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Call for Chapters: Transcultural Media Fandom in the Asia Pacific

March 13, 2023

Call for Chapters: Transcultural Media Fandom in the Asia Pacific

Editors

Dr Tingting Hu

Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communication, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Dr Fang Wu

Associate Professor, School of Media and Communication, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Targeted publisher

Hawaii University Press (AsiaPop!)

Routledge (Digital Media and Culture in Asia)

Project Aims

In recent years, the field of fan studies has seen exponential growth in the global academia, with many remarkable books such as the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018), edited by Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, and Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture (2019), edited by Celia Lam and Jackie Raphael adding to the literature. While the former aims to evaluate the state of the field and comprehensively survey core concerns, the latter focuses on how Australian fandom explores the national popular culture scene through themes of localization and globalization. In the Asian context, Lu Chen’s monograph Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture (2018) has focused on the reception and interpretation of the Chinese audience involving the content of transnational cultural flows in East Asia. 

Previous literature has predominantly focused on media fandom in the U.S. and the U.K., with only sporadic non-Western fandom-related scholarships. Despite popular Asian cultures such as Hallyu and Otaku creating a global impact in recent years, the Asia-pacific continues to receive scant academic attention, largely because the Asia-pacific has long been conceptualized as a geographically vast and culturally heteroglossic ‘other’ to the Euro-American formation (Wilson and Dirlik, 1994). While some scholarships have investigated how stardom and fandom in China, Korea, and Japan influence western countries in terms of culture, economy, and politics, popular cultural exchanges and transcultural practices among Asian Pacific countries still require closer observation.  

This project’s goal is to bring together Asian-pacific-focused media fandom research across diverse disciplines and contexts to assess the state of the field, empirically investigate fandom activities, and point to new research directions. Engaging with a wide array of media texts and formats, this project will be organized into three main sections:

Part I 

Identities, Activities, and Practices 

  • the transformative textual practices of fans.
  • the transcultural practices and media activities of fans.
  • the range of identities that are represented in fandom media practices/activities.

Part II 

Technology, Industry, and Economy 

  • the networked relationship between media technology, industry, and fans.
  • the dynamics between media fandom, industry, and economy.
  • the evolution of media fans in relation to technology, industry, and economy in different cultural contexts. 

Part III

Gender and Sexuality 

  • the gendered identities of fans as represented by their media activities.
  • the gendered and/or sexual-related practices/issues involved in fandom media activities.
  • the fandom engagement with sexual minorities and/or the LGBTQ communities.

This anthology will adopt a transcultural perspective to broaden our knowledge of the complex ways that media fandom develops across cultures and national borders. In the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom’s first edition, Click and Scott (2018) have argued that “The absence of a robust dialogue in fan studies scholarship about race and transcultural fandom is one of the field’s most obvious deficiencies” (p. 241). They have also mentioned Chin and Morimoto’s (2013) call for more attention to transcultural fans and assertion: “… non-English (often non-Western) fandoms are not peripheral to ‘mainstream’ fan culture. Rather they are part of the transcultural interplay of fandom as much as any other, separated only by barriers of language, distribution, and availability that have become eminently surmountable as fandoms have migrated online” (p. 105).

In conclusion, we hope to examine diverse forms of media fandom research in the Asian-pacific contexts (within but not limited to the thematic scope listed above), paying attention to Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and broader Oceania. 

Submission

Please send a 500-word abstract and your CV to the editor at tingting.hu_academic@hotmail.com, wufangwf@sjtu.edu.cn.

Abstract submission deadline: May 1, 2023

Submission of full proposal to the publisher: September 1, 2023

If the proposal is accepted, full chapters would be expected by December 2023.

References

Chen, L. (2018). Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture. Routledge. 

Chin, B. and Morimoto, L. H. (2013). “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom,” Participations, 10, pp. 92-108.

Click, M. A. and Scott, S. (2018). “Race and transcultural fandom: introduction,” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, pp. 241-243.

Lam, C. and Raphael, J. Eds (2019). Aussie Fans: Uniquely Placed in Global Popular Culture. University of Iowa Press. 

Wilson, R., and Dirlik, A. (1994). “Introduction: Asia/Pacific as space of cultural production,” boundary 2, 21(1), 1-14.

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CFP: Edited volume for Bloomsbury Series in Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies

December 16, 2022

CFP: ‘Star and Celebrity Branding within Asia: Using Comradery Capital’ edited volume for Bloomsbury Series in Asian Celebrity and Fandom Studies

Editors: Jackie Raphael and Celia Lam

Call for chapters
The centrality of the celebrity commodity to the flow of cultural and economic capital in mediascapes has been explored by scholars such as Driessens and Marshall who note that celebrities are “manufactured by the celebrity industry” (Driessens, 2012, p. 643), and a mechanism to sell products. Marshall notes that the “celebrity as public individual who participates openly as a marketable commodity serves as a powerful type of legitimation of the political economic model of exchange and value – the basis of capitalism – and extends that model to include the individual (2014 [1997], p. xlviii).

