Dear all,
we just wanted to offer a little reminder that abstracts for the Fan Studies Network conference 2014 are due in at the end of this week (by Sunday 1st June)!
You can read the CFP here:
The video of last year’s event is here:
We hope to see you there!
Otherness and Transgression in Celebrity and Fan Cultures
Hosted by the Cultural Transformations Research Group, Aarhus University.
November 21-22, 2014
LOCATION: AARHUS UNIVERSITY, DENMARK.
CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: AUGUST 22, 2014
Keynote speaker:
Matt Hills, Aberystwyth University –
“Fans as Celebrities, Celebrities as Fans: The Rise of an Affective Economy?”
The notions of otherness and transgression play an essential part in the cultural work and practices celebrities and fandoms perform inasmuch as these concepts are inseparable from the celebrity and fan cultural processes of social in/exclusion, identification and dissociation, uniformity and diversification,
and forces both drawing and disrupting demarcations between normalcy and deviance. To the extent that these processes are actively shaped by and partake in shaping our desires, contempt, ways of thinking and being, otherness and transgression constitute pertinent sites for critical exploration within
the two overlapping fields of research, Fan and Celebrity Studies.
A complex and multivalent term, otherness is conventionally signaled by markers of “difference” and the unknown. As difference remains a condition for any determinate sense of identity, otherness is also inevitably implicit and complicit in considerations of subjectivity, identity, and sameness rendering it a pivotal aspect in discussions on both their constitution and impossibility. Likewise, in the field of Fan and Celebrity culture – where categories such as class, gender, race, sexuality, and age dynamically intersect and interact in manifold ways – the identity work, social meanings, and cultural preferences informing both these cultures’ production and consumption of cultural and media texts are also
constantly negotiated. Reflexive of the values, biases, and tensions of the social body, they are useful indicators of contemporary configurations and devices for othering; for example, the ways in which the discourses of immorality, pathology, monstrosity, impropriety, and cultism, among others, inform the construction of difference, and function as vehicles for othering that additionally cut diagonally across various imbricating “-isms,” such as racism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, and lookism.
As difference often implies the perception of deviance, otherness is accompanied by the constant impending threat of transgression, to undo and redraw the differentiating limits determining the
provisional identities of entities, behaviors, and bodies. While transgression refers to a violation and exceeding of bounds, it also ambiguously realizes and completes these boundaries as it helps define them and reaffirms a given social order by designating the illicit. This dialectic of the de/stabilizing
effects of transgression summons further inquiry in relation to fandoms and celebrity cultures, in which deviance is an attractive commercial component. Construed as particularly excessive, both celebrity personas and subcultural fan practices are defined by their distance from the norm, but where celebrity
culture concerns the consumption of transgressive content and narratives of extraordinary personalities, in the case of fan culture, consumption itself is purportedly transgressive. Celebrities are conventionally conceptualized as power-saturated signs seductively reinforcing cultural norms – either
through glossy portraits of charismatic individuals advertizing luxurious lifestyles and the censure of celebrities in the scandal genre respectively – and fandoms, conversely, as subversively contesting these norms through the fetishistic appropriation of cultural icons, media products, and playful textual poaching. However, hardly homogenous, both celebrity power and fandoms channel a multitude of contradictory and inconsistent ideological inflections, and entail a complex mesh of conformity and heterogeneity, which informs, for example, the social interaction among fans and their interpretive communities, whose internal fractions struggle over affect and meaning, as well as the pervasive circulation and currency of certain im/proper celebrity images and fan identities. Accordingly, the need to study, explain, and analyze the semiotic labor invested in the celebrity sign and by the fan in a given media product respectively only becomes greater.
In light of today’s new socio-political subjectivities, prosumer and participatory culture, new technologies and distributive modes, expanding networks, and means of communication enabling transcultural proximity between individuals from different parts of the world, new encounters, expressions, and understandings have emerged and with it, transformed nuances of othering, saming, and transgression. As a result, Fan and Celebrity cultures, are in need of a reappraisal in which the new
fickle and permeable boundaries between identities, cultural practices, private and public spheres, products and consumers, celebrity and fan bodies, intimacy and estrangement are investigated.
Refracting otherness and transgression from overlapping prisms, the pleasures, representations, productions, and affects of celebrity and fan cultures opens up a fruitful and invigorating space for further research.
It is this variety of formulations which this conference wishes to convene on from divergent disciplinary
and theoretical perspectives. The Cultural Transformations Research Group at Aarhus University
therefore invites submissions exploring celebrity and fan cultures within the scope of the critical spaces
and contexts offered by otherness and transgression.
