Teaching Toward the 24th Century : Star Trek as Social Curriculum (Pedagogy and Popular Culture, Volume 5)

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and under-researched
Review: Apparently, this book (first published in 1994 as a Ph.D. dissertation for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) is meant to be a study of the way teachers use Star Trek as part of their teaching curriculum. At least, that's the impression the title gives. Anijar forgot to write a foreword or introductory chapter, so for some time it's hard to tell exactly what she's doing. As a result, during the first few dozen pages, the book comes off as an academic version of the documentary film Trekkies: a freakshow of weird people (all school teachers) with weird beliefs. Though Anijar throws in a number of allusions to critics and theorists of the postmodernist persuasion, during much of the book she simply quotes people she interviewed, and asserts her own moral superiority and greater understanding of the social, political, religious, or racial matters involved. And sometimes she simply mocks the people she interviewed.

Granted, many of the people she quotes (if they're quoted accurately) seem worthy of derision. She quotes an alarming number of people who believe Gene Roddenberry was a great moral philosopher (and a few who believe he was sent by God or aliens). In perhaps the best and most useful chapter of the book, she looks at the subculture of fans who like to dress up as Klingons, join Klingon organizations, and pretend to be Klingons. Her discussions with several Klingon wannabes reveal that many of them are racists in denial. She compares Klingon dressup games to minstrel shows, pointing out that the people she talks to like to put on dark makeup and pretend to be aggressive, animalistic, and generally uncivilized. Anijar quotes one teacher who says that his Klingon character helps him relate better to his black students.

But the book is marred by poor structure, factual errors (mostly related to Trek, like episode titles, and so on), too many snide putdowns of her interview subjects, and insufficient reading in the subject matter at hand. For example, in the chapter about Star Trek and NASA, it's painfully evident that Anijar is unfamiliar with Constance Penley's book on the subject, NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America, even though she quotes two mentions of it. And though she refers to her book as an ethnographical exercise at a couple of points, she doesn't seem aware of the two classic Trek ethnographies, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, by Henry Jenkins, and Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth, by Camille Bacon-Smith.

Is it a worthwhile read? For a cultural studies devotee who sees no need to respect people being studied or their preferred pastime, this is ideal. For academics interested in fandom, there are a few useful bits and pieces, despite the author's apparent lack of awareness of many key writings in the field. For Star Trek fans, it's another example of someone who doesn't know much about the show or its fans looking at some of the more extreme fans and making absurd generalizations and misrepresentations (and a painfully accurate criticism or two). For teachers interested in ways to use Star Trek as part of their curriculum, this book is a discouraging word, not a handbook.

Rating:
Summary: Essential book for Curriculum and Culture Studies Scholars
Review: Dr. Anijar's book is beyond brilliant. As a scholar who examines the aesthetic, political, economic, social, cultural, ethical dimensions embedded in curriculum (not as a document, but as an intersection of several very highly human processes that are ongoing and consistently in process) she gives readers a rich, textured view of how Trek teachers seek to define the world in which they live in and out of school-how Trek culture is embedded firmly within the Eurocentric canon and how Trek signifiers simply (re) present that canon.

Dr. Anijar infuses her entire work with an outstanding theoretical and conceptual framework utilizing Bakhtin, Baudrillard, Bourdieu, Foucault, Haraway, and Turkle. She creates oppostional pedagogies that educators can use to contest what occurs in our schools every day. Readers who look to this book as providing a specified curriculum utilizing Star Trek, you have missed the point. This book is a well researched, critical narrative on how we consume hyperreality, increasingly obscuring the modes of production and blurring boundaries.