In a recent publication, Celebrity Bromances (Routledge, 2022), we engage with the notion of the celebrity commodity, expanding Driessens’ celebrity capital to the dynamics of celebrity relationships. Driessens outlines how celebrities become part of the currency in a commodity culture, amassing capital that can be traded for profit to the benefit of the celebrity or affiliated products. Celebrities are therefore seen as cultural commodities (Marshall, 2014; Driessens, 2012, 2013); products of culture that contain value which can be traded for economic capital.

The commodification of celebrity interactions is a lens through which celebrity bromances are explored. We suggest that a “bromance capital” operates in contemporary celebrity culture, wherein the bromance is not only used as a tool to draw attention to individual celebrity figures. It also becomes a cultural “product” which gains value as a consequence of the affective attachments it provokes. Expanding the discussion beyond male homosocial intimacy, we also propose the concept of comradery capital, which is inclusive of group dynamics and functions across genders. Comradery capital refers to inherent value of the presentation of celebrity friendships and how these are utilised for the promotion of movies, television shows, charities, and products. The capital can fluctuate depending on levels of authenticity and how the relationship is performed.

While Celebrity Bromances explored some examples of comradery capital, these examples originated mostly from Hollywood celebrity culture. In our efforts to explore the operation of comradery capital, we wish to examine the various readings of comradery capital across countries in Asia. For example, The Avengers cast promotes their dynamic and films in interviews across Asian countries. Similarly, the way Gal Gadot and Chris Pine perform their friendship in the promotion of the Wonder Woman films or Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson for Men In Black International.

We would like to capture cultures from around Asia including Japan, Korea, Dubai, Lebanon, India, China, Iran, Singapore, Pakistan, Malaysia, Israel and Indonesia. In examining the way comradery capital is performed and perceived in these various regions, the book would be able to capture the way in which celebrities vary their performances of friendship to take into account cultural differences of acceptable physical contact, understanding of language and slang, and the reading of sexuality and gender. It will also examine how comradery capital is a global promotional tool, breaking the barriers of communication.

We welcome contributions that focus on the political economy of comradery capital, as well as the affective/empowering dimensions of comradery capital, including fan and consumer relations.

We encourage interested authors to review definitions of bromance and comradery capital in Celebrity Bromances by accessing the open access chapters at the below links. We encourage an engagement with these concepts in abstracts submitted.

Chapter 4 – ‘Utilising’ Bromances<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.taylorfrancis.com%2Fchapters%2Foa-mono%2F10.4324%2F9781003093329-4%2Futilising-bromances-celia-lam-jackie-raphael%3Fcontext%3Dubx&data=05%7C01%7C%7C5c7a858a51014954e98008dadf4891f8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638067800052913989%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=xqIIXx%2FP%2FRm4LqPSE6fIeuLBGsklVF8RXUdDVzVfubQ%3D&reserved=0>

Chapter 5 – Beyond Bromances<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.taylorfrancis.com%2Fchapters%2Foa-mono%2F10.4324%2F9781003093329-5%2Fbeyond-bromances-celia-lam-jackie-raphael%3Fcontext%3Dubx&data=05%7C01%7C%7C5c7a858a51014954e98008dadf4891f8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638067800052913989%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SsEeWFN%2B%2FwF6gSd7JZAo05FlKavhV%2BPziTUVDKSFFUY%3D&reserved=0>

Topics could include, but are not limited to:

·      Promotion of Hollywood films in Asian contexts

·      Reception of Hollywood cast dynamics in Asian contexts

·      The creation and presentation of cast dynamics in Asian contexts, including same and mixed gender (binary and non-binary) casts

·      The reception of regional cast dynamics in Asian contexts

·      Creation and reception of joint or group celebrity persona

Submission
Please send the following to the editors at: cjcelebrityresearch@gmail.com<mailto:cjcelebrityresearch@gmail.com> by April 1, 2023:

–       300-word abstract

–       100-word bio

–       5-6 key words

Contact: cjcelebrityresearch@gmail.com<mailto:cjcelebrityresearch@gmail.com>.

Anticipated timeline:
Abstract submission deadline: April 1, 2023
Submission of full proposal to Bloomsbury: July 1, 2023

If the proposal is accepted, full chapters would be expected by November 2023.

References
Driessen, O. (2012). The celebritization of society and culture: Understanding the structural dynamics of celebrity culture. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(6), 641–657. https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1177%2F1367877912459140&data=05%7C01%7C%7C5c7a858a51014954e98008dadf4891f8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638067800052913989%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=sTi07KNaNTZixgWHlQmmTfwBZBQFVRXKUDN5ETjVKhU%3D&reserved=0.