WELCOME TOPICS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:
The Intersection of Celebrity and Fan Studies
Sex, Gender, Sexual Differing, and Queering the Fan / Celebrity Body
Cross-Over Celebrities; Ethnicity, Hybridity, and Fandom in Transcultural Contexts
Celebrity Representations of Dis/ability and through Fan Works
The Intersectionalities of Social Categories in Celebrity and Fan Cultures
Notoriety, Infamy, Scandal, Deviance, and Excess
Social Media and the Construction of Celebrity as Other
The Construction of Otherness in Fandom and Fan Works
Monstrosity, the Abject, and Uncanny in Fan Fiction, Fandoms, and Celebrityhood
Pathology, Addiction, Cultism, Confession, and Therapy
Mashing and Vidding: Viral and Violating
Authenticity, Secrecy, Intimacy, and Publicity
Post-feminist Celebrity Narratives and Cultural Forms
Power, Prosumerism, and Participatory Culture
New Modes of Self-Other Relations within Para-social Contexts
Fan and/or Celebrity Shaming
The (Im)Material Other Worlds of Fandoms and the Alternative Spaces of Fan Communities
PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITIES
We are pleased to announce that qualified research papers are considered for prospective publication in
a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Otherness: Essays and Studies,
http://www.otherness.dk/journal/. Submitted articles will follow the standard review process of the
journal.
PROCEDURE FOR SUBMITTING PROPOSALS FOR PAPERS
The conference is open to scholars and students of all disciplines. Those wishing to participate in the
conference are invited to submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the organizers at
otcelebrityfan@gmail.com by Friday, August 22, 2014. The convenors will have reviewed the
abstracts and notified the authors of whether their proposals have been accepted no later than
September 12, 2014. Papers may be given in English with citations in any language, and are limited to
20 minutes.
All questions regarding conference content (abstracts, presentations, speakers etc.) may be directed to
the organizers at otcelebrityfan@gmail.com.
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE:
Matthias Stephan, Ph.D. scholar Claus Toft-Nielsen, Ph.D.
Lise Dilling-Hansen, Ph.D. scholar Susan Yi Sencindiver, Ph.D.
Call for Papers
Fan Phenomena: James Bond
Having recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the James Bond films in 2012, and with pre-production on Bond 24 underway, Intellect’s Fan Phenomena book series is now seeking chapters for a new volume on fandom and James Bond. The Fan Phenomena books explore and decode the fascination we have with what constitutes an iconic or cult phenomenon and how a particular person, TV show or film character/film infiltrates its way into the public consciousness. Over the years Bond has proved to be popular with fans, and is an enduring global cultural phenomenon, making him a perfect icon to be covered by the series.
From the original Bond stories written by Ian Fleming, through to the success of the EON-produced films, and other licensed Bond novels, video games and tie-in products, the Bond franchise is long-running and highly financially lucrative, having generated billions of dollars in revenue. But unsurprisingly, given his status as a global icon, Bond has also evolved well beyond this official image to become a popular hero who is deeply influential and widely appropriated. The James Bond (Fan Phenomena) title will examine aspects of the Bond fan culture, and may consider in particular what exploring fans and fandom might bring to debates about Bond’s continued cultural relevance. The emphasis will be on fan culture as an aspect of the Bond phenomenon, and the collection will aim to analyse some of the ways in which this iconic character has been taken up and (re)interpreted, (re)appropriated and (re)branded by and for his fan-base, and across media.
