Cosplay, Academia, and Me—Some Thoughts, and a Note on the Future

Long ago in a distant future, I described myself as a pop culture scholar with a passion for cosplay. Nowadays I might describe myself as an independent pop culture scholar with a passion for cosplay. But I don’t. I imagine myself as an informed writer passionate about pop culture, cosplay, and the transformative power of stories and storytelling. I say “imagine” because I am still making that writerly dream happen, still making that no-fuss descriptor—writer—mean something, mean me. As I once tried to make other words like academic and scholar mean me, too. Later compounding the issue by trying on other kinds of nouns, other semantic costumes in my search for a designation, a destination, like some latter-day Mr. Benn.3 This kind of meaning-making exercise is something of a rite of passage for scholars exiting the academe, a naming act of self-creation. Each possibility allowing us to make ourselves mean differently, signaling shifting orientations toward the world. And it usually starts with a question, or two.