Driessens, O. (2013). Celebrity capital: Redefining celebrity using field theory. Theory
and Society, 42(5), 543–560.

Marshall, P. D. (1997, 2014). Celebrity and power: Fame in contemporary culture. University of Minnesota Press.

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Explaining Isekai – Call for Contributions

December 7, 2022

This book anthology will provide a compilation of various themes that are within the broad scope of the Isekai genre. Starting with an introduction and a historic overview of the recently very popular anime and manga genre, the different chapters will deal with specific aspects in the field of film and visual culture, religious studies as well as possible effects on the militarization of societies. Authors can cover the thematic issues of gender representations, violence, the representation of state and religion, the military, and the societal aspect of transgressing to another world. Hence the aim of this book is to be a valuable source for all those who are willing to look behind the scenes of Isekai and other worlds, unraveling the mysteries, impacts, and social functions of this popular genre.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • History of Japanese Isekai novels, manga and anime
  • The evolution of Isekai and it’s rise in popularity
  • Gender aspects, Gender Swap, Gender Based Violence, Gender Role Models, Isekai Harem
  • Religious aspects , The image of religion in Isekai
  • Violence and the military in Isekai
  • Unique features in Isekai
  • Societal aspects of Isekai
  • Case studies of a specific Isekai series/novels

Final submissions should be between 5000 and 7000 words (including bibliography and reference). If you have additional suggestions or topics that you would like to contribute, please feel free to email them. As this anthology understands itself as interdisciplinary, proposals from Japanese Studies, Cultural and Film Studies as well as from Popular Culture and the Social Sciences including Humanities are welcomed.

Submission details

Please send your proposal, approximately 200 to 400 words, covering the topic and methodology used before 20th January 2023 to the editor. Please also provide a short academic bio of around 100 words.

Your work should be original and currently not submitted to another publisher or Journal.

Decisions will be communicated in February 2023. Chapter manuscripts are expected to be submitted in August 2023. A detailed guideline (citation, spelling, chapter structure of the book) will be communicated together with the decisions.

Contact Info: 

Proposals and any inquiries should be sent to the editor’s email:

Dr. Cserkits Michael (independent post-doc scholar; University of Vienna/Austria)

a1049671@unet.univie.ac.at (Academic email); and please cc to explainingisekai@gmx.at (Project email)

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CFP: Inked Up Marked Out – An Exploration into Tattooing, Identity and Culture

December 6, 2022

Inked Up, Marked Out – An Exploration into Tattooing, Identity and Culture

A collaborative event run by The Centre for the Study of the Body and Material Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London, The University of York and Royal Museums Greenwich

Date:   Friday 12th May 2023 (timings tbc)

Location: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (in person) / Hybrid (via Zoom)

This one-day symposium is focused on bringing together academic researchers and other interested parties working on, or researching in, the area of tattoos, tattooing practice, tattooed communities and tattoos/wellbeing. It will offer insights on using tattooing as a means of exploring the themes of identity and self-expression through the use of mark making on the body. We invite papers, panels, provocations, creative interventions or stories that explore the theme of ‘tattoo’. Papers may include (but are definitely not limited to!) topics such as:

●      The historical development of tattooing

●      The use of tattoos as devices within literature

●      Tattooing and branding within marginalised groups and within power relationships

●      Representation of tattoos in media and popular culture

●      The relationship between art/photography and tattooing

●      Celebrity and tattooing

●      Perspectives of gender, class and race and the relationship

●      The visual language of tattoos

●      Tattooing as work

●      The material culture of tattooing

●      Tattooing and fandom

●      What it means to be tattooed

Papers providing an interdisciplinary perspective are highly encouraged, as are papers which explore different historical periods and geographical regions. We welcome both traditional and non-traditional conference paper formats, alongside submissions from academics (including postgraduate and early career researchers) and non-academics alike. We are also hoping to hold a public engagement event in the afternoon/evening, which offers the opportunity for more creative interventions into the topic theme. 

For individual contributions, please send an abstract (approx. 200 words) and a short biographical note (approx. 100 words) to the organisers: inkedupmarkedout@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions is Tuesday 28th February 2023.

Please indicate whether you would prefer to present online or in person and if you would like to be considered for a travel bursary. We are hoping to be able to offer a limited number of travel bursaries to support attendance. If you would like to be considered for a travel bursary, please include a short 150-200 word statement including your career stage, how far you are travelling, if you have access to any other funding and why you would like to attend ‘Inked Up, Marked Out’. Priority will be given to those without access to any other funds.

For information or assistance please contact Sarah Weston at inkedupmarkedout@gmail.com

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Call for Papers, Video Games: Time and Nostalgia

November 15, 2022

12 May 2023, one-day symposium run by @ExeterComms, Department of Communications, Drama and Film, University of Exeter

Organisers: Aditya Deshbandhu, Neil Ewen, Shannon Lawlor, and A.R.E. Taylor

About the conference:

This one-day in-person conference at University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus will be structured by two thematic strands. One will focus on ‘time’ and the other on ‘nostalgia’.

