The Fan Studies Network

Asia-Pacific Fandom, Screen Media and Home

Deadline: February 1st 2024

Editors

Dr Meenaatchi Saverimuttu (Macquarie University)

Dr Jane Simon (Macquarie University)

Summary: This edited collection examines the site and idea of home through the specific lens of transnational and diasporic fan practices in the Asia-Pacific. Our approach to the thematic of home is informed by feminist and post-colonial scholarship that understands home as both a material site and an idea or imaginary that intersects with questions of mobility, labor, belonging and economics. We begin from the premise that home is not a contained idea or space, and that the idea and experience of home is not always a shared one, nor is it always easily locatable (Blunt and Dowling 2006; Lloyd and Vasta 2017). The edited collection will expand on recent scholarship that highlights home as a neglected site for fan practices (Baker 2019; Duncan 2022), by focusing specifically on the shifts, mobilities and regions associated with the Asia-Pacific.



We position the Asia-Pacific as an unfixed geographical region that has complex transnational flows (Martin et al 2019), and a rich landscape of screen-based fan practices, performances and identification. The collection will examine how these practices, performances and identifications unfold in everyday domestic spaces: kitchens, bedroom walls, living rooms and sofas. We seek book chapters that explore what it means to think about fandom as a home-making practice; how fan collections and displays are enmeshed with domestic space; how domestic labor intersects with fan practices; and how the movement of media texts across the Asia-Pacific zone create new registers of belonging and re-imaginings of home.

We welcome submissions on topics that focus on screen media texts or fan practices based in or from the Asia-Pacific region, including (but not limited to):

Fan collections and displays in home spaces
Material objects and fandom at home
Memorabilia and everyday use
Representations of fandom at home
Fan labor and/as domestic labor
Online fandom in the home
Home and mobility in diasporic fan practices
Home, belonging and screen media fandom
Case studies of fandom in domestic settings
Nostalgia, homeland and diasporic fandom
Fandom and the bedroom wall
Sofa telephilia
Kitchen fandom
Deadline for submission: February 1st 2024

Submission instructions: Please submit a 300 word abstract and a 100 word bio to jane.simon@mq.edu.au and meenaatchi.saverimuttu@mq.edu.au with Asia-Pacific Fandom in the subject line.

You will be notified if your proposal is accepted by March 1st 2024.

Chapters will be peer reviewed and a full proposal will be submitted to a University Press (such as University of Iowa Press’ Fandom & Culture Series, to be confirmed) in May 2024, and full chapters (approx 6000 words) will be due for submission by September 2024.

References

Baker, Tegan Alexandra. 2019. “‘It Was Precious to Me from the Beginning’: Material Objects, Long-Distance Fandom and Home.” Soccer & Society 20 (4): 626–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2017.1376187.

Blunt, Alison. 2005. “Cultural Geography: Cultural Geographies of Home.” Progress in Human Geography 29 (4): 505–15. https://doi.org/10.1191/0309132505ph564pr.

Duncan, Catherine. 2022. “Fandom, Homes and Families: Home as an Overlooked Site of Fannish Practice.” Journal of Fandom Studies, The 10 (1): 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1386/jfs_00047_1.

Lloyd, Justine, and Ellie Vasta. 2017. “Reimagining Home in the 21st Century.” In Reimagining Home in the 21st Century, edited by Justine Lloyd and Ellie Vasta, 1–18. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Martin, Fran, John Nguyet Erni, and Audrey Yue. 2019. “(Im)Mobile Precarity in the Asia-Pacific.” Cultural Studies 33 (6): 895–914. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2019.1660690.