interest in many “low brow” mediums and artworks.

ANYWAY. this preamble was all to say: how would you guys feel about participating in a zine where we would compile a bunch of essays each exploring a topic through comparing a piece of “high brow” art to “low brow” art? for example, if i expanded on my post using satan and sin in paradise lost to discuss akio and anthy’s roles in utena, or using 19/20th c. existentialist philosophy as a framework through which to discuss adventure time. you could also take a theoretical approach to an internet phenomenon, such as exploring character criticism from a fandom perspective. (these are all ideas for essays i would write if i had the time, so obviously these examples are just templates, not workable suggestions.) this would obviously take a long time to compile and there would be no fixed deadline (i have way too much on my plate at the moment for that anyway), this idea literally just came to me because i was thinking about how fun it could be to work on an online collaborative zine, and how the broader topic could best reflect the discourse of the internet as a collaborative and (ideally) egalitarian realm (for media as well as people). mutuals (or nonmutuals) who are interested, dm me with a description of what you want to write about, and i’ll get back to you with the logistics once i have more of a sense of whether or not this is actually going to happen, and if so, how.