Con Artist: Non-Cosplay Participation at Popular Culture Conventions as an Arts-Based Method of Inquiring Into Resistance and the Undoing of Rules

Abstract

I conduct an inquiry into my participation as an African American woman at two popular culture conventions, the 2017 Dragon Con (Atlanta) and the 2018 annual general meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Kansas City). Through a methodological approach to Con-ing—attending a popular culture convention—as arts-based inquiry and utilizing techniques of autoethnography, I inquire into my participation in spaces that, while intended to be havens of adult play, reproduce and reinforce discourses and material practices that can limit the play and participation of marginalized Others.