Time – Morning Session

Keynote: Professor Christopher Hanson, Syracuse University   

Video games are an inherently interactive medium that offer players and researchers multiple avenues to explore time and temporality. These temporalities can unfold across multiple scales, from the narrative time of the game itself to the time that exists beyond game worlds. Video games demand time if they are to be completed or mastered and, similarly, players require time to reconfigure and make games their own. Video games have incorporated time-based mechanics and dynamics in myriad ways – some games, like MMORPGs, are effectively never ending, while others have their engagement durations extended through updates, DLCs or reward systems that incentivise player engagement or time spent in-game.

Time in games has been a key area for study in the field of video game studies and is a dimension that often unifies this very diverse domain. This panel hopes to initiate new conversations on time and temporality in video games by reflecting on how new developments in gaming culture (as well as new game and console releases) alter experiences of game time and temporality. Increasingly, games are emphasising temporality in their play mechanics, enabling players to manipulate narrative time, while the rising popularity of mobile gaming means that ‘game time’ increasingly moves beyond the temporal confines of the game itself. For example, game-accompanying platforms like companion apps have allowed game time to seep into the mundanity of everyday life and vice-versa. We welcome contributions that approach the theme of temporality and video games from a range of angles, such as (but not limited to): 

  • Grinding and ‘no lifing’ as temporal experiences
  • Journeys of the collector, the quest for gathering in-game items, gear, and trophies
  • Playing with permadeath
  • Altering dimensions of time in the play experience to showcase mastery of the game or a willingness to win with increased complexities – speed runs and Nuzzlocke-like challenges
  • Understandings of time and temporality through acts of leisure, labor and playbor
  • Representations of time and temporality in video game narratives/play mechanics
  • Lived experiences of game time
  • Conceptions of time and temporalities in mobile and free-to-play games
  • Game time beyond the screen 
  • The ‘always on’ and ‘live’ worlds of online games
  • Game and console development and launch time (including ‘crunch time’ and launch/release anticipations)

Nostalgia – Afternoon Session

Keynote: Professor Debra Ramsay, University of Exeter

Nostalgia permeates gaming in various forms, from remakes of classic games to new games made to mimic the look and feel of early games (such as the use of 8bit aesthetics and music). Companies like Nintendo repeatedly revisit their core franchises (Mario, Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, etc.) which continue to attract new and returning players, while companies like Rockstar and Bethesda re-release their biggest titles on new consoles, such as Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto V, with great commercial success. The appeal of rediscovering the same games in new and ‘improved’ forms has resulted in a slew of remakes and reboots in gaming, while at the same time the rise of retro gaming reflects a desire to discover new stories in old formats, due to nostalgia for previous gaming experiences. The afternoon session of the conference will be dedicated to critically exploring and critiquing nostalgia and games in various ways, including but not limited to:

  • Nostalgia’s role in intra-generational gaming
  • Nostalgia and fandom
  • Games and memory
  • Nostalgia in games as comfort / pleasure / affect
  • Nostalgia as regression
  • The value of nostalgia in games
  • Nostalgia and aesthetics
  • Nostalgia and interactive storytelling
  • Nostalgia and sound

We look forward to receiving proposals from established scholars, emerging career researchers, and postgraduate candidates who are engaging with video game studies within or across multiple disciplines.   

This in-person event will take place on the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus. Attendance is free.

Proposals for 20-minute presentations should include:

  • Your name, email, and affiliation
  • Proposed paper title
  • Abstract (400 words max)
  • Bio (100 words max)

Please send proposals to Aditya Deshbandhu and Shannon Lawlor by 20 January 2023: a.deshbandhu@exeter.ac.uk and shannonlawlor92@gmail.com

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 5 February 2023.

Conference presentations will be considered for two edited volumes (Temporality in Video Game Studies and Nostalgia in Video Games) in the Routledge series Games and Contemporary Culture, edited by the symposium organisers.

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Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 2nd edition Call for Chapters on Transcultural Fandom

November 1, 2022

Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, 2nd edition Call for Chapters on Transcultural Fandom

Work has begun on a second edition of The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, a 40+ chapter collection that provides reflection on and direction for the evolving field of Fan Studies edited by Suzanne Scott and Melissa Click. The project’s goal is to bring together an internationally and interdisciplinarily diverse group of established and emerging media fandom scholars to survey core concerns, evaluate the state of the field, and point to new directions of inquiry. The project will be organized into five main sections: Methods & Ethics, Fan Practices & Platforms, Identities, Transcultural Fandom, and Industry & Labor.

