Fredonia's Got Talent!

My students in Fantasy Fiction and Novels and Tales did some amazing work throughout the semester, and particularly at the end.  Unfortunately, most of them chose not to do web authoring projects, so I can't share their work here.  Fortunately, a good number did; here are links to their work:

• Alexandra Atseff, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone:  Book to Film [blog]
• Aubrey Cunningham, Fantasy Fiction [blog]
• Halie Degnan, Alternate Worlds [web site]
• Paige Jones, Fairy Tale Seamstress [blog on making of fairy tale dress for character in her fairy tale revision of Beauty and the Beast]
• Jessica Krajacic and Skylar Pratt, Fantasy Fiction and the Harry Potter Generation [blog]
• Kyle Roof, Harry Potter vs. LotR vs. GoT--Fantasy Fiction Club [live-action on youtube]
• Rhiannon Vercant, A Neapolitan Cinderella in Oz [animation on vimeo]
• Ashley Weinheimer, History of Magic School [blog]
• Kristal Zarczynski, Fantasy Blog [blog]

Please check 'em out while you're waiting for me to finish grading and get back to posting student essays that respond to the questions my students generated at the start of the semester!

[cross-posted at Mostly Harmless and Citizen of Somewhere Else]

Will This Course Idea Seem So Cool in the Light of Day?

All of a sudden, I've got the urge to teach another version of my Science Fiction course. But this time, instead of trying to sample a small number of novels on a small number of topoi, I've got this idea for teaching near-future sci fi that both gets us thinking globally and reveals something about the preoccupations of the time periods in which they were first written and read. So far, I've come up with works like William Gibson's Neuromancer, Masamune Shirow/Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang, Cory Doctorow's For the Win, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. What am I not thinking of that would fit that kind of reading list? Particularly from pre-cyberpunk sci fi?

On Anime and Commercials on Veoh and Youtube

As new faculty advisor to SUNY Fredonia's Anime Club, I feel it's my duty to point out one weird side-effect of youtube's and veoh's turn to running commercials on their sites.

Check out the commercials that air during the first episode of Onegai My Melody on veoh.com:


Watch Onegai My Melody (Episode 01) in Anime View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

As I've remarked before, Onegai My Melody may well be the strangest anime ever. It puts Hello Kitty-style living stuffed animal characters in the midst of a music-oriented junior high school setting, mixing kawaiitude and crushes in equal measure. So why are the ads so adult-themed?

Contrast the sponsors for Ouran High School Host Club on FUNimation's youtube.com channel. What the heck are Cheerios and Nature Valley doing airing commercials during a full-on ikemen parody of/tribute to Hottie Paradise, Boys Over Flowers, and Nodame Cantabile?

I would have thought the shows and sponsors would have been reversed. But maybe that would make too much sense?