The Fan Studies Network

BAFTSS 2016 University of Reading April 14-16 2016

Trans/media: Trans/national Screens

Individual and Panel Proposals are invited for the April 2016 BAFTSS conference at the University of Reading. At a time when distinctions between national boundaries and between media platforms are increasingly fluid, we wish to interrogate the many ‘in-betweens’ that this fluidity gives rise to. We also want to embrace the very concept of how not only form but identity is in a state of flux and transports us from one position to another. Keynote speakers (to be announced in due course) embrace and question these spaces and networks and, as more academic works from a new generation of screen analysts who identify with neither old nor new media come to the forefront, being trans- seems to encapsulate post-postmodernity. Examples of topics can be found below, but papers are invited examining all screen forms and subjects beyond the thematic list below. 

Transmedia
Adaptation
Transnational stars
International television and the impact of the contemporary epic
Questioning national identities
European identities
Policy, Regulation and Funding
Transnational genres on all screen platforms
Trans… identities
Transnational versus international
Historical transnationality (e.g. early cinema, émigré directors and performers, industry collaborations)

To submit a proposal, email Anna Claydon at eac14@le.ac.uk for a proposal form. The deadline for proposals in October 14th 2015. Proposals will be reviewed and decisions communicated during December.

We aim to keep the conference fee as low as we can and there will be a substantial discount for PGR, non-salaried and retired conference attendees but the conference fee (which will not include accommodation or the conference dinner) will not be announced until we have a rough idea of numbers based on paper submissions and can set the price accordingly.

Sex and Sexualities in Popular Culture: Feminist Perspectives

Call for Papers for a 1-day postgraduate symposium hosted by the Digital Cultures Research Centre

Abstract deadline: September 27th, 2015

Conference date and location: November 7th, 2015, Digital Cultures Research Centre, The Watershed, Bristol

Eligibility: Postgraduate students (MA/MSc onwards) and creative practitioners

Send abstracts to:milena2.popova@live.uwe.ac.uk and bethanvjones@hotmail.com

Popular culture, as can be seen through the GamerGate controversy for one example, has a profound impact on feminist issues and discourses. Representations of sex and sexualities influence public opinion and individual attitudes and perceptions. Discussions – in both media and academia – are continuing to take place about the impact of Fifty Shades, sexism and misogyny in computer game and comic book fandom, the sexualisation of girls and the sexual desires of both young and adult women. Moral panics abound surrounding Fifty Shades and the “irrational” behaviour of One Direction fans, while LGBTQIA+ identities and sexualities are often represented tokenistically at best. Creative practitioners can easily come under fire for poor representations of sex and sexualities, as evidenced most recently by the reception of Joss Whedon’s treatment of Black Widow in The Avengers: Age of Ultron; equally they can be celebrated for their efforts, as was the case with BioWare’s inclusion of a consent negotiation scene in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

This one-day symposium will open up debates and explore the nuances of sex and sexualities within popular culture and will afford a platform for postgraduate students (MA/MSc onwards) and creative practitioners exploring these areas to meet peers, share work and learn from each other. We aim to create a space safe for experimentation – both with new ideas and with presentation formats. We therefore encourage a range of submissions, including workshops, discussions, pecha kucha, as well as the traditional 20-minute paper format.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
– Representations of women’s desire and sexualities in popular culture
– Non-cis- and heteronormative sexualities in popular culture, especially beyond “gay and lesbian”
– Representations of sex work
– Infertility and sexual dysfunction
– Sexual intersections: race, disability, religion, class and socioeconomic status, gender
– Sex and sexualities in gaming
– Sexual pleasure in popular culture
– Invisibility: (a)sexualities unrepresented
– Sex, sexualities and social media
– Sex and sexualities in fan and transformative works

Please submit a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio to milena2.popova@live.uwe.ac.uk and bethanvjones@hotmail.com by September 27th, 2015.

CALL FOR PAPERS – FAN CULTURE AND THEORY

POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION NATIONAL CONFERENCE

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – MARCH 21-25, 2016

Proposals for both panels and individual papers are now being accepted for all aspects of Fan Culture and Theory, including, but not limited to, the following areas:

Fan Fiction

Fan/Creator interactions

Race, Gender and Sexuality in Fandom

Music Fandom

Reality Television Fandom

Social Media and Fandom

Individual Fan Communities

Fans as critics

Fan videos and films

Fan crafts

Fan pilgrimages

Comics fandom

Ethics and responsibilities of academics working within fan studies

Global fan practices

Please submit abstracts of 100-250 words with relevant audio/visual requests online.  Click here for instructions for doing so. Deadline for proposals is October 1, 2015.

Panel proposals should include one abstract of 200 words describing the panel, accompanied by the abstracts (100 – 250 words) of the individual papers that comprise the panel.

Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals.

All proposals & abstracts must be submitted through The PCA Database. Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. Exceptions and rules.

If you are unsure whether your proposal fits in this area, please contact the area chair, Katherine Larsen at klarsen@gwu.edu

This is a call for participants for a Fan Studies panel at PCA 2016. We’d like to put together a diverse group of speakers, ideally acafans who are also active in their fandoms and aware of the intersectional issues that occur when it comes to responses to fannish reading and writing.

