Daniel Fandino

Blog

Popular culture is a potent force. As a carrier of culture, as a contested realm, as a source of personal and national identity, and a tool of cultural dominance, popular culture is an inescapable dynamic engine that has the capacity to deeply influence societies. To create understandable background lore and synthetic worlds, popular culture often draws upon the real (and imagined) past. This malleable vision of the past is a palimpsest that popular culture inscribes itself upon, rewriting, redacting, and retconning that-what-was to suit the demands of a story.

History fills many roles in this negotation between the real and fictional: as shorthard to introduce concepts that would take too long to expand upon, as a superhot furnace of nostalgia, a force to push against, and as a vocabulary to define the new and exotic. In these strange new worlds, history itself becomes redefined and reimagined. I explore these processes and the usually precarious intersection of history and popular culture (and technology too!) at Journeytothewiredwest.com

Work

Education

• PhD candidate in History, Michigan State University
• M.A. in History, University of Central Florida
• B.A. in International Relations, Florida International University

Publications

• Daniel Fandino. "Remembering Fictional History and Virtual War in EVE Online" In Virtual Dark Tourism: Ghost Roads
• Julian Chambliss, Bill Svitavsky, and Daniel Fandino, eds. Assembling the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Essays on the Social, Cultural and Geopolitical Domains
• Entries for The Encyclopedia of Japanese Horror Films, ed. Salvador Murguia (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)

Selected Presentations

• "Reflections in a Mirrored Helmet: Wolverine, the Silver Samurai, and the American Image of Japan" presented at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society, July 25-27 2019, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
• "'Imagine Strange Things': Durham Stevens and American Opinion Towards Japan and Korea, 1894 to 1908" presented at the 67th Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, October 19-20 2018, Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis, Minnesota
• “Looking for Group: Building Interdisciplinary Game Studies Communities,” roundtable participant, at Meaningful Play, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 2018
• “Virtual Spaces, Augmented Places,” presented at Mechademia, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2016. (Online presentation)
• “Exploring a Virtual Past: History and Massively Multiplayer Online Games,” presented at the 2nd International Conference on Popular Culture and Education, Hong Kong, SAR, 201
• “No Future: Visions of China in American Science Fiction Film and Television since 1950,” presented at the World History Association Conference, Beijing, China, 2011

Digital Projects

• The Travels of Lady Nijo
• TBA

Selected Exhibitions

• Julian Chambliss and Daniel Fandino, curators. "Justice for All: Social Justice in Comics," MSU Residental College of Arts and Humanites (2018), https://rcahlookoutcomics.wordpress.com/

Fellowships

• Cultural Heritage Informatics Senior Fellow, Michigan State University, August 2018 - May 2019 & August 2019 - May 2020
• Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellow Michigan State University, August 2016 - May 2017

Selected Reviews

• Hikikomori: Adolescence Without End by Saito Tamaki in The Middle Ground Journal: History and Global Studies
• Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics by Casey Brienza in Studies in American Culture
• "Tokyo's Sporting Diplomacy,” by Jessamyn R. Abel, in Olympika: the International Journal of Olympic Studies

Teaching

• GSAH 314: Gender, Race, and Global Identities, Michigan State University, Fall 2023
• GSAH 312: Global Digital Cultures, Michigan State University, Summer 2023
• GSAH 312: Global Digital Cultures, Michigan State University, Summer 2022
• HST 250: History of the Digital Age, Michigan State University, Summer 2022
• GSAH 312: Global Digital Cultures, Michigan State University, Summer 2021
• HST 250: History of the Digital Age, Michigan State University, Summer 2020
• AMH 2020: U.S. History 1877 - Present, University of Central Florida

Graduate Teaching Assistant Courses

Certificates

• Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate, Michigan State University (pending Spring 2024)
• Graduate Certificate in American Studies, Michigan State University

Digital Skills and Tools

Programming and Markup Languages
Content Management
Project and Research Managment
Data Analysis and Visualization
Photogrammetry
Agisoft Metashape
Omeka
Scalar
GitHub
Leaflet JS

CV

Download complete CV as a pdf

About

Daniel Fandino is a History PhD student at Michigan State University. His academic fields of study focus on U.S. cultural history, Modern Japan, and digital history. Daniel's research is centered on the intersection between popular culture, technology, commodities, and consumption. He also maintains an interest in game studies.

Wired History takes its name from the breakthrough 1998 Japanese anime Serial Experiments Lain (シリアルエクスペリメンツレイン) where the Wired (ワイヤード) is a worldwide virtual reality network that encompasses all forms of communications from the internet to radio to television.

Contact

• Twitter
• GitHub
• Email
• Twitter

Site information

Power icon by useiconic.com from the Noun Project

Photographs on this site were taken by the author. Screenshot of a Gallente frigate flying past a space station in the computer game EVE Online by CCP Games taken by the author.

Contact

• Twitter
• GitHub

Elements

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