Thursday April 9th, 9:00-10:30 am CEST
The focus of this webinar, which once again brought together an international and interdisciplinary group of participants, was led by Crys Clitheroe and Anna-Sophie Jürgens, who offered insights into the research engagement work of the Popsicule, a Science in Popular Culture and Entertainment Hub hosted by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) at the Australian National University (https://popsicule.weblogs.anu.edu.au/), as well as some of the specific research work on representations of science in popular culture.
Anna-Sophie Jürgens introduced the group to several of the Popsicule projects and initiatives. Building on popular entertainment studies, the contributors and organizers of the Popsicule engage with questions about the cultural meanings of science, and how they are negotiated, transported and shaped by popular culture, specifically by and in visual fictions (comics, films, graphic novels, street art, …). A specific interest of the Popsicule community is to inquire into the ways in which media narratives shape our ideas of science. The Popsicule’s focus on research engagements means that projects involve students, scientists, artists, people from the general public in new formats for science communication. It also means inquiring into the ways in which pop culture can foster thinking differently about environmental topics. One of the many projects that are part of the research engagements is the Sci-Burst Podcast series, which is already in its third season, with a focus on solarpunk (https://popsicule.weblogs.anu.edu.au/season-3/). Another one is the project Exhibition in a Box, which combines doing puzzles with animations to teach about key environmental issues (https://popsicule.weblogs.anu.edu.au/expedition-in-a-box/). The Popsicule website also publishes student research work from the courses “Science in Popular Fiction” and “Science and Humor.”
In the second part of the webinar, Crys Clitheroe then provided the group with a specific example of what research on representations of science in popular culture can look like by introducing their Ph.D. project on themes of biotechnology and bioengineering in comics. Close engagement with various comics allows for critical insights into, for example, the ways in which these comics contribute to and shape specific narratives of bioengineering and bioengineers, and it also offers opportunities to trace how certain tropes and genre conventions are employed, sustained, or challenged and turned on their head. A specifically interesting way in which some of these “biopunk” comics engage with bioengineering themes is via critical optimism or “hopepunk” (a term coined by A. Rowland in 2017) which offers resistance against cynicism and fatalism.
The discussions were very lively, and the webinar participants got the chance to both learn about the various projects of the Popsicule and discuss their own research questions about the intersections of popular culture and science.
