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On the first day of class, the Slytherin table (most of the tech and science students in the room) gleefully embraced their chosen identity and set out to convince the rest of us that Slytherin is the place to be. Clearly, their campaign worked: for the fifth week in a row, one student has made a point to tell me that she's a Slytherin, not a Hufflepuff, thank you very much. And another student emailed to share that he had just started reading the Harry Potter books for the first time because of our class discussions. These students are preservice teachers, some of them entering their second careers, most of them in their twenties and beyond, and we're not in an English classroom: this is one of their professional courses, focused on the rules and ethics of teaching. So why in the world are we talking about Hogwarts?
FABULOUS FANDOMS
From the continued surge of wizards and muggles greeting new material from J. K. Rowling with costumes and fanfare to online spaces such as Wattpad and Fanfiction.net, there are countless ways for people to experience fan content that stimulates their creativity and fosters a sense of camaraderie. Fandoms cultivate community built on shared interests and passions. Fan culture is vast, with multiple entry points, and many of our students are already participating with various fandoms. Instead of ignoring these pop cultural spaces, what potential could we invite into our classrooms by engaging in fandoms with our students? Although fan spaces have traditionally functioned outside of the classroom, fan culture provides a rich third space for growing our classroom communities and inviting students to integrate various aspects of themselves into the process of learning.
If we consider the school to function as the "first space" and the home or outside of school world to be the "second space," a third space is formed in the liminal overlap between the two, where students are able to use their strengths and skills from each space to participate more fully in learning (Assaf; Dredger et al.; Moje et al.). This article explores how teachers might tap into the generative third spaces of fandoms to create community, to encourage authentic and collaborative academic literacy practices, and to help students discover...