The Fan Studies Network

Editors:

Vlada Botorić, Zayed University, UAE

Lincoln Geraghty, University of Portsmouth, UK


Popular culture, with its diverse manifestations in media, art, and entertainment, has become a powerful lens through which societies express, negotiate, and challenge their identities. Fandom spaces, whether physical or digital, serve as dynamic arenas where communities coalesce around shared interests, creating unique subcultures. Simultaneously, collectors, driven by passion and a desire to preserve cultural artifacts, contribute to the curation and reinterpretation of popular culture through physical objects. The convergence of these elements prompts a rich exploration of cultural dynamics, consumption patterns, and identity formations. Collecting practices have become more sophisticated but they have tended to attract less critical attention over the years (Geraghty, 2014). With that said, more work is now being done on the relationships between fandom spaces and fan objects. For example, in his auto-ethnographic study of a life-long participant observer of the LEGO phenomenon, a collector, and an academic-fan, Botorić (2023) offered an externalizing fandom life-long experience and aesthetic preoccupations while creating a personalized interior, where LEGO becomes a dioramic spectacle integrated into the living space.

Along with traditional fan convention physical spaces, fans create digital and social media content to expose their creations and collections. Besides taking photos of their creations, fans make “room tour” videos of their creations of collection spaces. Rebane (2019) argues about this YouTube genre of room tour demonstrating its similarities with the nineteenth-century practices of ‛making of the parlor’ as a highly specific space in which private and public spheres interacted and the symbolic capital of the family was both created and put on show. These videos appear on personal YouTube channels centered on a specific hobby or activity of their authors ranging from beauty, fashion, to video gaming and popular culture, which also greatly influence the furnishing of their spaces. This digital performative logic of those videos is characterized both by the need to exhibit fans achievements and to maintain and have control over the public and private spatial domains, that is opposed to the physical exhibition spaces of the large fan conventions and events.

Geographical location of fans and fan communities may (over-)determine fan engagement and productivity in a global community setting. Botorić (2022) introduced the concept of periphery fandom, a concept that is new in the debate on consumer culture, to interrogate global fan community productive experiences from various geographical locations. Periphery fandom is defined as a sub-ordinated fan community experience, where members are deprived of access to their objects of fandom. Local fandoms are influenced by the local market conditions, questioning fans’ creativity, their community rise and spread. In this context, Chin and Morimoto (2013) argue that, while national identity and socio-political contexts may inform fan pursuits, this is neither necessarily the case nor the only possible mode of fan engagement. Fan identity is prioritized over national identity (Hills, 2002); therefore, a fan orientation may supersede geographical boundaries, becoming essentially a transnational/transcultural experience (Hills, 2002).

Moreover, collections, not only in their simple existence as owned things, but also in the care that goes into their organization, maintenance and display, serve as an objectification of the fans’ (sub)cultural capital (Geraghty, 2018). The collecting of objects forms a visual and physical biography of the self that in turn reflects how cultural texts cross national borders.  Therefore, this edited volume will examine culture(s) of consumption by focusing on the collected objects as a focal point for personal narratives of collectors’ cultural practices and experiences. In addition, this edited collection seeks to explore the multifaceted intersections of diverse experiences, examining the evolving dynamics and cultural significance of popular culture, the spaces where fandoms thrive, and the practices of collectors. As scholars continue to recognize the profound impact of these phenomena on contemporary society, this collection aims to provide a comprehensive exploration of their intricate relationships.

This edited collection addresses the need for a cohesive and interdisciplinary examination of the evolving landscape of popular culture materiality, fandom spaces, and collecting practices. By bringing together diverse perspectives and methodologies, we aim to contribute to a nuanced understanding of these phenomena, fostering dialogue among scholars from fields such as media studies, cultural studies, sociology, consumer culture, marketing and beyond.

Contributors are invited to submit proposals exploring, but not limited to, the following themes:

•          Materiality of Collecting

•          Geographies of Fandom

•          Digital Fandom Spaces as Virtual Collections

•          Gender, Identity and Material Fandom

·           Global Exchanges of Fan Objects

•          Ethnographies of Fandom and Collecting Spaces

Deadline for abstract submission: May 31, 2024.

Submission instructions: Please submit a 300 word abstract and a 100 word bio to vlada.botoric@zu.ac.ae and lincoln.geraghty@port.ac.uk with Fandom Book Chapter in the subject line.

You will be notified by June 15, 2024.

Following review and hopeful acceptance of the proposal submitted to Palgrave Fan Studies series, it is anticipated that authors for specific chapters will be identified, approached and confirmed by June 15, 2024. First draft of full chapters (approx 6.000 words) to be submitted by December 1, 2024, feedback and revisions communicated to authors by May 31, 2025, and final drafts due to be submitted by October 1, 2025. Final submission of full manuscript by December 1, 2025.


References:

Botorić V. (2023). Living with LEGO: A fan’s re-interpretation of the interior domestic space, Popular Communication, 21(2), 98-113.

Botorić, V. (2022). Periphery fandom: Contrasting fans’ productive experiences across the globe. Journal of Consumer Culture, 22(4), 889–907.

Chin, B. and Morimoto L.H. (2013) “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom. Participations 10(1): 92–108.

Geraghty L. (2014). Cult Collectors: Nostalgia, Fandom and Collecting Popular Culture. London: Routledge.

Geraghty, L. (2018). Class, Capitalism, and Collecting in Media Fandom. In Melissa Click and Suzanne Scott, eds. The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 212-219.

Hills, M. (2002). Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.

Rebane, G. (2019). A ‘parlour of one’s own’? The YouTube room tour genre. Continuum, 33(1), 51–64.