Ajustes

Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal

This article analyses Hosoda Mamoru’s anime film Summer Wars (2009) through its rearticulation of the lonely male otaku. A highly debated issue in and outside of Japan, the otaku community of fans shares with nerds associations with obsessive interests, technology, and lack of social skills. Summer Wars provides a counternarrative to such discourses by setting up a story of interpersonal ties with an otaku at its centre. Furthermore, the film displaces this story to rural Japan, thus recontextualising the otaku’s typical highly technological urban environment by relocating one of them amidst a large family and historical continuity. Through this emblematic shift in space, in opposition to the city at multiple levels, Summer Wars takes a novel approach in representing the otaku’s potential for sociability, while still retaining the very features that may categorise him as an otaku; at the same time, the film uses otaku themes to create an imaginative reflection on the importance of i...

abstruct of AJCE in 2015

Cognitive Case Study Series., 2016

Part of the Cognitive Case Study Series from Cabrera Research Lab, this case explores the distinction between the terms "nerd" and "geek" in qualitative and quantitative terms. In the same way that all terminology (text) is conceptually distinguished from other similar terminology (context), an exploration of the nerd-geek distinction explicates the structure of distinction making.

2015

Nerd and geek culture have become subjects of increasing public concern in recent years, with growing visibility and power for technical professions and increasing relevance of video games, science fiction, and fantasy in popular culture. As a subculture, nerd/geek culture tends to be described in terms of the experiences of men and boys who are unpopular because of their niche interests or lack of social skills. This dissertation proposes the concept of nerd/geek masculinity to understand discourses of hegemonic masculinity in nerd/geek culture. Examining three case studies, the novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the neoreactionary political ideology, and the #GamerGate controversy, the dissertation suggests that nerd/geek masculinity responds to a perceived emasculation of men who identify as nerds or geeks by constructing the interests, skills, and behaviors of nerd/geek culture as inherently male traits. In this way, nerd/geek masculinity turns the very traits nerds and geeks are often mocked for into evidence of manhood-as the cost of excluding women and queer people from nerd and geek culture. iii DEDICATION To my friends and family who have supported me through this process of scholarship and survival, especially Aeva Palecek and Emily O'Leary… you are my dearest friends. hegemonically masculine forces that I define and critique in this dissertation. Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Katherine Cross, Anita Sarkeesian, and countless others who go by countless names, online handles, and pseudonyms have fought and suffered for a fight they did not choose. I only hope that my words here can somehow honor their struggle. vi

NERD ECOLOGY argues that the environmentalist content of nerd culture can be explained by the ecological constitution of the American "nerd." Nerd discourse arises from the American traditions of eugenics, pollution, and technophobia. Nerd culture utilizes artifacts such as Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and superhero comics to overcome the heritage of negation in subjectivity and society. The book concludes that the skillful use of nerdism can generate a new source of environmental cultures that can intervene in planetary ecocide.

Nerd and geek culture have become subjects of increasing public concern in recent years, with growing visibility and power for technical professions and increasing relevance of video games, science fiction, and fantasy in popular culture. As a subculture, nerd/geek culture tends to be described in terms of the experiences of men and boys who are unpopular because of their niche interests or lack of social skills. This dissertation proposes the concept of nerd/geek masculinity to understand discourses of hegemonic masculinity in nerd/geek culture. Examining three case studies, the novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, the neoreactionary political ideology, and the #GamerGate controversy, the dissertation suggests that nerd/geek masculinity responds to a perceived emasculation of men who identify as nerds or geeks by constructing the interests, skills, and behaviors of nerd/geek culture as inherently male traits. In this way, nerd/geek masculinity turns the very traits nerds and geeks are often mocked for into evidence of manhood – as the cost of excluding women and queer people from nerd and geek culture.

The development of technological expertise requires not only financial resources but also cultural capital. Nerd identity has been a critical gateway to this technocultural access, mediating personal identities in ways that both maintain normative boundaries of power and offer sites for intervention. 1 This essay examines the figure of the nerd in relation to race and gender identity and explores the ways in which attempts to circumvent its normative gatekeeping function can both succeed and fail.

Printed T-shirts are the characteristic garment, risen to the role of distinctive “uniform”, used by one of the most representative socio-cultural phenomenon of the latest years: nerds. Rather than the style of the garment, more than its aesthetic dimension, I focus on T-shirt explicit semiotic content. This paper aims to show how nerds could be considered as an universal cultural field based on consumption practices. How a label once considered a stigma became something to be proud of. How the choice of clothing becomes a complex tool for identity construction and community making.