There are very specific histories and stigmas associated with women’s writing and reading. Whether it’s a question of popular reading or canon formation, the responses are still the same: “that’s not good for you!”/ “that’s trashy!” / “why can’t you read Serious Literature?” The big questions we would like to especially consider are: “Why is reading and writing fic a problem for some people?” and “Where does reading fit into participatory culture?” It seems that in the scholarship fic is viewed is as something women write, and that we as scholars read critically–but we seldom to never consider how fans read fic for pleasure as leisure activity.With the increasing mainstream knowledge of and exposure to fanworks, this topic is especially pertinent, given public attacks on women’s writing (and especially young women’s writing) in television and news media.This roundtable would like to discuss how the fan models of women’s writing and its reception is complicated both through genre and fan history. And finally: Why must women always defend what we want to read and write?

We would like to add 3-4 additional participants to the three scholars already assembled (myself, Candace Benefiel from Texas A&M, and Katherine Larsen from George Washington University).

Please send a statement of interest of no more than 250 words to cait.coker@gmail.com by September 1, 2015.

SPECIAL ISSUE ON ETHICS IN FAN STUDIES CALL FOR PAPERS

In November 2014 an article by Adrienne Evans and Mafalda Stasi appeared in Participations calling for us as a field to consider whether a unified methodology is necessary or desirable for the field. In April 2015 the conversation at the Journal of Fandom Studies roundtable during the annual Popular Culture Association conference quickly turned to the dual (and perhaps inextricably related) topics of methodology and ethics in fan studies.

This month that conversation will continue at the Fan Studies Network 2015 conference during a workshop on ethics.  As the description of that workshop suggests, there are several questions we have all been grappling with for quite some time, questions that have become perhaps more pressing in the light of increasing use of social media by fans and increasing attention from the media on fan activities.  The four questions posed during this workshop: “what should ethics in fan studies look like, do we need a standard ethical framework; how should fan studies scholars approach ethical issues in their work; what does the future of the field hold” all raise discreet questions of their own.

This special issue of The Journal of Fandom Studies aims to examine these and related questions.  How do we define privacy? Do we need to re-examine the notion of the aca-fan? Where are our boundaries as researchers? As fans? When do we need IRB approval? To what extent might our desire to “protect” fans actually being doing a disservice to the fans and the field?

Please submit proposals for papers (250-400 words) by August 15, 2015 to journaloffandomstudies@gmail.com.

Deadline: 1 September 2015 (contributors will be notified within two weeks of the deadline)

When Sydney Newman created a new family-orientated show for the BBC back in early 1963, he envisioned it as being, in John Reith’s terms, to “educate, inform and entertain”, one in which all stories “were to be based on scientific and historical facts as we knew them at that time”. It was no coincidence therefore that consequently the Doctor took on board the TARDIS a science teacher and a history teacher to learn from and share in his travels. “How wonderful,” Newman would later recall, “if today’s humans could find themselves on the shores of England seeing and getting mixed up with Caesar’s army in 54 BC, landing to take over the country; be in Rome burning as Nero fiddles; get involved in Europe’s tragic 30 years war, etc.” There would be no bug-eyed monsters, Newman warned, and the Doctor was not allowed to interfere in history, only to observe.

Over fifty years later, Doctor Who has itself become part of the cultural history of Britain, and its many stories across television, audio plays and books – whether set in the past or populated with the inevitable bug-eyed-monsters – have engaged directly and indirectly with important contemporary and historical issues, characters and events.

We invite contributions for an edited volume that focuses on Doctor Who and History: A Cultural Perspective. While there have been many publications recently celebrating the show’s longevity, or those reflecting on the programme as a product of the BBC as British institution, this volume focuses specifically on the topic of history. This publication promotes a scholarly and interdisciplinary approach to Doctor Who, exploring how the programme reflects on and contributes to notions of history. 

Doctor Who engages with history in multifarious ways and can therefore reveal much about how history is practised, produced, consumed and remediated. Chapter proposals may therefore seek to explore Doctor Who from a diverse range of academic approaches (e.g. media studies; reception theory; fan studies; education) and should draw on and identify appropriate historiographical methods and debates. It is envisaged that the collection will speak both to the programme and to history as a subject area.

Your contribution may focus on the classic series, the reboot (or both), the Big Finishaudios, original novels, or fan fiction.

That said, your contribution might focus on some aspect of

*Reflections in the programme of particular social and political eras and events

*How the show engages with historical cultural icons

*How the show expresses a continuing dialogue with literature, folklore, and mythology

*Tensions between academic and ‘public history’, between history from above and below

* How changing approaches to history and alterations in understanding of historical fact have impacted upon the show

*Non-canonical historical travels or themes

*The interaction of media and technologies in how they inform the practice of history in the programme

*Developments in the Doctor’s strict policy of non-intervention – or not

*Case studies of the ‘pure historicals’/pseudo historicals/celebrity historicals

Topics already under consideration include the depiction of Nero and the early Roman Empire in 1965’s The Romans, imagery of the Holocaust, focalisation techniques in lost story Marco Polo, and an investigation into the cultural practices and social sign-posting in The Awakening

Proposals/abstracts should be 300-350 words in length and sent as a Word file. Accepted proposals will be developed into5000-8000 word essays (including notes and references). Please send your abstract (and all correspondence) to Carey Fleiner, University of Winchester (carey.fleiner@winchester.ac.uk) James A. Jordan, University of Southampton (J.A.Jordan@soton.ac.uk) and Dene October, University of Arts London (d.october@lcc.arts.ac.uk

See https://doctorwhoandhistory.wordpress. for details