Topics of particular interest might include, but are not limited to:
– Bond as lifestyle icon
e.g. Bond’s influence on fashion, the emulation of Bond through the purchase of clothing/accessories/fragrance, fan appropriation or identification with the Bond image or role, Bond-themed experiences, or Bond as cult hero
– The Bond brand
e.g. the creation of brand partnerships, brand recognition and reinforcement, the significance of ‘Bondomania’, the Bond brand reboot, transmedia Bond, the Bond villain, or Bond girl
– Bond merchandise, memorabilia and collecting
e.g. the significance of product consumption, marketing or creation
– Bond fans’ use of different media to create community
e.g. fan clubs, fanzines, Bond on the internet, video games, books, music or comic books
– The phenomena of Bond fan art, fan fiction, fan films and other fan responses
e.g. the Bond/Q pairing, crossover fan fiction (such as Bond and Harry Potter, Bond and Dr Who, or Bond and Batman), fan interpretations of the Bond character, or Bond fan fiction and copyright
– Bond fan demographics
e.g. the role of gender, sexuality, age in the Bond fan base, global examples of Bond fandom, or stereotypes of the Bond fan
– Arguments and divides between Bond fans
e.g. fans of the Bond books vs. fans of the films, Bond bests and worsts (actors/films/characters), or fan responses to particular characters, casting choices or the direction of the Bond franchise (such as DanielCraigisnotBond.com)
– Bond-inspired tourism
e.g. fans who visit Bond film shooting locations, Bond tours, Bond’s London, or the Bond-related tourist industry
– Bond-inspired spoofs, satires, parodies, imitations and references in film, books, videogames, on TV or other media
e.g. Austin Powers (1997, 1999, 2002), James Pond (1990), ‘You Only Move Twice’ (1996) The Simpsons’ episode, Johnny English (2003), or the short story ‘Bond Strikes Camp’ (1963)
– Bond and philosophy
e.g. the philosophical questions raised by Bond, or the appeal of Bond’s philosophy
– The language of Bond
e.g. key terminology (the ‘Bondian’), the significance of Bond’s body language, or of the repetition of iconic phrases (by fans)
Like other titles in the Fan Phenomena series, this book is aimed at both fans and those interested in the cultural and social aspects of James Bond. As such the book is intended to be entertaining, informative, and accessible to a broad audience.
Please send an abstract (300 words) and a short bio, or direct enquiries to Claire Hines claire.hines@solent.ac.uk by 30 June 2014. Final chapters will be 3,000 – 3,500 words.
Call for Papers:
FAN STUDIES
2014 Midwest Popular Culture Association Conference
Friday-Sunday, October 3-5, 2014
Indianapolis, IN
JW Marriot Indianapolis
Updated Deadline: May 15, 2014
Submissions.mpcaaca.org
Topics can include, but are not limited to fan fiction, multi-media fanproduction, fan communities, fandom of individual media texts, sports fandom, or the future of fandom. Case studies are also welcome.
Please upload 250 word abstract proposals on any aspect of FanStudies to the Fan Studies area, http://submissions.mpcaaca.org/.
More information about the conference can be found athttp://www.mpcaaca.org/
Please note the availability of graduate student travel grants:http://mpcaaca.org/conference/travel-grants/.
Please include name, affiliation, and e-mail address with the 250 word abstract. Also, please indicate in your submission whether your presentation will require an LCD Projector and/or Audio hookup.
Any questions? Please email Katie Wilson at KateMarieWilson@gmail.com
CFP- Fan Phenomena: The Lord of the Rings
Intellect’s Fan Phenomena series is seeking chapters for a new volume on fandom and The Lord of The Rings films. The series explores and decodes the fascination we have with what constitutes an iconic or cult phenomenon, and how a particular
person, TV show or film infiltrates its way into the public consciousness.
The Lord of the Rings (Fan Phenomena) title will examine the film’s ‘fan culture’, including matters of audience participation and iconic status, as well as other areas of influence and impact. Subjects are to be addressed in a thoughtful and accessible manner aimed at both fans and those interested in the cultural, economic, and social aspects of The Lord of the Rings.
Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:
· Fan media
· Cult status
· Film-based tourism
· Web site and forum interactions
· Character franchises
· Adaptation processes
· Audience reception
· Prequels/sequels (The Hobbit in particular)
· Film location guides
· Fantasy fandom
· Merchandise
· Economics
· Collector editions
· Media design
· Gender portrayal
· The Philosophy of LOTR
· The importance of ‘location’
Interviews with The Lord of the Rings tour organisers, fan-media coordinators, or authors of LOTR-related books (especially of tourism and film guides) will also be considered.
Please send an abstract (300 words) and a short bio (250 words) by 15 May 2014. For selected abstracts, the final chapters of 3000-3500 words will be due 1 September 2014.
Please direct all questions and submissions to Dr Lorna Piatti-Farnell:
lorna.piatti-farnell@aut.ac.nz.
Dear all,
Transformative Works and Cultures journal has just published a new special issue guest edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, examining Fandom and/as Labor.
Transformative Works and Cultures
Vol 15 (2014)
Table of Contents
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/16
Editorial
——–
Fandom and/as labor
Mel Stanfill,Megan Condis
Praxis
——–
Fifty shades of fan labor: Exploitation and Fifty Shades of Grey
Bethan Jones
The media festival volunteer: Connecting online and on-ground fan labor
Robert Moses Peaslee,Jessica El-Khoury,Ashley Liles
Chuck versus the ratings: Savvy fans and “save our show” campaigns
Christina Savage
Modding a free and open source software video game: “Play testing is hard
work”
Giacomo Poderi,David James Hakken
Sherlockology and Galactica.tv: Fan sites as gifts or exploited labor?
