Cosplay Rey: Intergenerational fandom and the importance of play at the 2016 Star Wars Celebration, London.

Emma Pett Attending large-scale fan conventions has never particularly appealed to me. Big crowds. Confined spaces. Long queues. Getting up at the crack of dawn to join said queues. Rampant commercial exploitation. The list is endless, and significantly compounded by the fact that I am not overly inclined towards collecting stuff. It was with a…

Dystopian States of Mind: Identity, Mental Health, and the Private-Public Sphere in The Hunger Games and Chaos Walking

Roslyn Weaver |  Although science fiction is maligned in some quarters as escapism, two recent, popular young adult dystopian series offer themes that parallel realities of contemporary teenage life, primarily around identity in a world where internet and social media have dissolved the boundaries between private and public spheres. The following discussion focuses on these…