The Fan Studies Network

You can find more info here: https://aaaconference2019.home.blog

Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne, Australia December 11th – 13th, 2019

For the 2019 FSN Australasia Conference, we turn to a focus on the impact of technological, cultural, and media change on shifting fan practices, and vice versa: the impact of fan practices on technological, cultural, and media change. The Conference aims to showcase diverse approaches to a wide range of fan communities and practices across four core areas: screen and digital cultures (such as film, television, videogames, online and other digital media); public leisure cultures (such as sport, theme parks, festivals and conventions, popular culture stores, and concerts); audio cultures (such as podcasts, radio, and music); and material cultures (such as comic books, toys, books, and board games). 

In focusing on technological and industrial change, the conference aims to address pressing questions relevant to a wide range of disciplines, such as: how does the dominance of streaming services in the contemporary entertainment media landscape influence the formation of fandoms and fan practices? What role do digital platforms – from social media to taste curation websites like LetterBoxd – play in the mainstreaming of fandom? Do hacker and maker cultures, such as those that surround videogames, necessitate new theorisations of fan cultures? How do interactions in public spaces between fandoms from different cultural spheres affect or reshape fan practices and identities (for instance, in the case of Melbourne’s “Marvel Stadium” sporting arena, which connects sporting and comic book/superhero fan cultures)? 

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words (with 150 word bio) to be submitted by 15th July 2019 for presentations that address any aspect of fandom or fan studies. We also welcome collated submissions for pre-constituted panels of three to four presenters. We encourage new members in all stages of their career to the network, and welcome proposals for presentations on, but not limited to, the following topics: 

Across all of these areas, papers are welcome that approach issues such as audience research and fan studies methodologies; accessibility of fan cultures and fan studies; anti-fandom and toxic practices; fan labour; transcultural and transnational fandom; fan/industry relationships (subversions, interactions, appropriations); inter-generational fandoms and fan practices; the ethics of studying participatory culture and fandom; transgressive fan practices and fandoms (ie alt-right and serial killer fan cultures); shipping, slash fiction, and other queer fan practices; and the intersections between media/industry change and shifting fan practices. 

The conference will feature a number of innovative keynote speakers who have driven fan studies in new directions across a range of different disciplines. These include the following keynote speakers, with further speakers and industry events to be announced: 

Dr Bertha Chin 

Lecturer of Social Media and Communication 

Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak, Malaysia 

Editor: Crowdfunding the Future: Media Industries, Ethics, and Digital Society (with Lucy Bennett & Bethan Jones, 2015) 

Editor: Crowdfunding Issue of New Media and Society (with Bennett and Jones, 2015) 

Editor: Transcultural Issue of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies (with Lori Morimoto, 2015). 

Dr Suzanne Scott 

Assistant Professor, Department of Radio-Television-Film 

The University of Texas at Austin 

Author: Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry (2019) 

Editor: The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (with Melissa A. Click, 2018) 

Editor: In Focus: Gender Identity and Representation in the Superhero Genre Issue of Cinema Journal (with Ellen Kirkpatrick, 2015). 

Professor Melanie Swalwell 

Professor of Digital Media Heritage 

Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia 

Editor: Fans and Videogames: Histories, Fandoms, Archives (with Angela Ndalianis and Helen Stuckey, 2017) 

Editor: Born Digital Cultural Heritage Issue of Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media (with Angela Ndalianis, 2016) 

Lead Investigator of the digital heritage project “Play it Again: Creating a Playable History of Australasian Digital Games” in collaboration with the Australian Centre of the Moving Image. 

Dr Benjamin Woo 

Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication 

Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada 

Author: Getting a Life: The Social Worlds of Geek Culture (2018) 

Author: The Greatest Comic Book of All Time: Symbolic Capital and the Field of American Comic Books (with Bart Beaty, 2016) 

Editor: Scene Thinking: Cultural Studies from the Scenes Perspective (with Stuart Poyntz and Jamie Rennie, 2016). 

Please send a 300 word abstract and a 150 word bio by the 15th of July as a word doc attachment to the conference organising committee: jbalanzategui@swin.edu.au. Use the Subject Line: “Abstract Submission FSNA2019” and the following the file name convention: Surname_ProposalTitle 

Conference Steering Committee: 

Dr Jessica Balanzategui (jbalanzategui@swin.edu.au) 

Dr Liam Burke 

Taylor Hardwick 

Dr Naja Later 

Tara Lomax 

Andy Lynch 

Professor Angela Ndalianis 

Special issue of Transformative Works and Cultures: Fan Studies Pedagogies (deadline 1/1/20)

The expansion of fan studies as an academic field, and the growing visibility of fandom and fan activities in popular culture, have led to more instructors using fannish activities and engagement in the classroom, and teaching fan studies as a disciplinary focus. Teaching fandom and fan studies means drawing from a multidisciplinary spectrum of methodologies and foci. Yet, as fan studies itself is often a “moving target” — refusing, in many instances, of becoming “disciplined” enough to match traditional academic units — it becomes imperative to discuss the various contributions, methodologies, ethics, and lacunae of the field in a classroom setting. The specific pedagogical needs of the fan studies classroom require sustained interrogation because of the changing field of fan studies itself.

This special issue seeks submissions that specifically address the pedagogical methods, styles, contributions, and concerns of the fan studies course, classroom, and online space(s). We are particularly interested in pedagogical methods drawn from fan studies, fan studies’ application to the academic environment, engagement with students’ fannish affect for pedagogical purposes, and explorations of how fan studies itself is taught. We also seek papers that directly address the epistemological and ethical stakes of operationalizing fans’ approaches to their media texts for use in academic contexts, and best practices for securing permissions for student contact with fan texts themselves. In addition, we seek pieces that explore how teaching fandom/fan studies engages (or doesn’t) the demands  of the university institution itself.

 We also welcome shorter pieces focused on particular projects/pedagogies that have worked in the classroom, hybrid, or online setting, or particular assignments with specific ties to fan studies methodologies. We seek to develop the Symposium section as a useable set of lesson plans, assessment techniques, and methodological interventions with immediate pedagogical application. Hybrid approaches, detailing the stakes and theory behind a particular lesson, or describing the implementation of a fannish technique, would also be welcome here. 

 Potential topics include but are not limited to:

–       Student or Instructor fan engagement

–       Fan studies methodologies in the classroom

–       Fandom itself as pedagogical method

–       Administrative reaction to fan studies pedagogies

–       Global fan studies in the classroom

–       LMS (learning management systems) and their roles in the fan studies classroom

–       Teaching fandom versus teaching fan studies

–       Engaging with race and fan studies in the classroom

–       Student demographic changes and fan studies

–       Corporate engagement with/cooptation of fandom as pedagogical opportunity

–       Fandom as model for the academic system

–       The hybrid course as relational mode in fan studies classrooms

–       The ethics of assessing affective engagement

–       Methods of assessing the creative fan studies project

–       Collective assignments and the expression of fannish ethics

–       Leveraging students’ existing fan-expertise throughout a course

Submission guidelines

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC, http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) is an international peer-reviewed online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. TWC accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. 

Theory: Conceptual essays. Peer review, 6,000–8,000 words.

Praxis: Case study essays. Peer review, 5,000–7,000 words.

Symposium: Short commentary. Editorial review, 1,500–2,500 words.

Please visit TWC’s Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor (editor AT transformativeworks.org).

Contact—Contact guest editors Paul Booth and Regina Yung Lee with submissions, questions or inquiries at FandomPedagogy@gmail.com.

Due date—January 1, 2020, for estimated March 15, 2021 publication.