Scholar Amy Carleton on Prince, Wikipedia, & Passion Projects

Amy Carleton

Scholar, music lover, Prince PHD

Best gift you gave or received

A Christmas gift from my bf—a pair of custom-painted Prince-inspired Chucks that he had done by a very talented NC-based artist named Candy Carver (Check out her work and support her Black-owned business!).

Best 80s-90s memory

On a trip to Paris with a childhood friend, we went on a three-hour sunrise bike tour around the city. The city went from being completely dormant (6 a.m.) to buzzing (9 a.m.) and we finished the ride with espresso at Les Deux Magots (frequented by Hemingway and Picasso back in the day) while people-watching. We had no money at that point in our lives but decided to splurge on that tour—best decision.

What do you refuse to give a F about

Timelines—like, by age X you should have done this or that. Or at X you’re too old for Y. Everyone is on their own schedule!

What's your G.O.A.T

Definitely PRINCE! His musicianship is unmatched, but he was so much more—a true creative genius in every sense of the word. I think the average person associates him primarily with Purple Rain, but that doesn’t even showcase a glint of his talent. Branch out and dig into his catalog because he was so much more than just the mainstream hits.

A PhD in Passion Projects

I was teaching an advanced writing course for undergraduate students, when I first noticed my students were turning to Wikipedia to fuel their research. “You can’t use it,” I’d say. “It’s crowdsourced, and therefore it’s unreliable.” But then, funny thing, I began to use it more and more in my own research and life. So I started thinking, if there were gaps in topical coverage or questions about reliability, could my students fix it—could they stop disinformation while learning to engage with content with sourcing and evidence? 

One Wiki assignment led to another, and over the past 10 years my students have contributed more than 700,000 words via hundreds of articles to this largest collaborative writing project in the history of humanity. I am fascinated by Wiki’s ability to democratize information via an all-volunteer operation with no central authority. There’s no editorial board, but somehow it just works. I’ve made my own Wikipedia contributions over the years—I just published a book on its impact 20 years after its launch—and I am personally motivated to help ensure women and people of color are represented, since almost 90 percent of editors are currently white males ages 18-35.

Around the time that Wikipedia came across my desk for the first time, I began to realize that my academic life didn’t necessarily align with my “civilian” life. None of my other personas—musichead, Prince fanatic, old-school hip-hop fan—were represented in my research or teaching. As I took on the Wikipedia work, I started thinking about how Prince was interestingly one of the first artists to embrace technology—first to have a website, a CD-ROM, an online community. First to crowdfund an album. His fans are unique in that they are not digital natives but their online fan community is as robust as any you’d find for Taylor Swift. 

Prince was a vanguard in so many artistic and creative areas, I realized there were enough layers there to carve out an academic niche—one that would marry my intellectual pursuits with my deep-down interests. So I did: I launched an annual symposium, “Prince 101: Beyond Purple Rain,” at MIT where I teach comparative media studies (yes, with a healthy helping of Wikipedia). And I have a book manuscript in the works, examining Prince fan culture.

I think the reason my Wikipedia pursuits have worked so effectively with my students is they experience the less “transactional” aspect of education—simply following an assignment and receiving a grade—by choosing topics they’re interested in and engaging with content in a meaningful way. That’s changed the way I teach, as well—I’m not just there to deliver information but to lead students toward meaningful engagement and learning. Carving out these corners of academia for myself has reignited my own love of learning. 

Here’s a free first lesson from Prince 101: If you want to get away from Purple Rain (not that there’s anything wrong with that track) and get to know the Prince I know, start here.