Introductions

[damned_colonial]

Please feel free to introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your interest in this community.

Speaking for myself... I identify as a fan and as an amateur history nerd. Most of my fandoms -- at least, those that I am most deeply involved in -- are historical fandoms, and I enjoy learning and thinking about the history of the periods in which they are set. When it comes to history, I lean most towards social history, especially women's history and queer history, and I'm fascinated by the similarities and differences between Britain and its colonies during the colonial period. As far as Sherlock Holmes is concerned, I read the books and enjoyed them years ago but didn't fall head-first into the fandom until the 2009 movie came out. Since then I have been immersing myself in reading every related thing I can find, especially about homosexual subculture in late-Victorian London. (Previously, my main historical fandoms centred around the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.) I don't have an academic background but I enjoy reading and discussing scholarly texts with smart, interested people, and I'm hoping this community will give me more opportunities to do that.

Comments

[starlady]

Intro!

To borrow damned_colonial's format somewhat, I am a fan and a soon-to-be graduate student in history; my interests in both are all over the media and map, though my scholarly interests center around the state in society and the construction of empire and its subjectivities, both ancient and modern. In practice I tend to focus on modern Japan and northeast Asia and also on ancient Europe (Greece and Rome): I took my undergraduate degree in classics and in Asian studies.

But I have been fascinated by British history in particular as something of a hobby for years; I first read the Sherlock Holmes books at the age of about eight, and then became rapidly enthralled with the fandom after the 2009 movie. So I am very much hopeful that this community will expose me to more of the histories that I don't know.

[lotesse]

How did I not know you did Asian studies? Anyway - yeah, this is going to be fun!

[starlady]

Hah, I don't know! But, yes, Asian studies. Really I should say East Asian studies, because what I know about South and Southeast Asia would fit in a thimble (with the exception of Clifford Geertz' book on the theater state in pre-colonial Bali), but my diploma says Asian studies because my department holds out hope of being able to expand sometime, maybe, in the next 20 years or so.

I'm excited!

[geeksdoitbetter]

eeEEeE

is your icon from the most recent Alice?

[starlady]

*looks* um...I don't think so. It's by iconomicon; he does use a lot of movie stills though, so it's possible.

[wrabbit]

Hi, I'm wrabbit. I just finished my third year majoring in Classics and Comp Lit. My interests are in critical theory, all over but particularly queer theory. My background is in Classics where I favor Greek over Latin, but lately I've been living in the Victorianism stacks. I was introduced to Holmes fandom through the new movie and I've been a lot in love with it ever since.

[lotesse]

Hey, nice to meet you! I did a year of - weird, very nontraditional - classics as an undergrad when I was at St. John's College, MD. I learned almost enough Greek to remember it. I've chickened out since!

[starlady]

High five classics!

[language_escapes]

Hello there! I am a fan and, similar to starlady, I am a soon to be graduate student in anthropology. My actual academic interests are actually in Islam and the Middle East, and connections with feminism, disability, and queer studies, but no one ever accused me of not having diverse interests!

I read the books when I was twelve and was part of fandom at that point, writing five incredibly horrific modern!SH novels (which... just, NO), whereupon I disappeared for a while. But I'm attempting to ease myself back into fandom, and was thrilled to see this community! I honestly don't understand why more hasn't been written about a queer Holmes and Watson interpretation.

[kindkit]

Hi! I'm a recent-ish Holmes fan--I first read the stories a couple of years ago, although I saw and enjoyed some of the Granada adaptations when I was a teenager. I think the stories are overwhelmingly queer in all kinds of ways, and I look forward to great discussions here.

I'm an ex-academic with a Ph.D. in early modern (aka Renaissance) English lit and a strong interest in queer theory and the history of sexuality.

[eumelia]

Hello!

I just discovered this comm and am so excited! I've only read a few of the stories, though due to a course I'm taking at Uni I'm beginning to love Canon Holmes (mainly Watson, to be honest) and the 2009 movie was great-great fun!

I'm currently studying for my BA in literary theory and women & gender studies so this comm us right up my alley!

Looking forward to the discussion here!

[mllesays]

Hi! I'm mllesays, or mlle. I'm a fan and soon-to-be graduate student in English lit (though my focus is 20th century American). I've loved the Holmes stories for years, but recently got back into reading them due to loving the 2009 movie. I'm interested in queer theory and reinterpretations of texts based on historiography, as well as the study of colonialism and Orientalism. (I may do some of my grad work on how colonialism paved the way for postcolonialism in literature, and how this has helped or hurt subaltern communities and the way the privileged perceive them.)

I'm terribly excited for this comm and its content!

[luce]

Hi, I'm Luce.

I've no background or academic studies in literature bu I am a book nerd with a passion for early 20th century authors and homosexual history. I include Doyle and Wilde just because they are that good!

Sherlock Holmes as fandom ocurred to me with the 2009 movie, though I had read a few pieces of fanfic before by copperbadge.