We are looking for new chapters for the collection’s section on Transcultural Fandom. In the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom’s first edition, the co-editors argued that “The absence of a robust dialogue in fan studies scholarship about race and transcultural fandom is one of the field’s most obvious deficiencies” (p. 241). Thus, we agree with Chin and Morimoto’s (2013) call for more work on transcultural fans and assertion that “… non-English (often non-Western) fandoms are not peripheral to ‘mainstream’ fan culture. Rather they are part of the transcultural interplay of fandom as much as any other, separated only by barriers of language, distribution and availability that have become eminently surmountable as fandoms have migrated online” (p. 105).

To continue to broaden our knowledge of the complex ways media fandom develops across cultures and national borders, we are seeking abstracts for the collection’s second edition section on Transcultural Fandom. We are particularly interested in media and fandoms that develop in or evolve from the Global South.

Submission Instructions:

Please submit a 500-word abstract and a CV by December 15, 2022 to the co-editors at click@gonzaga.edu and suzanne.scott@texas.edu. Please include both co-editors on your email submission.

Authors whose abstracts are selected will be notified by January 15, 2023 and asked to submit the first draft of their full (5000-word) chapter by August 1, 2023. Final chapter drafts will be due May 1, 2024.

References:

Chin, B. and Morimoto, L. H. (2013). “Towards a theory of transcultural fandom,” Participations, 10, pp. 92-108.

Click, M. A. and Scott, S. (2018). “Race and transcultural fandom: introduction,” The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, pp. 241-243.

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CFP: Fandom After #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc

January 24, 2022

 1 July 2022, The University of Chicago, Paris 

 Keynote speakers:
Kristina Busse (University of South Alabama)
Alexis Lothian (University of Maryland) 

In late 2017, in the wake of the widespread scandals surrounding American film producer Harvey Weinstein, the hashtag #MeToo started trending on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Using this hashtag, primarily (though not exclusively) female victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault shared their experiences and decried the ubiquity of these experiences even in a supposedly modern and egalitarian world. 

Although the #MeToo hashtag has since been used to decry experiences of sexual violence in any context, the origins of the movement in the Weinstein scandal, and the subsequent sharing of the hashtag by various well-known actors, has ensured a continued focus of the movement on the entertainment industry. In the wake of the Weinstein scandal, actors/comedians such as Louis CK and Jeffrey Tambor also found themselves under public scrutiny in this context, with Tambor, for example, being fired from the Amazon Prime Video series Transparent in February 2018. 

Similar movements also developed in other national contexts, such as France, where the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal in 2011 prompted increased public discourse on sexual harassment and assault, and where the hashtag #BalanceTonPorc started trending at the time of the Weinstein scandal, explicitly inviting women to name and shame their harassers and abusers. The movement quickly gathered steam in France, but also received criticism, for example in a public letter in January 2018, which was signed by over 100 French women in entertainment and which denounced the movement as going too far and punishing core French values such as chivalry. The letter itself was heavily criticised, as well, with particular signatories issuing apologies a week later.  

Given this particular focus on the entertainment industry, it is not surprising that the global #MeToo movement has affected audiences and fans of media forms, including film, TV, music, video games, and more. Since fans often develop affective, parasocial relationships with the objects of their fandom–including the producers of particular content, actors, characters, etc–the accusations and scandals emerging in the wake of #MeToo have necessarily provoked discussion and even conflict within fan communities, have affected the ways in which fans relate to their fandoms, and have impacted even the “forms of cultural production” (Jenkins 2013, 1) these fans have proceeded to produce. 

In recent years, these effects have not been limited to accusations of sexual violence within the context of #MeToo movement; indeed, this movement has become part of a wider trend toward holding popular entertainment figures accountable for particular views considered morally unacceptable or damaging. An example of this is, for example, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, who has come under scrutiny since late 2019 for her purported views on civil rights for transgender people; these views have impacted the Harry Potter fandom in various ways, with particularly LGBTQ fans vowing to cease purchasing licensed Harry Potter products, alongside other reactions of a similar nature (Yehl 2021).  

While fan studies as an academic discipline has existed since the early 1990s and has since both proliferated and become increasingly mainstream in the anglophone world (Scott and Click 2018, 1) and in France (Bourdaa 2015), no academic work or event has yet confronted the important question of the impact of #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc and their offshoots on fan communities and practices. This conference, then, aims to bring together international scholars interested in this issue. Potential topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to: 

  • Social media discussions and arguments between fans concerning revelations or accusations of celebrity sexual/sexist violence. 
  • Empirical research on fans’ reactions to such revelations/accusations. 
  • Accusations of sexual/sexist violence within fan communities.  
  • Representations of, or reactions to, #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc in fan works (fan art, fanfiction, fan vids…).     
  • Representations of the #MeToo movement in media works (e.g. The Morning Show, Promising Young Woman, Bombshell, The Loudest Voice) and fan reactions to them. 
  • Attempts by celebrities accused of sexual or gender-based violence to appease their fans. 
  • Posthumous reconsiderations of specific celebrities in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era. 
  • Reconsiderations of past works (including characters, themes, stories…) in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era. 
  • The position of the “acafan” (Jenkins 2011) when the object of their research is accused of sexual or gender-based violence. 
  • Writing and rewriting film and media history in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era. 
  • Teaching film and media studies in the #MeToo/#BalanceTonPorc era. 

