Posts Tagged 'nerds'

Just to Vex and Be Vexed in Return
Anthropology, Study of geek culture

Just to Vex and Be Vexed in Return

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I suppose it’s my turn to introduce myself.

My name is Nick Mizer, and I’m a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Texas A&M University, where I’m working on a dissertation analyzing the historical relationships between story, play, and imagined spaces in Dungeons & Dragons.  I’ve been studying D&D since my senior year as an undergraduate, when I came to the topic by way of studies in folklore and mythology. The parallels between ritual and myth on the one hand and play and narrative on the other are the first thing that caught my interest in D&D. Gaining a better understanding of those relationships has been the driving force behind a lot of my research since then.  Here on the blog I’ll probably be posting a lot about gaming, but also about other areas of geek culture too.

Geeks and nerds: some representations
Anthropology, Definitions of Geek, Online communities, Study of geek culture

Geeks and nerds: some representations

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As I mentioned in my first post, it is essential to define words such as “geek“, “geek culture” or “nerd” before I proceed in this enterprise of the anthropological study of geek culture and online communities. So in the following few weeks I will be posting research material I use to build clearer definitions of these concepts as well as the definitions themselves. The first concepts we will be exploring is those of ”geek’, and ”nerds” as they are central to the project that underlines this blog. In addition, there is an ongoing debate on the deep meaning of these words and, more importantly, on whether there is actually any difference between the two. Some of the most interesting images I found so far on the topic are on this pinterest board. Enjoy!