[ilthit]

Hello!

Boy, this reads a lot like a credentials listing thread, doesn't it?

My credentials: I read a lot and forget most of it.

More interestingly, I enjoy ALL Holmes canons. Yes, even the bad ones. I have a strange love of all those derivative films made throughout the decades. I would consider Doyle canon when writing fic for the 2009 movie but not vice versa, and not when writing Basil of Baker Street fanfiction, and can approach each new Holmes as a wholly new character informed by all the others. I'm guessing having read so much fanfiction helps with all that. But I've never been in the Holmes fandom, really (and I know that's a huge gap in my Holmes knowledge because fandom is pretty important and a world of its own), so poking about here feels all strange and new, and I'm looking forward to seeing other people's angles on the stories and characters.

Label list: woman, 30 years old, BA in film, unambitious, fat, white, Finno-Belgian, bi-queer, feminist, etc. TMI? Oh well.

[spacefall]

Hello, Spacefall here. Erm, mostly I'm amazed that there's a place to come and squee loudly about Holmes and urban/sexual history stuff. I think the Holmes canon makes a great lens for viewing this topic, and am only very slightly completely biased ;) I became a Holmes fan about five years ago, when I realised I had no hope of resisting the lure any longer. It has caused my bookshelf to fill with strange things, and I don't regret it in the slightest ;)

My most dangerous habit is chronology crack. Spreadsheets are involved. It's best not to ask.

A Holmesian's shelf-filling is never done.

[shes_a_geek]

Hi! I'm shes_a_geek.

I'm currently a double-major in Women's Studies and Music, and recently developed an interest in nineteenth-century constructions of gender and sexuality. Before that, my interest in the nineteenth century primarily revolved around Holmes and steampunk. I came to Sherlock Holmes quite a few years ago when a friend introduced me to Michael Kurland's Professor Moriarty series. (I am probably one of the only Holmes fans out there to discover the fandom through writing Moriarty/Moran fics.)

[lefaym]

Hello!

I'm another person coming from an academic background, although the focus of my study is children's literature (I hope to submit my PhD thesis this year).

I got into Holmes in around September last year, when I decided to read Hound of the Baskervilles. It didn't take me long to decide that I needed to read ALL OF IT. :) I also loved Guy Ritchie's movie, but fandom-wise, I prefer writing in the Doyleverse. I'm currently watching the Granada series in a rather out-of-order fashion.

I'm really interested in the way that Holmes fandom engages with ideas of unreliable narrators, and the implications that this holds for notions of canon.

[womansurvives]

Hello, everyone.

I am here, more or less by accident. I'm a radical feminist, and finally realized, hey, there might be groups related to feminism on DW, so search already! I did, and here you were.

Coincidentally, I have been re-watching the 1984 series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Season 1, with David Burke's Watson to Jeremy Brett's Holmes) and after watching four or five episodes in a week, began to think quite a lot about the intimate nature of the two characters' relationship as presented in the series. It's been probably twenty years since I read Doyle's novels and shorter fiction, although I read it avidly enough, even owning a single-volume complete works at one time.

I have also been a student of (medieval German) literature, an area more than rife with close, even intimate, relationships between men. I'd been wondering already this week, in between the scratchings of daily life, if there were parallels to be drawn between those older tales, the Victorian era Doyle, and the filmed versions.

I have also had unreliable narrators on the brain, lefaym, especially considering how much emphasis is placed, at least watching the television series, on Holmes' cocaine habit. It seems to me, though I took him for the hero of the series when I was a teen, that the actual characterization of Holmes isn't quite as uncritical as I'd once thought.

So. I'm in the right place, am I?

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

(Because Winston is my mystery reader icon)

Wondering if anyone is still here, just finished reading Art of Detection and found a link over.

I've read the ACD canon through twice (once printing order, once 'Chronological' (Baring-Gould)) and some stories more.

[dorothy_notgale]

Um, is this place still alive? If so, I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Dorothy, and I'm about to earn my BA in English with a concentration in Media and Communications studies and a minor in Writing.

I'm a nitpicker, a fact-checker, a feminist, and a fan. I love fitting works into their contexts and then pulling them back out and saying, "To hell with the author! This is how I read it!"

I grew up with the Baring-Gould Annotated in the house, reading it from an early age and trying to figure out just what a tantalus is. My Holmes is Jeremy Brett, with Basil of Baker Street coming in a close second. Reading the relationship between Holmes and Watson as a romantic one always just seemed common-sense to me, like Sam and Frodo in my other childhood favorite; it wasn't until I discovered slash fanfiction, paradoxically, that I realized most people weren't seeing books the way I was.

I'm fascinated by, but not a scholar of, Victoriana in general and the minutiae of differences to their social mores in particular. The resources available here seem very helpful; I may try posting a few recommendations of my own soon and seeing if there's any interest.