We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers, to be sent to eve.bennett@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr and l.lanckman@herts.ac.uk by 18 March 2022. 

Please also indicate if you would like to present your paper face-to-face (in Paris) or remotely. We hope that the Covid-19 situation will enable us to offer both options.

Symposium attendance will be free of charge. 

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CFP: Pikachu’s Transmedia Adventures: The Continuing Adaptability of the Pokemon Franchise

June 8, 2021

In 2021, the Pokemon franchise celebrates the 25th anniversary of its debut in Japan and the fifth anniversary of its popular worldwide AR cellphone game Pokemon Go. In fact, Pokemon is arguably experiencing something of a resurgence and renaissance within the current cultural moment. When a pop-up Pokemon Centre store was opened in London in 2018 to mark the release of Sword and Shield, queues for entering the retail space frequently had to be closed due to demand whilst product lines regularly sold out on a daily basis. In 2019, when the long-running cartoon’s main character Ash Ketchum finally won a Pokemon tournament, major news sites humorously deemed this victory a newsworthy event (Bissett 2019). More recently, a revival in Pokemon card collecting has left retail shelves bare and scalpers running rampant whilst mint-condition ‘graded’ cards have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction (Koebler 2021). Meanwhile, the games themselves continue to be adapted to Nintendo’s console platforms, with the Nintendo Switch releasing both remakes of previously popular titles (Pokemon Let’s Go! Pikachu and Let’s Go! Eevee, Pokemon Snap) as well as new titles exploring hitherto unknown regions (Pokemon Sword and Shield). Much more than a franchise intended to commercially target and exploit children, the Pokemon franchise represents an enduringly popular intellectual property that continues to attract interest across generations. 

Despite this, in-depth and continuous academic study of this hugely popular intellectual property has been infrequent at best. In fact, the last time that a dedicated collection of essays exploring the franchise in a holistic manner was published was in 2004, with many of the contributors positioning the property as a ‘fad’ whose cycle of popularity was apparently at its end (see Tobin 2004; N.B. the augmented reality game Pokemon Go (Niantic 2016- ) has bucked this trend by generating considerable academic attention – see Kulak, Purzycki, Henthorn and Vie 2019; Saker and Evans 2021). Where Pokemon has attracted infrequent academic discussion, this has occurred in the context of assessing how wider cultural flows from Japan to the West have impacted on children’s media (Allison 2006; O’Melia 2020). What is absent, then, is a volume that takes the Pokemon franchise on its own terms and which situates the property within a much-changed media environment. Thus, a study is needed which considers Pokemon in terms of multiple contemporary debates within media and cultural studies. These include – but are no way limited to – cultural, technological, and media convergence (Jenkins 2006), discourses of transmediality and media mix (Steinberg 2012; Williams 2020), paratextuality (Gray 2010), licensing and/or (transgenerational) media industries studies (Santo 2015; Johnson 2019), material culture (Geraghty 2014; Bainbridge 2017) and fan cultures (Scott 2019; Stanfill 2019). Whether approached as a transmedia franchise, corporate intellectual property, system offering ludic possibilities, fan community, or otherwise, academic scholarship should better consider how the Pokemon franchise has engaged with, adapted to, and challenged the contours of the ever-evolving transmedia environment.

This call for papers seeks abstracts of 300-500 words for chapters of approx. 6000 words that explore topics including (but not are limited to):

  • The Industrial development of The Pokemon Company and its corporate relations with Nintendo and other licensed partners.
  • Pokemon and the historical development of media industries studies.
  • The evolution of Pokemon: The Card Game and its relationship to industrial contexts.
  • The evolution of the Pokemon computer games (e.g. games studies perspectives; remediation relating to Let’s Go!, Snap, etc.)
  • Pokemon and/as character licensing.
  • Pokemon and transmedia storytelling and/as transmedia text.
  • Pokemon, transmedia tourismand the Experience Economy (e.g. the Pokemon Cafe; the annual Pikachu Parade).
  • Pokemon Go and developments in augmented reality experiences and/or the gamification of space.
  • Detective Pikachu and Pokemon’s other cinematic adaptations.
  • Pokemon’s historical developments as anime.
  • Pokemon’s historical developmentsas manga
  • Pokemon and/as fan fashion (e.g. high-fashion licensees, jewelry, make-up).
  • Pokemon and/as paratextual theory.
  • Interventions concerning Pokemon and identity politics (e.g. feminism, critical race theory, queer theory).
  • Pokemon and/as the global expansion of kawaii/cute culture.
  • Thematic analyses of the Pokemon franchise (e.g. its ties with environmentalism).
  • Pokemon’s links to Japanese ‘soft power’.
  • Fan practices and transformative works related to the Pokemon franchise across multiple forms and platforms.
  • Pokemon and/as children’s culture.