Bertha Chin
Promoting fan labor and “all things Web”: A case study of Tosh.0
Rose Helens-Hart
The cultural economics of performance space: Negotiating fan, labor, and
marketing practice in Glee ’s transmedia geography
Matthias Stork
Symposium
——–
Fan work: Labor, worth, and participation in fandom’s gift economy
Tisha Turk
Better Badges: Image as virus
Joly MacFie
Interview
——–
Veronica Mars Kickstarter and crowd funding
Bertha Chin,Bethan Jones,Myles McNutt,Luke Pebler
Review
——–
Digital labor: The Internet as playground and factory, edited by Trebor
Scholz
Stephanie Anne Brown
Cognitive capitalism, education, and digital labor, edited by Michael A.
Peters and Ergin Bulut
Simone D. Becque
Gaga feminism: Sex, gender, and the end of normal, by J. Jack Halberstam
Anne Kustritz
Dear all,
A new issue, Volume 2, Issue 1, of the Journal of Fandom Studies has now been published. This is a special issue focusing on the anniversary of Textual Poachers by Henry Jenkins. The table of contents are as follows:
Deletion Special Episode CFP Doctor Who: “…definitely a madman with a box!”
Deletion, the open access online forum in science fiction studies, is calling fororiginal contributions for a special themed ‘episode’ on Doctor Who. Following the 50th anniversary celebrations the return of the Time Lord later this year. What new directions are possible for a series with such history, production demands and passionate fandom?
Deletion invites contributions from science, philosophy and all other approaches that consider the visual alongside the aural and the aesthetic, to critically engage with the series’ future, past and present and to forge new perspectives for the study of this iconic SF imaginarium. We aim to reflect a diversity of approaches and seek contributions that offer new critical dimensions and concepts to engage with the series, its themes and concepts, its cultural importance and its impact, directions and meaning. Deletion encourages the submission of non-standard submissions such as creative pieces.
Contributions should be between 1200 -1500 words, but can also take the form of 2-3 minute podcasts, video blogs, image galleries, and other media.
Submission are Due May 30, 2014.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
Death and Life and Regeneration
Reimagining Time and Space: multi-dimensional perspectives and places
Conservation and environmentalism restarting the universe
Mental health and time travel
Companion; bodies, genders, races and people
Technology; and non-technology technology
Whovians and fan cultures, commodities, cosplay, crafts, economies, and relations
Genre policing: science fiction, fantasy or space opera?
Time Lords: politics, power, society, order and chaos,
New Who and Old Who: transmedia, paratextual industries and innovation
Please contact the editors for the episode Christopher Moore (chrism@uow.edu.au) or Daniel Lewis (djle@deakin.edu.au) for further information.
Call for papers:
THE FAN STUDIES NETWORK 2014 CONFERENCE
27-28th September 2014
Regent’s University, London, UK
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Paul Booth (DePaul University)
Dr Rhiannon Bury (Athabasca University)
Mr Orlando Jones (star of Sleepy Hollow, appearing for a virtual Q&A)
For two years the Fan Studies Network has provided a fruitful and enthusiastic space for academics interested in fans and fandom to connect, share resources, and develop their research ideas. Following the success of our first symposium in November 2013, we are delighted to announce the FSN2014 Conference, taking place over two days at Regent’s University London from 27-28th September 2014.
FSN2014 will feature three fantastic keynote speakers. The first will be Dr Paul Booth, author of Digital Fandom: New Media Studies (Peter Lang, 2010), Time on TV: Temporal Displacement and Mashup Television (Peter Lang, 2012) and editor of Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who (Intellect, 2013). His newest book, Media Play: Pastiche, Parody, Fandom, is forthcoming from University of Iowa Press. The second keynote will be Dr Rhiannon Bury, author of Cyberspaces of Their Own: Female Fandoms Online (Peter Lang, 2005) and currently writing her second book for publication with Peter Lang, entitled Television 2.0: New Perspectives on Digital Convergence, Audiences, and Fans. We are also incredibly delighted that Mr Orlando Jones, an American film and television writer, producer, and actor who currently plays Captain Frank Irving in Sleepy Hollow (Fox, 2013-) and vocal proponent of fan culture, will be joining us via Skype to participate in a virtual Q&A session.
