Please join us for our next Communication, Culture and Media Graduate Colloquium featuring Jonathan Gray, PhD, from University of Wisconsin-Madison! Refreshments will be served.

Over the last three decades, fan studies has grown into a thriving sub-field of media studies, telling us a great deal about what it means to like a text. But too little has been said, conversely, about what it means to dislike a text, allowing Pierre Bourdieu's canonical explanation — that to dislike is to be a snob — the status of The Answer.

This talk, though, will report on qualitative audience work that listened to angry voices, especially from marginalized communities, and will examine the thoughtful, impassioned commentary these voices offered on media culture and its absences and omissions. What the talk therefore considers is to be gained by approaching media audiences, texts and culture from the angles of dislike, alienation and failure rather than privileging engagement and assuming success?