We are especially interested in soliciting chapters featuring non-Western perspectives as well as ones engaging with historically marginalised or underrepresented groups. 

We hope to include work from both established and emerging scholars; junior scholars & graduate students are encouraged to apply.

Please email abstracts of 300-500 words with an accompanying Author Bio of approx. 150 words to Ross Garner (GarnerRP1@Cardiff.ac.uk) and EJ Nielsen (ejnielsen.ephemera@gmail.com) by 27 August, 2021.

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CFP: Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict and Complicity in Fandom 

May 7, 2021

***Call for papers and contributions for an edited collection*** 

Participatory Culture Wars: Controversy, Conflict and Complicity in Fandom 

Edited by Dr Simone Driessen, Bethan Jones, Dr Benjamin Litherland. 

It has become increasingly clear that fandoms and participatory culture are sites of controversy, conflict and even complicity, complicating earlier assessments that sought to celebrate creativity, collegiality, and community. As we continue to make sense of the consequences of web 2.0, the study of fans – the affective bonds, identities, and productive cultures of a highly mediated and networked society – is vital in understanding our current moment, whether expressed in debates about “cancel culture” or ongoing “culture wars”. Fans have had to rethink and reassess their relationships to fan objects, consider their role in reproducing global systems of inequality, and reflect on the meaning of participation in an era that is marked by both moral ambivalence and political earnestness.  

Implicitly and explicitly, fannish practices are involved in a variety of key social, political, and cultural issues across the globe. They can be seen in politics, ranging from QAnon’s role in the storming of the US Capitol building, conspiracy theories relating to the covid pandemic, and the continued expansion of the global reactionary and populist right, from Britain to India to Brazil. They can be seen in new cultural terrains produced by networked movements like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #OscarsSoWhite, and the accompanying activism and responses as fans come to terms with the crimes, misdemeanors, and disagreements of former faves, like Xiao Zhan, Joss Whedon, or JK Rowling. They are expressed in the strategies and tactics of inter- and intra-fandom conflicts, whether Meghan Markle and the Royal Family or some Chinese fan responses to BTS talking about the Korean war. And, pressingly, fan tourism, collector culture, and the energy use of digital culture all contribute to the ongoing climate crisis.  

Scholars of participatory culture can play a key role in assessing many and more of these issues, but they will also have significant and ongoing impact on the way we conceptualize fans, fandoms, and participatory culture. This work builds on developing themes in the field. Ongoing scholarship about racism, sexism, and homophobia in prominent fan spaces is vital (Massanari, 2017; Pande, 2020; Scott, 2019), and Jonathan Gray’s conception of anti-fandom (2003; 2005; 2007) is an important moment in indicating the darker underbelly of fan cultures. Yet scholarship on QAnon and Trump fandom (Reinhardt, forthcoming; Miller, 2020), cancel and commenting culture (Clark, 2020; Ng, 2020; Barnes, 2018), reactionary fandom (Stanfill, 2020), ethical consumption (Wood, Litherland & Reed, 2020; Tyler, 2021) and serial killer fandom (Nacos, 2015; Rico, 2015) pose important questions which cannot be answered simply by reference to anti- or toxic fandom.  

This collection brings together some of these authors and perspectives while developing and extending these debates. We are keen to broaden the scope of the issue so that studies of fans of film and television are included alongside studies of music, literary, theatre, sports and politics. And we are especially eager to include case studies beyond the anglophone and global north. We are also interested in the practices of organizations in fan-adjacent areas such as marketing, production, branding and influencer culture. We welcome traditional essays and research papers and non-traditional formats, such as roundtables, interviews, and think-pieces, from people inside and outside of the academy. Topics might include but are not limited to: 

·        Conspiracy theories and/as fandom. 

·        ‘Culture wars’, intra- and inter-fan conflicts, and other broader disagreements or discontent about the meaning and values of popular cultural texts.  

·        The consequences of anti-fandom and toxic fandom. 

·        Expressions and practices of ethical consumption, whether via “cancel culture”, commodity activism or similar. 

·        The moral economies of fandom, and their consequences for the media and cultural industries. 

·        The ethical implications of participation, whether through fan activism, dark fandom or other. 

·        The environmental impact of fandom, from NFTs to fan tourism. 

 
Please send an abstract of 300 words, along with a short author biography of 150 words to participatoryculturewars@gmail.com by 31 July 2021. Please also address any queries to this email address. 

