By Sarah Neil
Correspondent
The College’s Office of Intercultural Affairs is collaborating with student organizations to bring the third annual Fandom Fest to campus between Feb. 16 and March 11. This multi-week series of events highlights the intersecting cultures found within and around fandom spaces.
Jordan Shyi, director of intercultural affairs, noted how the events have developed over the past few years to include more student-led activities. This year, the lineup includes events with Kohesion, PRISM, Enigma and the Japanese Student Association, along with Intercultural Affairs programming.
“This is the third annual Fandom Fest, and it just felt like it was about time for PRISM to step up and do something more,” said Mary Ziminski, a senior psychology major and president of PRISM, The College’s oldest and largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group. PRISM will be hosting a queer literature book drive and has hosted a drag makeup workshop with professional drag queen Lexie Legato as part of this year's Fandom Fest.
“[Drag] is a big part of queer culture, it’s a way for people to express themselves, and it’s also one of the more mainstream parts of queer culture, so to educate people on the significance and the reality of it is very important,” Ziminski said.
This theme of educating the campus community on the impact that fandoms have on culture is at the heart of Fandom Fest’s mission.
The importance of amplifying the culture weaved into fandom spaces and the impact that they have on popular culture as a whole, according to Shyi.
“I think for a lot of students, they are always centering ethnic and cultural heritage, but not these other things that have cultural roots,” Shyi said. “If you’re a fan of certain types of movies or music or manga, there’s a language, there’s a tradition, and that is very much cultural.”
Included in this year’s Fandom Fest is a dance workshop with Kohesion, the College’s K-pop dance team. K-pop largely takes inspiration from hip-hop and R&B traditions in combination with Korean influences.
Katrina Lucero, a senior computer science major and act leader of Kohesion, said, “We wanted to let people who might not know how to dance have the chance to experience it… We also want to show that even though we’re dancing to Korean music, that doesn’t mean you have to be Korean to enjoy it.”
The Intercultural Affairs office worked with student organizations to find events that best showed the diversity of the culture present on campus while still making everything accessible and inclusive.
“We really focus on having a welcoming environment in general, we’re trying to be inclusive to what people know about things,” said Francisco Guerra, a senior industrial organizational psychology major and an intern at the Intercultural Center.
While the events are planned to be fun and engaging, the ultimate goal of Fandom Fest is to “broaden students’ definition of culture,” said Shyi. “We really want TCNJ students to be more curious and maybe not come away with a definitive answer, but really just embrace the intricacies of these things.”