We invite abstracts of no more than 300 words for individual 20 minute papers that address any aspect of fandom or fan studies. We also welcome collated submissions for pre-constituted panels. We encourage new members, in all stages of study, to the network and welcome proposals for presentations on, but not limited to, the following possible topics:
– Activism and fandom
– Producer-audience interactions
– Non-Western fan cultures
– Ethics in fan studies
– Defining fandom
– Anti-Fandom and Non-Fandom
– Fan use of social media platforms
– Fandom (and) controversies
– The future of fan studies
We also invite expressions of interest (100- 200 words) from anyone wishing to host a short session of ‘speed geeking.’ This would involve each speaker chairing a short discussion on a relevant topic of their choosing, and then receiving extensive feedback, making it ideal for presenting in-progress or undeveloped ideas. If you have any questions about this format of presentation, please contact Richard McCulloch at mccullochr@regents.ac.uk.
Please send any enquires/abstracts to: fsnconference@gmail.com by SUNDAY 1st JUNE.
Notifications of decisions will be sent out w/c 16th June.
You can find out more information on https://fanstudies.wordpress.com/ or talk about the event on Twitter using #FSN2014.
Conference Organisers:
Lucy Bennett and Tom Phillips (FSN chairs)
Bertha Chin, Bethan Jones, Richard McCulloch, Rebecca Williams (FSN board)
Call For Papers/V. 2, N. 3/ IJCLTS 2.3/ June, 2014
INDIAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION STUDIES
ISSN: 2321-8274
VOLUME: II, NUMBER: III
CALL FOR PAPERS
STARDOM AND CELEBRITY IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA
Issue Editor- Rakesh Ramamoorthy
Asst. Professor of English, St.John’s College.
LAST DATE OF SUBMISSION: 31st May, 2014
Shahrukh Khan, Anna Hazare, M.S. Dhoni, Shiney Ahuja, A.R. Rahman, M.S. Subbalekshmi, Saina Nehwal, Arundhati Roy, Sanjay Dutt, Vava Suresh…….
A random list of famous Indians such as the one given above is enough to remind one of the wide range of celebrities who are in the limelight in contemporary India. They range from film stars to politicians, from sport stars to activists, from darlings of the masses to widely hated ‘villains’, from pan-Indian and global celebrities to stars whose fame exists within specific regions.
The forthcoming issue of IJCLTS will seek to decode the politics of stardom in post-1990s India. The informing assumption is that there is no single culture of celebrity and the issue will endeavor to highlight the co-existence of multiple domains of celebrity culture in India. We invite scholars all over the world to submit critical essays that are analytic and that are informed by the extant work on celebrity studies. The areas of interest include but are not limited to:
Ø Theorizing the Indian celebrity
Ø The global circulation of Indian celebrities such as Shahrukh Khan, A.R. Rahman etc.
Ø The apparatuses of the Celebrity Industry in India: The media (magazines, websites, TV shows), the events (Film launches), product tie-ins etc.
Ø The conventional domains of stardom: Authors, Filmstars, Sports Stars etc.
Ø Crime and Celebrity: Criminals and victims, especially the fame (or notoriety) accrued in conjunction with rape cases.
Ø The public intellectual/activist as celebrity.
Ø Fandom: Study of Fan identities across various domains of celebrities, including the study of Fan Clubs (online as well as ‘real life’)
The pertinent master categories of India studies – class, caste, gender and region – could inform the prospective contributions. In keeping with the overall scope of the journal, we would especially welcome comparatist approaches to celebrity studies and would welcome works that focus on regional language representations and analysis of celebrities whose fame circulates within certain regions.
We invite original, unpublished and innovative work from across the disciplines and across the world. The extent of the essays should be between 3000-5000 words. We also welcome shorter but rigorously analytic pieces (500-1500 words) whose scope is less extensive than that of an essay but which raises a pertinent point regarding celebrity culture. Besides the articles on above said topics we inviteTRANSLATIONS, INTERVIEWS, and BOOK REVIEWS etc. on any area. All submissions should adhere to the MLA 7th edition style sheet, failing which they would be rejected without any notice the quality of the work notwithstanding. Paper can be sent to ijclts2013@gmail.com by 31st May 2014. No paper will be accepted after the dead line. For further enquiries please feel free to contact the issue editor (rakeshmoorthy@gmail.com) or the editors. For more details you can visit our site mentioned below: https://sites.google.com/site/indjournalofclts/announcements
The Fan Studies Network 