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CFP:  Nightmare Before Christmas (Key Films/Filmmakers in Animation series, Bloomsbury) 

January 28, 2021

This edited collection will consider Nightmare Before Christmas as a milestone in animation and film history as well as a key cultural object with lasting impact. The book will be inserted in Bloomsbury’s Key Film/Filmmakers in Animation series. 

In the thirty years since its release, Nightmare Before Christmas has drawn repeated academic attention. Many of these contributions have seen the film as an entry point to larger arguments about Tim Burton’s work, whether in terms of its animation (Cuthill 2017), representations of gender (Mitchell 2017), and use of fairy tales (Burger 2017). Less often, Nightmare Before Christmas has been considered in relation to other frameworks, such as its presence beyond the film industry, in theme parks (Williams 2020a, 2020b), and the way it negotiated changing cultural expectations of children’s media and horror (Antunes 2020). Though this literature has shed light on several aspects of the film’s significance, there is to date no sustained scholarly inquiry that brings these insights together and examines the historical and cultural significance specifically of Nightmare Before Christmas. This edited collection seeks to address this gap, considering the different layers of meanings and history of Nightmare Before Christmas from pre-production to the present day.  

Nightmare Before Christmas was released quietly in 1993 under Disney’s Touchstone banner and sold primarily on the art-house appeal of its animation technique, amid fears that a close association with child audiences would harm Disney’s reputation. But the film was an immediate success and has since been reclaimed by Disney as one of its most beloved family titles. Growing into a cult phenomenon, Nightmare Before Christmas still cultivates a dedicated fandom across the globe today with an array of merchandise, tie-in products, and other media. 

Nightmare Before Christmas marks an important moment of technological development in stop-motion animation, and the technique has continued to have a key presence in the industry, particularly associated with horror- and gothic-inspired narratives (Selick’s Coraline and ParaNoman, or Burton’s Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie), where it blurs questions of suitability for child audiences and continues to fuel debates about the art of animated films and its target audiences. Indeed, the specific combination of stop-motion and children’s horror in Nightmare Before Christmas is key to how the film has negotiated genre, suitability, and other cultural categories in its original and retrospective reception, questions which often become tangled with ideas of nostalgia. 

More recently, Nightmare Before Christmas continues to serve as a point of reference for negotiations of genre and of the boundaries between mainstream and niche cultures, both on screen and in spaces of fandom. Its many afterlives expand well beyond the film industry, occupying manga and comic books , board games, and other paraphernalia, as well as physical rooted localities through events such as the live-staged musical, theme parks, and in exhibits (Hicks 2013), as well as through the fan practices that the film has inspired, such as fan fashion (Cuthill 2017) and makeup, cosplay, textual production, and transcultural fandom. 

How can we best understand Nightmare Before Christmas and its significance in the history of film and animation? What is Nightmare Before Christmas’ legacy thirty years on, and how does it continue to challenge and delight audiences, scholars, and industry today?  

This book aims to collect diverse and original insights into the meanings and impacts of Nightmare Before Christmas from a range of disciplinary perspectives and methods. Some suggested topics include: 

  • Nightmare Before Christmas in animation and film history; 
  • animation and genre (musicals/fairy tales/horror/family/etc); 
  • narrative structure in Nightmare Before Christmas and the audience; 
  • stop-motion as animation technique and cultural object; 
  • animation and branding practices; 
  • Nightmare Before Christmas as seasonal media (Christmas/Halloween); 
  • suitability, animation, and young audiences; 
  • children’s horror animation before and after Nightmare Before Christmas;
  • animation and nostalgia; 
  • animation, technology, and art; 
  • the music of Nightmare Before Christmas (songs, covers, re-releases, etc.); 
  • the politics of representation in Nightmare Before Christmas; 
  • childhood in Nightmare Before Christmas and its associated texts and practices; 
  • authorship and associated debates (Burton/Selick/Elfman/Disney), including the links between Nightmare Before Christmas and other works; 
  • franchises and franchising relationships; 
  • live and experiential events linked to the film (live musicals, theme park attractions, the Beetle House restaurants in New York and Los Angeles, Tim Burton exhibitions, etc.); 
  • transmedia and merchandise (Funko figures, action figures, board games, clothing and make-up, cookbooks, etc.); 
  • transnational critical and audience/fan reception; 
  • fandom, subcultures (Goth/emo), and fan practices, including transformative works (fan animation, fanfiction, fan videos,…); 
  • cosplay and the body in Nightmare Before Christmas fandom. 

JQuestions and informal discussion can be directed at any of the three co-editors: Filipa Antunes (a.antunes@uea.ac.uk), Brittany Eldridge (brittany.eldridge.18@ucl.ac.uk), and Rebecca Williams (rebecca.williams@southwales.ac.uk). Formal proposals (under 300 words) and short bio should be emailed to Rebecca Williams by 3 May 2021. 

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