Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins III (born June 4 1958 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American scholar, currently Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities and Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies program with William Uricchio.

Professor of literature and author of "Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture" and "What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic", he was one of the first scholars to seriously study the effects of audience participation in media culture.fact He is recognized as an expert in the influence of digital popular culture on behavior, especially political behavior in a participatory media age.fact

One of Jenkins' earlier arguments was that the boundary between text and reader has broken down, not merely in the way the reader "constructs" the text (see deconstructionism), but in the growth of fan cultures. These could be seen by how "fan genres grew out of openings or excesses within the text that were built on and stretched, and that it was not as if fans and texts were autonomous from each another; fans created their own, new texts, but elements within the originating text defined, to some degree, what they could do."

More recently, Jenkins' research has been focused on the concept of "Media Convergence", arguing that the simple technological-focused view that was once hyped was short sighted and that an understanding of how individuals in contemporary culture themselves tap into and combine numerous different media sources offers a far richer understanding of the relationship between different media forms. In this respect, he suggests that convergence be understood as a cultural process, rather than a technological end-point. According to Jenkins, there are nine sites where important negotiations between consumers and producers are occurring. These sites are revising audience measurement, remapping globalization, reengaging citizens, renegotiating relations between producers and consumers, redesigning the digital economy, rethinking media aesthetics, regulating media content, redefining intellectual property rights and restricting media ownership. This research led to his 2006 book "Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide" and the founding of the [http://www.convergenceculture.org Convergence Culture Consortium] research group at the [http://www.comparativemediastudies.org Comparative Media Studies] program at MIT.

He has also written extensively about the effects of interactivity, particularly computer games, and "games for learning", and in this capacity was called to testify before Congress in 1999. This work ultimately led to the founding of the [http://www.educationarcade.org Education Arcade] group, also at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program.

He was featured in both "Electronic Gaming Monthly" and "Game Informer" magazines, where he was asked about the effects of violence in video games. He offered a very different perspective from Jack Thompson's.

Jenkins earned his MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and his PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He did his undergraduate work at Georgia State University, where he majored in Political Science and Journalism. He and his wife Cynthia Jenkins are housemasters of the Senior House dorm at MIT. They have one son, Henry Jenkins IV.

Works

*Cite book
publisher = Routledge
isbn = 0415905710
pages = 343
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture
location = New York
series = Studies in culture and communication
date = 1992
*Cite book
publisher = Routledge
isbn = 0415906393
pages = 430
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = Classical Hollywood Comedy
location = New York
series = AFI film readers
date = 1995
*Cite book
publisher = MIT Press
isbn = 0262032589
pages = 360
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games
location = Cambridge, Mass
date = 1998
*Cite book
publisher = New York University Press
isbn = 0814742319
pages = 532
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = The Children's Culture Reader
location = New York
date = 1998
*Cite book
publisher = MIT Press
isbn = 0262201461
pages = 404
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition
location = Cambridge, Mass.
series = Media in transition
date = 2003
*Cite book
publisher = MIT Press
isbn = 0262101017
pages = 385
last = Jenkins
first = Henry (ed. with David Thorburn)
title = Democracy and New Media
location = Cambridge, Mass.
date = 2003
*Cite book
publisher = New York University Press
isbn = 0814742815
pages = 308
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide
location = New York
date = 2006
*Cite book
publisher = New York University Press
isbn = 081474284X
pages = 279
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture
location = New York
date = 2006
*Cite book
publisher = New York University Press
isbn = 0814742823
pages = 285
last = Jenkins
first = Henry
title = The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture
location = New York
date = 2007
* [http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.2108773/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CD911571-0240-4714-A93B-1D0C07C7B6C1}&notoc=1: 2006 White Paper] Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.

ee also

*Critical theory
*Media influence
*Digitality

External links

* [http://web.mit.edu/cms/People/henry3/ Homepage]
* [http://www.henryjenkins.org Weblog]
* [http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/outtakes/convergence_culture.htm Foreword to the Italian Edition of "Convergence Culture"] (English translation)
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxVxtVSHOw Henry Jenkins/Stephen Duncombe: Politics in Age of YouTube]